Huckabee: Obama's "European Ideas" Threaten America's Freedom
Posted by Joerg Wolf in Transatlantic Relations, US Domestic and Cultural Issues on Saturday, September 6. 2008
Mike Huckabee, who finished second in the Republican presidential primaries, said at the Republican National Convention:
John McCain offers specific ideas to respond to a need for change. But let me say there are some things we don't want to change: freedom, security, and the opportunity to prosper. Barack Obama's excellent adventure to Europe... (LAUGHTER) ... took his campaign for change to hundreds of thousands of people who don't even vote or pay taxes here. But let me hasten to say that it's not what he took there that concerns me. It's what he brought back: European ideas that give the government the chance to grab even more of our liberty and destroy our hard-earned livelihood.
He's right. Americans should never travel to Europe. The danger of brainwashing is too severe. Europeans are so sinister: They attract American teenager with their small freedoms. And once these Americans return to the US, they reduce freedom and liberty in the heartland. They will join Obama's communist party and take away your guns, domesticate you by providing free health care and make you addicted to Dutch weed, Belgian chocolate, German sauerkraut, Italian cappuccino, and French surrender-monkey cheese so that Europe gets richer and America poorer.
Two years ago, I wrote the post "Using the United States to Scare Germans." Perhaps I should write one about "Using Europe to Scare Americans."
Related posts in the Atlantic Review:
Huckabee: United States Does Integration Better than Europe
The Euro-American Religious Divide
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so far it's our "enlighteneds" fault, and I don't forget the german philosophers
http://www.amazon.com/Roads-Modernity-British-American-Enlightenments/dp/1400042364
Well, most American evangelical Christians like Huckabee believe that the Anti-Christ will appear as a "charismatic European". They consider Europe a cesspool of secularism.
What did surprise me was when Giuliani called Obama a "Cosmopolitan". That reminded me of Stalin's purge of the Jews, who he called "rootless Cosmopolitans" (безродный космополит).
No, they believe that he will come in the form of evil, but will sound like a "professional European" or anyone else selling their own virtues based on shallow and empty things like lifestyle hard.
How on earth can you pretend to know what most evangelicals, American or German, think anyway? Oh, yeah, it's because "they're all that way!" Geez, I almost forgot the script there for a second!
And we all know just how uncosmopolitain New York is!
What's specious about this post is the scale and nature of comparisons. Most Americans hava a unique, home grown view of the world. Wanting that to survive is not exactly unique. We raise the point far less frequently than German popular culture raises the bogeyman of "Amerikanische Verhältnisse", and to compare it to being able to smoke (a small pleasure more plausibly available in the US) or wasting time in a Kneipe is ignorant.
What about the traditionally narrower and more limiting life-options that compels so many Germans to leave for the US, Canada, Aus., and NZ? Or caused virtually every one of my classmates to leave Berlin for California?
How does being able to buy cheap hash as a "small freedom" compare to being able to pursue more life opportunities?
Obviously, everything I said was tongue in cheek.
Still, I would like to point out that in the Berlin underground your are allowed to drink alcohol. Britain just banned it:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=171029&title=anarchy-under-the-uk
Isn't that freedom much more fun than the right to carry guns?
;-)
Getting absolutely legless hammered is the Brit's chief freedom. Presumably a German's too. But what about the second most important freedom? Ummmm, errr - "colonising the platform", as the man said. It goes with getting hammered.
After one has had one's 15 pints some short time later another need arises or perhaps descends.
Actually 'trickles' might be a better description. Of course is one is legless one should take care to lie facing downhill if possible, lest life's small freedom's be experienced too often.
I have a secret - don't tell the Americans lest they revoke my passport. Shhhh!
I don't usually have a problem with life's little freedoms. Upon occasion, yes, such as the time one gentleman expressed his freedom by ralphing on my shoe. On the underground late one friday night as I recall. I expressed my repressive soul by expressing disgust and calling him a wanker.
Should this be considered a general freedom do you think? Ought I be able to wank in public, or leave a long zappa on the public footpaths when I feel the need?
