One thing not mentioned in most articles of this nature is that Europe had the luxury of creating a welfare state. Under the protective aegis of American arms, it spent very little of its blood and treasure on its own defense. Even today, European countries are balking at spending 3% of their GDP on defense.

Part of that was by American design. One objective of the American World War II strategy was to disarm Europe so it could not drag America into another war. NATO was formed less as a way of pooling defense resources than as a way of ensuring that no military in Europe had the ability to wage war on any other military in Europe, except jointly.

The strategy worked; perhaps too well.

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When you have bureaucracies that are so powerful and large, they in essence start to govern rather than people who are elected....

The people we elected have left the governing to the bureaucracies, to government regulatory agencies, rather than risk their elected positions by taking stands that can be used against them later if the stands they take turn out to be unpopular.

The relatively unpopular vaccine mandate could have been debated in Congress and voted up or down after that debate. Instead, our elected representatives chose to let an executive branch regulatory agency impose a mandate and then argue about it later in the press - but not actually do anything about it.

We're being governed by bureaucrats and courts, not by the people we ostensibly elected to represent us in the crafting of laws.

And that's on us for electing weasels.

Yet these same people have no interest in emulating France's great success with nuclear power.

I bet a little research could turn up other European policies/approaches that would be anathema to the superficially-Europe-loving American Left.

We're being governed by bureaucrats and courts, not by the people we ostensibly elected to represent us in the crafting of laws.

And that's on us for electing weasels.

Conan the Grammarian at November 16, 2021 5:12 AM

Well the system has been constructed to both protect the weasels and avoid any accountability by the actual elected representatives. In order to stay in office, most become weasels.

The bureaucracy is like a cancer. And will do much the same thing if left unchecked. Kill the host.

Harsanyi comes close to it with this bit: "Barack Obama is a good example of a Europhile. I think he just believed that Europe was doing a better job of controlling its citizenry in a top-down, centralized way that the European Union does. And that again, they just think that that's a better system and they'd like to implement that here."

As evidenced by one Europractice our bureaucracy has declined.

"The United States has been singularly cruel to children throughout the pandemic, closing schools and masking students for extended periods despite extensive evidence that these measures were unnecessary and harmful. Sweden showed that keeping schools open throughout the pandemic—without masks, social distancing, smaller classes or strict quarantines—did little to endanger students, teachers, or the community. Other European countries have also kept schools open without forcing young students to wear masks."

https://www.city-journal.org/the-covid-childrens-crusade

Unnecessary, harmful, use of force. On children. Is it a mass hypnosis? A team spirit? Why would people act this way?

Conan the reason Europeans can have a welfare state but Americans can't is because of race and IQ. It's easy to have a welfare state when your country is made up of high trust and high IQ northern Europeans.

In America the welfare state does not work because high average IQ populations (Asians and Whites) end up subsidizing low average IQ populations (blacks and Hispanics).

It has nothing to do with your convoluted explanation about defense spending.

It has nothing to do with your convoluted explanation about defense spending. ~ ElevatorGuy at November 16, 2021 9:24 AM

Convoluted?

First of all ElevatorGuy, I did not propose that defense spending alone accounted for European redistribution polices vs. American ones. I merely pointed out that lower defense spending afforded the Europeans a greater latitude to concentrate their funds on social spending - i.e., "the luxury of creating a welfare state."

