US Perceptions of Europe

Paul Krugman has a good post on his NY Times blog pointing out that Americans probably have an out-of-date view of Europe. He uses employment statistics to make his point:

One simple indicator is the fraction of prime-working-age adults — that is, 25-54 — that are, in fact, employed. Why focus on that age group? Because employment rates for the young are strongly affected by things like student aid policy, while those for the over-55 set are strongly affected by retirement policy; so if you want to know how many of the people who really should be working are managing to find jobs, the 25-54 sample is useful. Here’s America versus the cheese-eaters over the years:


In the 90s, with US employment surging while France (and much of Europe) was having trouble creating jobs, there was a lot of talk about the European employment problem. By the eve of the current crisis, however, the European job picture had changed a lot for the better, while even a business-cycle recovery didn’t seem to do much for US jobs.

Many Americans, even those who imagine themselves well-informed, don’t realize that there has been a big change here; my sense is that the US elite picture of Europe is stuck in a sort of time warp, in which it’s always 1997, and we have the Internet and they don’t. But things have moved on a lot since then.

I admit I was surprised by this graph. I've imbibed the story of the welfare state of Europe sapping the energies of people and leaving many collecting dole rather than working. So I admit, I was misled.

So the truth comes out... Europe during this Great Recession had a higher employment rate even though George Bush touted his two big tax cuts for the rich as stimulative, pro-business, and job-creating. Bush's tax cuts weren't. They lined the pockets of the ultra-rich, left the US treasury empty just before the biggest recession since the Great Depression, and left a people bitterly divided because of years and years of pro-rich propaganda.

Keynes talked about current history being entangled with "the voices" of long dead economists:

Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. (from Wikiquote)

I get annoyed with the power of the ultra-rich through their strangle-hold on the media (the one they loved to call the "liberal media" but is in fact in thrall to the right, with Fox "news" the most obvious slave of right wing demagoguery, but the rest of the media is terrified of reporting the full spectrum of political opinion despite being mis-labeled as "liberal").