Well, yes. I myself am a sad example of the way that living in Europe can corrupt a worthy (well to be honest unworthy) American. Fact is I moved to the UK when I realized that I was unworthy to live in Olanthe, Kansas, or Camden, NJ.
The degeneracy of my thought processes is such that I wasn't even aware that Obama is a commie! In my experience Dutch weeds are about as tasteless as the weeds of any other country, although MUCH rarer than in the US of course, the Dutch being infamous for cultivating every square inch. I LIKE free health care (although it isn';t really free, I pay taxes for it). But it's SUCH a relaxing feeling lying in a hospital bed wondering whether they will let you go and reflecting on the gladsome fact that one is not sliding into bankruptcy.......
Sauerkraut is much overrated (I much prefer Kartoffelsalat), and cappuchino only for breakfast. I prefer espresso, perhaps espresso con grappa. Pasta and pizza of course - one eats as well in Italy as anywhere.
I fear my degereracy is so far advance that my min point of curiosity is where one may obtain "surrender-monkey" cheese? I've never heard of that variety & fear I cannot obtain it in London - haven't even seen it at Harrods! Monkey meat, yes (in Bruxelles). But no monkey cheese.
you forgot to say how much the oysters are suffering of our evilness, that you adore
Oysters? What oysters? I see no oysters around here (burp). Oh those shells in front of me? Some ill-willed person put them in front of me, I've been framed!
hehe, someone has a bad memory
"Ah, that looks good, franchie! The assiete de mare and cheeses are my particular weakness. The main looks good, but give me enough fresh oysters and shellfish and I don't need the fancy dishes. In fact I don't need the asseite - just oysters! Or maybe Homard.... "
02/18/2008
I have no memory of that at all. Methinks an evil French blogger put those into her comments sections.
I will also note that all the visual evidence places someone else at rhe scene of these desperate deeds, not my humble self.....
It's like Groundhog day. One tries to have a discussion on ethics and philosophy, and a European will use as some kind of evasion or basis the culinary habits of their culture.
The Dutch don't have free health care. They have both a manditory insurance system and taxes so high as to make nationalization seem almost rational.
I 'm not sure what it is now, but at one point my brother in R'dam was in the 63% bracket.
Olathe, KS, not Olanthe. Are you really from Kansas or did you just pull that out of a hat?
Two sources, Sue. I lived in the KC area for several months about 15 years ago while doing a contract at US Sprint. The other is the book "Whats the matter with Kansasa", by Thomas Frank. I think I drove through a few times on the way to somewhere else, and it struck me as a slightly bleak place. Not as bleak as Camden, NJ by a long chalk however.
"free health care"
Like it's going to fall from the sky with gold coins and nude women.
Exactly! The European nanny states take care of all your needs, totally for free:
Mark Steyn:
Jazz in a comment:
Badboy, I observed no nude women or gold coins on my last visit to my local NHS trust. Such things are far more likely at a gold-plated hospital in the US or Switzerland catering to the global elite, I would think. Although I cannot say from personal experience, alas.
I have been in hospital in the US and in the UK, and there are some similarities. Both visits conclude with a visit to the cashiers office, but there the experience diverges somewhat; in the US they ask for money - in the UK thery give it to you. Or rather return the cash you were carrying when they admitted you; it's a way to reduce the theft problem on open wards....
US hospitals have one major advantage. The NHS motto ought to be "Ve hoff vays of making you stay!", a refrain which is never heard in the US.
Gold coind and nude women, no.
The NHS does try it's best however, and manages to provide cold pans and rude women.
Don, he is referring to Titian's painting : venus under the raining of gold coins,
though we don't get golden coins, we have to pay the third part, that means we have to get an extra assurance police like a mutuelle. But the poorest can't afford it., then their charges are only invalided for emergencies. Only if you are declared 100% invalid, all the chareges are exemted, be illnesses, accidents, elders.
