America's Romantic
Economic View of the European Lifestyle
"American
author Steven Hill says: 'American companies responded to the crisis by
slashing jobs, while European firms divided the available work among employees
so that there was enough work for everyone.' Hill doesn't seem to have noticed
monumental problems facing Europe, or the range of evidence suggesting that the
idea of European superiority has little in common with reality."
"There is nothing more enjoyable
than an evening stroll in early summer along the Rhine in Basel, while watching
young men, women and entire families float along the swift current of the water
in their inner tubes. … No one's in a hurry. Seriously - no one. People still
walk in Europe. Older people often walk with hands folded behind their backs,
with one hand clasping the opposite wrist."
Europe also seduced Steven
Hill, which was revealed in an interview published in Gazeta Wyborcza's
special Christmas edition. His book has almost the same title: Europe’s
Promise. Why the European Way Is the Best Hope in an Insecure Age. The
same strolls along the Rhine seem to have delighted Hill as well. "What a
great European treasure it is to have the chance to take a pleasant stroll
along the city promenade.”
Hill says: "American
companies responded to the crisis by slashing jobs, while European firms
divided the available work among employees so that there was enough work for
everyone." Which ones, where and how, I ask?
Hill doesn't seem to have
noticed monumental problems facing Europe, or the range of evidence suggesting
that the idea of European superiority has little in common with reality. For
instance, he describes how BMW, unlike General
Motors, would never shift its production abroad. Meanwhile, BMW built
factories in America, where they manufacture even for the European market.
According to a report
published in late February by Citygroup,
a picture of a gradually marginalized Europe emerges. In 1970, Western Europe
accounted for 28 percent of world’s GDP, today it's 19 percent. Citygroup
economists predict that by 2030, it will shrink to 11 percent and by
mid-century, it will only be 7 percent - less than the share of Latin America
and Africa. That's because Europe is loosing its capability to compete.
'A gathering storm': From
Edinburgh, the Financial Times'
John Authers dissects a
gloomy, bearish mood among the
In Lisbon eleven years ago,
with great fanfare, the E.U. adopted a plan to turn Europe into “the most
competitive, knowledge-based economy in the world” by 2010. It ended up being a
spectacular flop. The technological gap between Europe and America has widened,
not shrunk.
The share of R&D
expenditures is much lower within the European Union than called for by the
Lisbon strategy, and much lower than Japan, South Korea or the United States.
Obtaining a patent in the E.U. takes five times longer than it does in America.
In Europe, it's also much more difficult to obtain venture capital. And the
list of the world’s 20 best universities, traditionally drawn up by the
University of Shanghai, 17 are American, two are British and one is Japanese.
The Greek crisis showed not
only that design of the euro zone is much less stable than it once appeared,
but it also opened our eyes to the bitter truth that in recent years, Europe
has been living beyond its means. Just hours after passing the rescue package
for Athens, the first president of the European Union, Herman Van Rompuy,
said: “We can no longer continue to fund our social model.”
Posted
by WORLDMEETS.US
The crisis also exposed a
strong temptation in difficult times to seek refuge in economic nationalism.
This shows that the analysis in Gazeta Wyborcza's Christmas edition was
not only shallow, it provided us with grounds for an unjustified complacency.
*Andrzej Lubowski is a
feature writer for Gazeta Wyborcza and lives in the United States. He writes
about, among other things, the great challenges now confronting America.
