Thursday, March 17, 2011
A European's Warning to America - WSJ.com
You may have seen Mr. Hannan on television.
He is a member of the European Parliament, which should give him some credibility...
He is a member of the European Parliament, which should give him some credibility...
Daniel Hannan, discusses Europe and expresses his warning about where he sees America going:
"We can now see where that road leads: to burgeoning bureaucracy, more spending, higher taxes, slower growth and rising unemployment. But an entire political class has grown up believing not just in the economic superiority of euro-corporatism but in its moral superiority. After all, if the American system were better—if people could thrive without government supervision—there would be less need for politicians. As Upton Sinclair once observed, 'It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.'
Nonetheless, the economic data are pitilessly clear. For the past 40 years, Europeans have fallen further and further behind Americans in their standard of living. Europe also has become accustomed to a high level of structural unemployment. Only now, as the U.S. applies a European-style economic strategy based on fiscal stimulus, nationalization, bailouts, quantitative easing and the regulation of private-sector remuneration, has the rate of unemployment in the U.S. leaped to European levels."