Well, rooting for St. Louis woud cause anybody to be kicked out of Olanthe. I've been to Europe, many more times then Sen. Obama, and inspite of what some may think I do not have any animosity towards anyone living there. Well, maybe the English seeing as how my relatives left Scotland to get away from those pestilental descendents of German nobility.
But like Gabriel Marquez Garcia mentioned that he could tell in an instant by watching how someone walked whether he was European or American but he admitted that he couldn't tell the difference between the countries. That the Americans, both continents, walked always toward something while the European simply retraced where he had walked before. Of course there are Europeans that are just as energetic and nonconformist as the Americans but that number seems to spend an awful lot of time trying to get tourist visas or green cards to reverse the decline.
Herodotus, probably the first tourist who came back and wrote about the colorful people he saw and their strange habits, remarked that the Egyptians he saw were not the builders of the pyramids but merely those who lived in the shadows. And the Europeans of today, the exception of course being some nifty new buildings in Paris and anythng by Gaudi in Barcelona, are living in the shadows of others. And unfortunately content to bask in any stray shaft of light that illuminates the shade.
It is nice to see that David has decided his enemies are no longer racists when he can charge them with being anti-Semites just as easily. To these ears cosmopolitan is either a chicks magazine, a drink or people that can subdue any issue by nuance and identifying the validity of the opposing argument.
"But like Gabriel Marquez Garcia mentioned that he could tell in an instant by watching how someone walked whether he was European or American"
Oh, that brings back a great memory. I was in Madrid when I noticed it - Americans tend to have a much more open stride. I spent 2 hours outside the Prado people watching, trying to discern the Americans.
I was wrong once - Australian.
"That the Americans, both continents, walked always toward something while the European simply retraced where he had walked before. Of course there are Europeans that are just as energetic and nonconformist as the Americans but that number seems to spend an awful lot of time trying to get tourist visas or green cards to reverse the decline."
This is indeed a very interesting topic. I am a European and I feel often that quite the opposite is true. When I look at the way for example, how "the Americans" conceive foreign politics, I have the impression that little there has changed since the late 19th century. The "American" concept and expression of patriotism as well reminds me of an era before World War I. And then: Doesn't that notorious "American" skepticism towards a prominent role of the state in society conserve a mindset of the late 18th century?
From my European lookout, I often have the impression that "the Americans" are a deeply conservative nation clinging to the past that provides them with self-assuring myths, resenting any major change in the world around them.
They love to talk about "challenges", "optimism" and "change", but actually little changes in North America - unlike in Europe, which in the past two decades has seen the breakup of entire states and the building of new ones, the replacement of national sovereignties by a new supranational order, the collapse and rebuilding of entire national economies, the replacement of one system of society by another one - and wars. Along with East Asia, Europe is the place that has seen the most dynamic "change" in recent years, the place where you can meet real "challenges" rather than imagined ones. North America in comparison from my European lookout looks like a quiet backwater in the stormy sea of historical events.
In 2001 one heavy breaker reached the American continent - and its inhabitants panicked, rallying subsequently around their myths, desperately trying to understand what had changed in the world, while they had been "retracing where they had walked before".
These are my impressions as an observer distant to North America and close to European events. I do not quite trust these observations, however. For I know that it is much easier to perceive developments in your own life and in the life of people around you than to understand what is going on in the lives of people on a continent far away. After all understanding a person means much more than observing "how someone walks".
I think that is the point that most Americans would agree with in that the change the Europeans love to mention was generally at bayonet's point. American's tend to want social nobility that doesn't come from moving into someone else's home because they are the wrong color or religion. If that is what passes for positive change then Europe can have while the descendants of European immigrants in the US can safely avoid the enlightened thinking of the Old World.
Plus I think you have confused conservative with reactionary as the US does not have nobility nor an educational system that essentially create social immobility at the age of fourteen but does create a college graduation rate that is generally 30-50% higher than in Europe.
I think you partially misread me. I am not saying that all of the change taking place in Europe is a positive one - what was positive about the Balkan wars? Nor do I assume that European thinking in any way is "more enlightened" than American thinking - whatever the expressions "European thinking" and "American thinking" mean.