There are many variables underlying the formation of European welfare states vs an American one. Most of those variables were a few hundred years in the making. To wit:

• European countries tend to be more culturally and racially homogenous than the US. Redistributed income is not going to some "other" but to members of one's own group.
• Europeans grew up under the principle of noblesse oblige, wherein the aristocracy was obliged to provide, to some degree, a living for the peasants. In the US, "opportunity" was the watchword - that is, everyone could make a living, if they worked at it.
• US political stability means it is still governed by its original 18th century constitution vs. the multitude of political system changes and social revolutions experienced by European countries over the same period.
• European movements toward democracy concentrated on implementing majority rule over protection of individuals and property.
• Fluid social mobility in the US makes climbing social classes more reluctant to embrace redistribution that would rob them of the ability to amass wealth.
• Lower population density in the US made the government less vulnerable to socialist revolution.
• American labor policies were able to be reformed, albeit reluctantly - i.e., collective bargaining gave American labor the voice that socialist revolutionaries promised European labor.
• Federalism made redistribution of wealth unpalatable to states and territories afraid of losing their wealth to poorer states.
• In the US, effort and earnings are better correlated than they are in European societies, making Americans believe that higher incomes come from hard work, delayed gratification, and specialized knowledge.
• Protestantism (specifically Puritanism) being America's founding religion gave Americans a dim overall view of the poor as less industrious (Protestant Work Ethic and all that) and not simply less fortunate.
• American courts have typically ruled against redistributive policies in favor of property protection, whereas European courts that might have protected property were swept away as democracy replaced aristocracy.
• Death taxes in Europe are higher, limiting the ability to amass or retain wealth over generations.
• The close chronological proximity of America's frontier has left it with an attitude of protecting newfound property and wealth from all who would take it - vs. generations of hoarded European wealth that could only be stolen or pried loose by social revolution.
• Racial divisions do play a role in Americans' attitudes toward welfare and income redistribution - as they do in most parts of the world.

We tend to forget today how unique America was when it was founded and in the decades after that. It was the great frontier in operating without a net socially and economically. Life in America was a gamble. Freedom to become rich also meant freedom to fail. And many did. Yet, they came in droves to take a chance on making a new life for themselves.

We may not be able to offer that kind of e-ticket ride to our current immigrants, but the opportunities are still there. Implementing a European-style wealth redistribution system here will diminish those remaining opportunities and ossify the American social structure, the anathema of the society our Founding Fathers worked to establish.

That ossification of the American social structure is what the current haves who are pushing Europeanization of America want. They see themselves as the social elite - the aristocracy of the new European-style social order. Titles and peerages for them, peasantry for the rest.

"The hordes of immigrants were not drawn to America by the misapprehension that this country's millionaires would soon be dissolving their estates and passing out the proceeds to all comers. What lured our ancestors here was the chance to build a better, freer life through their own efforts." ~ Louis Rukeyser

Yes Conan. Convoluted. My race and IQ theory is both simpler and has more explanatory power than every single thing in your bullet point list. The first item was the only thing you wrote that was not completely wrong. But then again homogeneity isn't enough to explain what's going on because homogenous African countries can't maintain a Scandinavian welfare state. Which makes sense since the average Sub-Saharan IQ is 70. But your welcome to add more epicycles to avoid coming to terms with this fact.

Due to generous welfare policies and laws that prevent companies from firing anyone (so they are reluctant to hire) as well as government discouraging new business starts, there is persistent unemployment of about 10% in much of Europe.
Net income in the US is MUCH higher than europe, even if you count social programs. Upward mobility is higher also in the US.

Death taxes are not higher everywhere. Europe is not one country, it is lots of them.

In any welfare state, ElevatorGuy, the higher IQ portions of society end up subsidizing the lower IQ portions of society to some degree.

You're trying desperately to make this racial when a multitude of variables comes into play in determining whether a society establishes and supports a welfare state - including culture, economics, social mobility, history, etc.

As to why Europe established a redistributive state and the US did not, at least to the same degree. Race is only one factor out of many; as spending on defense is only one factor out of many.

It seems the only thing we agree on is that the US should not, under any circumstances, emulate Scandinavia's wealth redistribution systems; or Europe's.

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My race and IQ theory is both simpler and has more explanatory power than every single thing in your bullet point list. ~ ElevatorGuy at November 16, 2021 10:53 AM

Simpler? Yes. Too simple, in fact.

More explanatory power? Only in a two-dimensional world. And we don't live in one of those.

