For liberals like me, Europe has often seemed a charmed place with sound lessons for America.
Europe softened the harshest edges of capitalism, provided safety nets and in important ways has exceeded the United States in well-being. European infants are less likely to die than those in America, childbirth is less dangerous in Europe than in the United States, and Europeans live longer.
Northern Europeans work less than Americans — only about 1,400 or 1,500 hours a year compared with 1,800 for Americans — and mostly enjoy universal health care, free or subsidized child care and solid public schools.
University education is often free or inexpensive. People place more value on abortion rights than gun rights, while avoiding ferocious so-called bathroom wars. If you flip burgers at a McDonald’s in Denmark, you’re paid more than $20 an hour, plus you enjoy six weeks of paid vacation, a year’s maternity leave and a pension plan. And a red Burgundy is almost as good as an Oregon pinot noir!
Yet it’s also only fair to point out that Europe is struggling today. The U.S. economy last year grew six times as fast as in the European Union, 2.5 percent to 0.4 percent.
The United States abounds with tech successes like Apple, Google and Meta, but there isn’t a single European company on one recent list of the world’s top 10 tech companies by market capitalization. One list of “unicorns” — start-ups worth more than $1 billion — shows that Africa’s smallest country, the Seychelles, has as many such firms (two) as Greece and almost as many as Italy or Belgium (three).
France offers almond croissants, luxury brands and an enviable way of life. But if it were a state, it would be one of the poorest per capita, on par with Arkansas.
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