I was referring to your - and Garcia Marquez' - allegation that Europe unlike America is kind of a static place, where people "simply retrace where they have walked before". Any closer look at European history old and recent disproves that view. The opposite is true - whether this is for the better or for the worse. Though definitely not all changes come "at bayonet's point".
I do not quite understand what you mean by "reactionary". I would use that term to describe a social and political attitude that wants to restore a pre-democratic and pre-industrial social order. We can probably easily agree that this attitude is neither typical for Americans nor for Europeans.
Your concept of "social nobility" is cryptic to me. Are you alluding to aristocratic ideas? Such aspirations are thoroughly discredited in most European societies. Though we do have to struggle with traumatic memories of the old class system. But this is another story.
Typo, should have read social mobility! I was also responding , then to the impression I got that somehow conservatives in America fear change when in reality what we fear, if even that is the right word, change that comes with disorder or imposed by a minority. Most Americans and I hope some Europeans simply want to be left alone and not bullied or forced through non-democratic means to live lives of turmoil simply because of some nebulous ideal of the perfect state of man. Please the communists and the fascists tried that and it simply didn't work. When it comes to major changes, ie. going to war, the death penalty, taxes etc., Americans have this peculiar idea that they make the big decisions and the legislature keeps the potholes filled.
I thought this whole thing about social mobility in the US vs Europe had already been debunked.
I woudn't acknowledge debunked for the simple reason that a smaller gap between rich and poor doesn't indicate more social mobility but rather indicates that not only can the poor not rise but that the wealthy are also being constrained from acquiring more wealth. Best example I can think of is Sen. Obama whose unwed and rather undistinguished mother attended a state university while her son with no real familial or political connections went to two of the top rated universities in the world and is now a legitimate presidential candidate. I can't really think of too many comparable examples.
Colin Powell, whose father held a Commonwealth passport, remarked that his parents turned down an opportunity to emigrate to Britain and chose to wait until they could get into the US. Powell explained to a group of junior officers at Sandhurst that if his father had come to Britain then Gen. Powell would probably have become a well-respected senior enlisted man. But by coming to the US he went to West Point and then rose command of the JCS and Secretary of Defense in the US before retiring. This is not a oner but holds true for practically every country in Europe. How many Germans of Turkish descent are commanding anything above a company in Germany or how many French of Algerian origin commanding anything other than platoons in France? Where are the lower class of Europe in any kind skilled job that would come as the result of higher forms of education?
The LSE report doesn't say that there's a smaller gap between the rich and the poor in Europe than in the US. It says that the poor in the US are more likely to stay poor than the poor in Europe. Did you even read the link I provided?
Besides, the first African slaves came to the North America in the late 18th century. A good part of US history is the history of race-relations. Turkish immigrants came to Germany in the early 1960s. Good luck equating one group's situation with the other's.
"but that number seems to spend an awful lot of time trying to get tourist visas or green cards to reverse the decline."
uh, not anymore, a half dollar = 1 euro
though you still get people from eastern europe and or north Africa
"To these ears cosmopolitan is either a chicks magazine, a drink or people that can subdue any issue by nuance and identifying the validity of the opposing argument."
yeah, I have heard that is called "moral relativity",
well from people who recall themselve from Burke enlightment
During a period when the dollar had a stronger value compared to the Euro, 1.15-1.01 net migration from France was .3 per 1,000. Yet today when the Euro was briefly considered the got to currency with an almost 50% increase in value vs. the dollar, the net migration from France is five times greater than when the Euro was weak, 1.6 per thousand. The net loss of French citizens is not connected to the value of the Euro at all but appears to be more of a lack of opportunity, a moribund population and a lack of room for advancement.
