Europe vs. America

more from that article:

The US is an excellent place to be rich. Back in 1980 the average American chief executive earned forty times the average manufacturing employee. For the top tier of American CEOs, the ratio is now 475:1 and would be vastly greater if assets, not income, were taken into account. By way of comparison, the ratio in Britain is 24:1, in France 15:1, in Sweden 13:1.[2] A privileged minority has access to the best medical treatment in the world. But 45 million Americans have no health insurance at all (of the world's developed countries only the US and South Africa offer no universal medical coverage). According to the World Health Organization the United States is number one in health spending per capitaóand thirty-seventh in the quality of its service.

The rich are getting richer - and have better access to healthcare, too. Did everyone hear the news the other day that 1/2 of bankruptcies in the US are people who've had major medical problems?

A provocative number of facts:

In the Euro area, the standardised unemployment rate remained at 8.8% in November 2003, 0.2 percentage point higher than a year earlier. For the United States, the standardised unemployment rate was 5.9% in November 2003, 0.1 percentage point lower than the previous month but the same rate as a year earlier.

Over the twelve months to November 2003, the standardised unemployment rate rose in France from 9.0% to 9.5% and in Germany from 8.9% to 9.3%. In Canada, the standardised unemployment rate was 7.5% in November 2003, the same rate as a year earlier.

source:OECD Standardised Unemployment Rates (SURs) - January 2004

I am no expert in this arena, but one question pops up when you quote that, Justin/jlp. How do U.S. and European unemployment rates compare? What I'm really asking, clumsily, is how unemployment in Europe compares to the U.S. I know the health care issue would affect the answer, being that you wouldn't lose your health-care coverage when you lose your job. What else would? What would be the real differences between quality of life and other indicators?

Also, how is the E.U. dealing with unemployment these days? I know these have been big issues in recent elections in those parts.

I need to e-mail my German Financial Times journalist friend to get in on this one.

unemployed, sure. But with continued access to healthcare, at least it doesn't lead to bankruptcy.

Also, does the EU measuring stick for unemployment match the US? I've always wondered that.

Also, doesn't alleviate my annoyance with the 475:1 ratio of CEO pay to line worker pay in the U.S. And, the article has some good points about creation of small/medium sized businesses in Europe. And education levels.

Kate, sounds like we made the same point, and asked the same questions, at the same time. Great minds ponder the same B.S. ;-)

Another must read article on this subject...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6857387/site/newsweek/

Have you noticed that just as the remaining US ridicules the South, Europe ridicules the US?

How much resistance to new ideas is caused by ridicule from the "better"? You see it even today with the Red-Blue America squabbles. You see it with the US and Europe. Ridicule is the surest way to close opponents minds - even worse, ridicule is a pretty fertile ground for a demagogue, especially if the ridiculer is the target. I remeber this vividly in the David Duke campaign. Yes, he spoke in blatant coded language. What he did NOT speak in coded language about was anti-liberalism. His anti-liberal demagoguery foreshadowed Rush Limbaugh (who, in turn, appealed to feelings of condesension by the "liberal elites").

Until people stop ridiculing each other over ideology, and especially over superficial matters like "the food", "the weather", "the accents", "the lack of beauty in a place", etc. even the best efforts to change our world for the better will yield limited results - because, as I said, ridicule closes minds and (in the worst case) to outright wars.

BTW, my point was not to say anything for or against Europe. My point is that better ideas from whatever country will get limited reception in other countries (whether its US ---> World or World ----> US) if we the human race continue to act like spoiled 14-year-old know-it-alls

On unemployment in Europe:
It's my understanding that this is just a conservative talking point to deride European social welfare systems, as they don't have the part time, benefitless jobs we do (well, most of them are actually busily creating an immigrant underclass right now, but up to several years ago this was true and is still true for the majority i think), so if you compare underemployment in the US & the more clear unemployment in Europe, you get a basically comparable picture if I remember the reports.

On healthcare in Europe:
Conservatives always say it doesn't work well. The simplest rebuttal is: it works better than our system for less money! My favorite though is: well if we're so great, we can't we make it work better than them (and we certainly could since we have more money to design and run it better and train more doctors so less waits).
I heard two southern republican doctors talking once, and one was like "you know, i'd love to be a state employee with a good salary and benefits, if only because then the state would be responsible for all the lawsuits." Now, that's tort reform we can all sink our teeth into.

Philip, I was pondering a point tangential to yours this morning. It's funny to notice that we all immediately got into a discussion of us vs them, better vs worse. Instead of taking the opportunity to step outside of ourselves and use other perspectives as a way of learning about ourselves and our country.

I work with alot of Europeans, and love to travel over there, and have always enjoyed the whole European ambiance (which varies strongly from country to country - amazing when you consider how geographically small it is). However, it ain't all perfect (much as I love their maternity & family leave programs, their vacation plans, the healthcare, etc). I do know that once you're over a certain tax bracket, France can be an onerous place to live - one good friend is looking to move because of it. so, I'm not here saying "europe's better" - just that they do some things really well, and maybe we should think about those things.

Also, is there a direct/causal link between the social programs and the high unemployment? It's gotta be complex, because the article cited above talks about rate of entrepreneurship in Europe, and about how their levels of productivity are generally higher than in the US.

In my experience, Southerners have lots more in common with the average French person than we have with the average New Yorker, or Californian, at least in attitudes towards life, family, food, etc. A great book for understanding the French mind is "French or Foe," which was written to help Americans who have to work in France understand how to deal with them.