Politics: Being More Like Europe

Tim Worstall's column America: More Like Sweden Than You Thought is excellent. Read it, especially were it dissects common memes like the disparity between America's rich and poor. Turns out America's poor aren't any poorer than most developing countries, but our rich are a whole lot richer.

I'm more than willing to admit that Europe does some things better than we do. It is a fair cop as the US does not have some sort of monopoly on goodness or intelligence. On the other hand, most of the people who advocate adopting European methodologies do it poorly.

Many of the advocated systems that don't actually work well. For example, if you're going to advocate socialized medicine, advocate the French system not the British system. The British system is badly underfunded. The French system works pretty well in comparison. Unless you include cost. If I recall correctly, the French system is about twice as expensive as the British system. Which means that the French system offers good health care at the cost of bankrupting the nation, especially as the nation ages.

Few of the advocated policies cross party lines. For instance you will never see a liberal advocate for a more European tax system. Our tax system is far more regressive than, say, Sweden's. In the US the businesses pay more to shield the citizens. In Europe the citizens pay more to shield the businesses. Which means that the Europeans can have a much higher tax rate without destroying their economy than the US. It is the Republicans who largely argue for a more European style tax system (although they don't use those terms) rather than the Democrats. The Democrats oppose such measures with the standard class warfare rhetoric.

Which is really the point. The "lets be like Europe" isn't really an argument at all. It's an appeal to authority. It's like political peer pressure. I mean if Germany jumped off a bridge would you follow him? Granted there are things we can learn, but why model ourselves after Europe just to model ourselves after Europe?