Pat, then they are not students who are looking for jobs but more likely people who take profit of cheaper houses buyings. I know that a quite a few of our jewish families buy properties in Miami
as far as students are concerned see the report below :
http://www.newschool.edu/cepa/research/papers/04_06_Howell_French_Students_2.pdf
if some go to the US, it's more likely because they want to improve their english language as far as the same time becoming a first job experience. Most of them returned after 2 years, or 10 years if they are faculty teachers
Let's see I posted some facts concerning the actual Euro to Dollar ratio and the five fold increase in French emigration, which is not the same for holiday homes or study, but actually moving to a different country. And the response is basically supposition and guess work. Have the rates increased in spite of your claim that the Euro zone has created more incentive to stay or not?
"but appears to be more of a lack of opportunity, a moribund population and a lack of room for advancement."
can't see that, our unemployment rate has fallen from 9,x to 7,2 (to 4 within the oil crisis) %
also the babyboomers haved started to go on retirement, therefore that gives opportunities for the youth
I had like to see your source
Could you simply address your original claim that the strong Euro is encouraging the French to stay put? What does the unemployment rate have to do with the fact that the ratio of emigres has increased five fold in spite of an advantageous exchange rate and the highest productivity rate in Europe. Unfortunately that productivity rate is also coupled with one of the lowest per capita hours worked and a high personal income tax rate.
I concede you are an historian, but not a specialist in social policy science, where you show mostly your bitter pre-concepts, I am waiting for your SOURCE
I should apologize and note that the change is three fold not five fold as I originally stated. The first link is to the archived CIA World Factbook from 1999 the year the Euro was adopted. While the second is to the same source but the last complete year of statistics, 2007.
http://www.umsl.edu/services/govdocs/wofact99/134.htm#people
http://www.umsl.edu/services/govdocs/wofact2007/geos/fr.html#People
These statistics are collected by the CIA from primarily the country's own numbers and those reported to the UN.
I'm not to sure what the social scientist crack was about unless it means that I didn't make up statistics from something I remember reading or hearing or something on the internet or the radio, or something!
Plus your own statement of "...yeah, I have heard that is called 'moral relativity,' well from people who recall themselves from burke enlight[en]ment." I can accept the difficulty in writing in another language but that statement appears to lump in Burke with people he looked upon as apologists for social chaos and murder. And in spite of the efforts of Jefferson the US has a representative democracy mainly because America, though initially sympathetic, was horrified to see what the followers of Rousseau had accomplished.
I don't know where you got the rather fanciful claim of 4% unemployment as I couldn't find it anywhere however the rate as of July, 2008 was 7.6% which is a full percentage point drop from the year before, 2007's 8.7%.
ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/ForeignLabour/flsjec.txt
But we're still at the original question of why, with a strong but weakening Euro is emigration from France 3 times higher than before the new Eurozone was created? One could assume that they have something to do with each other and probably be correct.
I can't accept your sources when the first one says that in 1998 the unemployment rate was 11 %, that's silly !!!
are the CIA's of reliable source ? so far we can doubt.
I thought we only were approaching the 10%
I said 7,2 to 7,4 not 4
Well I wonder why you insist that much to tell us that our country is the third world, can't see that from here,
better my son and his wife bought an appartment last year in the east of France and they got a house construct this year... third world of course
my brother who just retired, is going to have a new house constructe, in order to get better energy performances, third world ????
And you have any source other than opinion and anecdote to bolster your claim that the higher number is silly. If you had bothered to read the description of where the numbers came from then blame your own government not those who use the statistics. I provided you with sources so simply saying you disagree is not much of a reponse other than whistling in the dark. It's your turn now, provide links to sources that back your claims other than stamping your foot on the ground because you don't like the numbers.
Who said anything about 3rd World? You might also want to read your own post as it clearly has the rate as 4 in parenthesis not as you are no claiming .04%. And again why is emigration increasing when unemployment is slightly trending down and the Eurozone still is stroner than the dollar?
Puritans? There is no mention of God as the supreme authority in either the Declaration of Independence or the Preamble to the Constitution. Most of the Puritans in the Americas had essentially been absorbed by the Congregationalists and the Presbyterians by the time of Burke. And their belief that public officials were held accountable only to Christ is plainly something that the rest of the country didn't agree with.