But then again homogeneity isn't enough to explain what's going on because homogenous African countries can't maintain a Scandinavian welfare state. Which makes sense since the average Sub-Saharan IQ is 70. But your welcome to add more epicycles to avoid coming to terms with this fact. ~ ElevatorGuy at November 16, 2021 10:53 AM

First, since you brought up IQ, it's "...you're welcome to...."

Second, epicycles? How positively Ptolemaic of you.

Third, I never said homogeneity was enough to explain it by itself. Remember that multitude of variables thing I mentioned?

Besides, very few African nations are truly homogenous. European colonization ignored tribal, ethnic, and cultural differences in drawing national borders. Rwanda, for example, is famous for the internecine warfare between its Tutsi and Hutu ethnicities, although both are of Bantu extraction. South Africa's black population is divided among four ethnicities. They do not always get along.

And, ElevatorGuy, many African nations are establishing their own welfare programs. According to The Economist article linked:

"Richer African countries such as Botswana and South Africa have operated welfare schemes for many years. Poorer ones are now rushing to do the same. Kenya has created several, including one that sends money to households in drought-stricken areas. Ethiopia’s main welfare programme, which requires recipients to work, used to operate only in the countryside but is spreading to cities. From 2010 to 2015 the countries of sub-Saharan Africa launched an average of 14 schemes per year, up from seven per year between 2001 and 2009. These countries spend an average of 1.2% of GDP per year on social safety-nets, using a broad definition that includes pensions as well as support for children and the poor. That is only a little less than the average for developing countries (1.6%)."

Scandinavia spends an average of "21-28% of GDP" while the US expends 29% of GDP on social protection programs. The US also has a higher percentage of private social spending that most other countries.

So far, these African welfare models are nowhere near the breadth and scale of the Scandinavian models, but one wonders if increasing wealth and modernity might have the world someday pondering the "African model" of social welfare.

The Economist adds:

"One reason so many African countries are building social safety-nets is that they have become wealthier and more politically stable. Another is that they have lots of examples to copy. African countries have learned not just from each other but also from countries such as Brazil and Mexico. Attitudes are changing, too. Political leaders have often been flinty-hearted. Armando Guebuza, then the president of Mozambique, claimed in 2007 that “the lack of a habit of hard work” was perpetuating poverty in his country. But in Tanzania, argues Ladislaus Mwamanga, the director of the Tanzania Social Action Fund, the agency administering PSSN, poverty is no longer seen as a character flaw." [all emphases mine]

So, cultural changes, wealth, and emerging political stability are driving a new attitude toward the creation of social safety net programs in Africa? Hmmm.

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Death taxes are not higher everywhere. Europe is not one country, it is lots of them. ~ NicoleK at November 16, 2021 11:56 AM

Yes, I recognize that Europe, despite the wishes of the French since Napoleonic times, is not one country; no matter what the European Union thinks.

As for death taxes, France has the world's third-highest at 45%. The US and UK are tied for fourth at 40%. Following closely are Spain, Ireland, Belgium, and Germany with rates in the thirties. Norway and Sweden, on the other hand, have no taxes on estates and inheritances.

The US, however, exempts estates below a certain size, thereby reducing the actual burden on middle class families. In addition, the US allows assets to be placed in trust, thereby bypassing the estate taxes. My father used one, and his estate paid estate taxes only on his non-trust assets. The trust distributions to heirs were subject to individual income tax only.

Britain, on the other hand, is famous for nearly bankrupting its aristocracy with death duties and land taxes established under the David Lloyd George sponsored 1909 People's Budget with its stated intention of redistributing wealth. His partner in crime for this economic travesty was Winston Churchill.

Hey, Artemis - if you bother to attend, please note Conan's extensive explanations. Both content and manner of presentation serve as examples of why your prose is worthy of discard, while he is eminently quotable.

You outclass many here, Conan. Continue!