But we are still no further from your attempting an answer to the question of why the French are emigrating faster when, as you claimed, the Euro would make it more attractive to stay? And if you really don't know anything about American history then don't try to pass off hearsay as informed opinion.
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/pls/portal/docs/PAGE/PGP_PRD_CAT_PREREL/PGE_CAT_PREREL_YEAR_2006/PGE_CAT_PREREL_YEAR_2006_MONTH_11/1-16112006-FR-BP.PDF
http://www.insee.fr/fr/indicateurs/indic_conj/donnees/doc_idconj_14.pdf
The second link is to the Bureau of Labour Statistics using the same methadology as the US which shows that in 1998 before the advent of the Eurozone unemployment in France was 11.2%. Plus the link to Eurostat was for 2006 and that rate was 8.9%. And since you don't seem to trust either the BLS or the CIA numbers then I would suggest not using Eurostat as it uses the BLS numbers. Oops!
no I don't trust you, different !!!
you gave us the habit to ressort what is not "glorious" in our country, for once try to make your coming-out like Don, and you will look fair
So you don't trust the site you provided as proof that France did not have a high unemployment number in 1998 even though that site clearly showed that to be the case? So are you simply saying that regardless of the actual numbers you are holding to some fanciful number because you think they sound better? You can't simply hold your breath and get you way this time!
so your making much ado for nuthin, uh that reminds me the monthy pythons : how to make an argument LMAO
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x40tb8_debat-sur-limmigration-aux-usa_news
12 millions undeclared persons are waiting for their reconnaissance
I don't see why french guis would replace them
otherwise, you might consider that the french enterprises that invest in your country send also a few of their best employees there, yeah, can't say there isn't a french immigration
1) From a moral perspective, I can't think of any reason to let in people from another developed country. I would prefer to see an opportunity to to someone who would benefit others with it.
2) Against itself at its' low point, the US dollar was down %16. Europe is an export economy that allowed its' currency to creep up 35%. We call this idiocy. Its' only purpose (if there was one) could have been to restore some of the buying power people lost to adopting the heavy-metal über-€.
3) Exportation in the US is going well as a result, and the Chinese might also be forced to float their currency.
Sure sound like the end of the world to me. As we speak, all of us who bought into the US$ at its' low point are trying to time the bottoming out of the £ and the €.
Germany will set a new export record again this year, more than one billion Euros in exports.
You might want to check that statistic again as that is only 1/1,000th of the actual exports of Germany just for 2007. Last year the Germans exported goods worth $1.334 trillion dollars while most redictions are that expots, due to the slide of the Euro(up 4.8% for the year but losing almost 20% of its value in the last three months), continued and expanding transfers to the former DDR and the temporary spike in oil prices will see a drop of 1-1.5% though Germany will do much better than any other nation except for Britain who has an almost unheard of 6% increase in exports. This figure is so large that because the UK doesn't export much in the way of commodities is probably an outlier. Minis and Guiness?
except for Britain who has an almost unheard of 6% increase in exports.
last time I checked, Britain show some kinda recession, funny, no ????
Yes funny, because the UK is not in a recession and the monetary powers, the Bank of England, have decided that they are not going to lower the interest rates because they are more concerned with inflation. That 6% increase in exports is not an outlier because there had been a pretty sizeable drop between 2006($4688.8 billion) and 2007($441.4 billion) so that jump based on increased car production or 12% and services outside of the Eurozone.
Also I doubt if Voltaire or Jefferson would have been any happier than burke in being described as moral relativists though moral pluralism would have been much more accurate. Both men preached tolerance but a tolerance that did not allow any religion to place itself above the religious sensibilities of the majority. Maybe reading Candide would be a better example that Voltaire agreed that all religions were equal except Islam.
"Former admirers of Burke, such as Thomas Jefferson, Sheridan, and fellow Whig politician Charles James Fox, proceeded to denounce Burke as a reactionary and an enemy of the French and their ground-breaking aspirations. Thomas Paine penned The Rights of Man in 1791 as a response to Burke."
I never said that I counted Voltaire as a "moral relativist", and certainly not Burke, that is the inspirator of your asserted christian conservatives.
Burke put the puritan chuch rules as the major agenda in your constitution, so do your chritians americans.
And that isn't really what Voltaire advocated.
about his anti-islamist, true !
though some argue that he was also anti-semit
http://shlemazl.blogspot.com/2008/08/what-do-putin-and-napoleon-have-in.html
The £ is weak against the euro currently, and after being very strong against the dollar for a couple years, has weakened about 10%. These movements could account for the rise in exports.
Good point also the UK, as noted here in an earlier post, is aggressively exporting weapons and this year fulfilled several contracts for both the Eurocopter and some of the new BAE armored transports. Which seem to have an alarming habit of not being very protective of the soldiers inside.
You're right, I meant a trillion, which is "billion" in German. My main point was just to put Joe Noory's comment about exports in perspective.
influx
How much of this is to france and Austria?
We don't count exports to South Carolina from Georgia.
But trust me when I say I am happy for you.
Good thing you remind me, joe: the export from Bavaria to Lower Saxony was not included in that number.
Try the likes of Spinoza, Nietzsche, Hume and Sartre for moral relativism or William James if you meant moral pluralism. Butke would have been astonished and offended to find himself in mentioned in the same breath.
no, just Voltaire in that case, the polemist suffices
he was also Jefferson's favorite, too bad !!!
Okay, I have been making enough fun of misperceptions regarding the European welfare states.
Those misperceptions are not based on evil intent, but on lack of information.
So, it would be useful to write a fact based comparison of the European and US welfare systems.
Or just a post on what benefits do Germans, French and other still get after the huge cuts over the last three decades. Perhaps the US peception of Europe is stuck in the 70s or early 80s...
"So, it would be useful to write a fact based comparison of the European and US welfare systems."
An excellent paper on the subject was written by Lane Kenworthy in 2003. On three different standards of the welfare state, the rankings were Sweden, Germany, UK, Canada, and then the United States. The scale of difference between Sweden and the US (the two extremes)varies from 57% to 173%, depending on the scale. (That is, Sweden was between 57%-173% more generous in its welfare state programs than the US.)The numbers are up to 1995 and you rightly note that there have been drastic differences since then; but likely all countries have been moving in roughly the same direction, that is to less generous welfare states.
What I find most interesting in the study is the author's conclusion regarding the relationship of the welfare state and absolute poverty."There is an association across these five countries between welfare state generosity and rising pretax-pretransfer poverty. Larger welfare states may have contributed to employment losses, hence to heightened inequality in the distribution of market income across households, and hence to increases in market poverty." BUT evidence from Sweden and Canada shows that "greater generosity in particular programs can yield lower absolute post poverty at little or no apparent cost in terms of increased market poverty."
My point in saying all this is, shouldn't we be WELCOMING variation in social welfare models so that we could pick and choose the best from all countries? Clearly, Europe does not have all the answers and neither does the US. Shouldn't the US be saying, "Some things are working great in our country and some are not. Who else in the world is doing well on issues that we are struggling with? What could we learn from them?"
Europe and America are allies for crying out loud! The way Republicans talk, you would think Obama was visiting with Soviet communists to learn how to undermine American democracy.
The full Kenworthy article can be found at http://www.allacademic.com/one/www/www/index.php?cmd=www_search&offset=0&limit=5&multi_search_search_mode=publication&multi_search_publication_fulltext_mod=fulltext&textfield_submit=true&search_module=multi_search&search=Search&search_field=title_idx&fulltext_search=The+Welfare+State+and+Absolute+Poverty.
Andrews, thanks for reading and commenting on Atlantic Review.
This is a great comment!
I would love to publish it as a guest post, if you could elaborate a bit on the welfare state comparisons.
You can email it to the Atlantic Review team at:
"AR-team ÄT atlanticreview DOT org"
WOW! What a bunch of pompous elites you have pretended to be.
The truth is Europe has many good and bad attributes and the USA has just the same or more, of each.
The real challenge for the USA is to take the good from the European nations, as well as other nations around the world, and somehow weave them into our makeup.
Most likely some type of freedoms will be scratched. Maybe it's the freedom of income for the sake of paying higher taxes for free medical.
Anyone who has faced bankruptcy here in the good ole US of A because of medical bills can tell you, "it ain't no picnic".
Those persons would gladly have spared an additional 5% taxation to be able to have had provided medical for their condition.
I'm one of those people. I worked my whole life. Paid into the system. Was in the US military and volunteered to give my life if necessary for your freedoms.
I am facing bankruptcy because the defunct "SYSTEM" in place is incompetent and inadequate to care for the needs of those deserving attention.
They are too busy trying to weed out the undeserving to provide for the deserving.
Just as the legalization of alcohol stopped bootlegging, free health care for all will stop medicare and medicaid fraud... because there would be no need for it!
Those agencies would only need to deal with those in need of disability assistance for monetary purposes, not healthcare.
It would save ten of thousands of americans each and every year from bankruptcy.
BTW, call me a commie and I'll punch your nose. I'm true Blue and Red, white!
Too many American kids grow up sick because the parents have to chose between eating and medical. Too many adults avoid the doctors office because they can't afford the bill or they have no insurance.
It is a crime against the American people to make them suffer. We treat our criminal population better.
A healthy populus is a prosperous one, so those who can't see the bigger picture are small minded in the first place.
I'm not for Obama and I'm not for McCain... I'm for whatevers best for America so we can fight the good fight in the global economic wars.
The big war isn't in Iraq or some other country. It's a global economic war and we're starting to lose.
Get our people (Americans) healthy. Get our people rich... not shared in riches... but earned riches... and we can take back the global economy and win the superpower struggle.
USA USA USA USA... go team.... :P
I'm Don J and I approved this annoucement.
woahhhh !!!!
"and win the superpower struggle" hehe, never forget that !!!
Don, you were ALWAYS been and still be and WILL be against the FRENCHS since our franco-normans invaded UK
Francie, you mistake me. Here I compliment France by referring to it as le hyperpower, and you take it as a slur...
I am injured!
nah, I was joking !!!!
I don't want to offend the hype you ment
next time ypu'll check for Belgium, there will might be no more belgian chocolate
http://bruxelles.blogs.liberation.fr/coulisses/2008/09/belgique-nouvel.html#more
What! Next you will be telling us that they intend to bulldoze Bruges to build an industial park, and sell the Mannekin Pis off for scrap!
"Mannekin Pis" is in Brussels so far and still in the francophon wallonian part of Belgium
Yes. Mannekin Pis is a glory of Francophon culture, is it not? ;)
Never seen it, despite having visited Bruxelles several times.
Bruxelles is not my favorite city in Belgium. I worked ther for a couple weeks a few years ago. Didn't really get to know it that well, but it struck me as a failed attempt to clone Paris.
I do like the Grand Place, and Bruxelles has a couple world-class art museums which I enjoy, but apart from that I prefer to head for Antwerp (probably my favorite city in the Low Countries), Gent, Bruges, or a smaller place like Huy or Leuven. I first visited Gent last year a couple weeks before Christmas and LOVED it. I also like Bruges, but Bruges is a little too touristy. Gent lacks the great art museum of Bruges (except for the cathedral) but has a better cityscape and the architecture is at least as good, perhaps better. More of a city for the citizenry. Gent is to Bruges as Padova is to Venice.
Bruxelles feels - cold to me, except for the area around Grand Place. Antwerp is like a catholic version of the best parts of Amsterdam and Rotterdam combined. I like Amsterdam better overall, but prefer Antwerp city centre to any neighborhood in Amsterdam.
Joerg, I launched 2 links about unemployment rates that have been eaten in the spam box
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