[A-List] Europe leaves the US behind

[Bill Totten <shimogamo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

by Steven Hill - Center for Voting and Democracy

WorkingforChange.com (May 05 2004)

Spain's new left-leaning government attracted the ire of the Bush
administration recently when it withdrew its troops from Iraq.  Prime
Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero fulfilled a campaign pledge when
he announced the withdrawal, aligning the Spanish government with the
overwhelming sentiment of the Spanish people, as well as with most
governments and peoples of Europe.

Receiving less attention than the troop withdrawal, in his speech
Zapatero announced other priorities that further separated his
government from the White House.  Zapatero pledged greater spending on
education and affordable housing for low- and middle-income families. 
He also pledged a crackdown on violence against women - a scourge he
called Spain's "greatest national disgrace" - and recognition of gay
marriage.  The last one no doubt will be dismaying to religious
fundamentalists in both the Bush administration and the Taliban.

From inside the White House, Zapatero must look like a flaming leftie
and certainly no ally.  But actually he is quite within the mainstream
of European politics, both on foreign policy and domestic matters.  The
fact is, even the conservative parties of Europe are to the left of the
Democratic Party in the US.  The European political center is where the
American left would love to be.  Europe's famously generous social state
is still alive and mostly well, though under attack by globalization and
corporate opportunists who would like to bury it and render Europe more
like - the United States.

But the differences between Europe and the US are growing, registering
like a series of small quakes on the Richter scale.  Trade disputes over
agriculture, steel, and genetically modified foods; broken treaties and
promises on global warming, sustainability, nuclear test bans, and the
international court; sharply differing opinions on the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict, and on the use of militarism versus diplomacy to
resolve disputes; eastward expansion of the European Union into
traditional NATO areas; multilateralism versus unilateralism, the list
is long and growing. European corporations are expanding around the
globe, challenging their US counterparts.  A rising Euro now is
competing with the dollar as a global currency.  The Europeans are
closer to putting their John Hancocks on a new Constitution that will
bind them closer as a continent.

Moreover, in numerous ways average Americans are falling behind our
European counterparts in this age of globalization.  Even with recent
cutbacks, still Europeans have free health care for all, cradle to
grave; free education through university level; generous retirement for
their elderly; an average of five weeks paid vacation, more sick leave,
and parental leave.  Social spending in Europe runs some 50 percent
above that in the United States.

Alternate energy development (wind, hydro, tidal and hydrogen cell power),
food safety, organic and anti-GM laws, and labor laws are the envy of
activists in the US.  For those pro-Iraqi war American workers who
patriotically joined in the dumping of French wines and the renaming of
French fries to "freedom fries", they might want to consider that they
now work a full day longer per week - about seven weeks longer per year
- than French workers.  Even the specter of higher unemployment, usually
the American rebuttal to European superiority in so many other
categories, turns out to be not so clear cut, with many European
countries by 2003 having lower unemployment rates than the US, once the
stock market bubble of the 1990s had burst.

And yet the American media is not reporting much of this.  The typical
American depiction of "old Europe" usually is fraught with stereotypical
extremes, either colorful vacation adverts about castles on the Rhine or
goose-stepping neo-Nazi parties.  One headline in an American daily
newspaper, in contemplating the apparent superior standing of average
Europeans, blared the ridiculous question "Do European Workers Have It
Too Good?"  As if workers can have it too good - obviously we know who
owns that newspaper.  The row at the United Nations last year over
whether to go to war in Iraq seemingly burst from nowhere, but if the
American media hadn't been so asleep at the wheel, they would have seen
it coming.

Why are Europeans outpacing Americans on so many social, political and
economic fronts?  The answers are complex but basically they boil down
to the fact that, for the last 60 years in the post-World War II period,
Europeans have been incubating markedly different "fulcrum institutions"
- the key institutions and practices on which everything else pivots. 
In particular, three fulcrum institutions form the foundation for the
rest - the political, economic, and media institutions. These three play
an Archidemean role in deciding ever-evolving policies that affect
people's lives, on matters ranging from health care, education, housing,
transportation, the environment and taxes to the energy regime,
corporate structure, immigration, foreign policy and national security.

In the political realm, Europe utilizes full representation electoral
systems that give representation to voters across the political spectrum,
public financing of elections that fosters debate, universal voter
registration, voting on a weekend or on a holiday, and national
electoral commissions that establish nationwide standards and practices. 
Women and third parties have far greater representation at all levels of
government.  In the US, we are still stuck with our 18th-century
winner-take-all system, privately financed elections, poor voter
participation, poll-tested sound bites aimed at undecided swing voters,
voting on a busy work day, and haywire decentralized election
administration left to over 3000 counties scattered across the country.

In the media realm, Europe boasts a robust public broadcasting sector
(radio and TV) and subsidized daily newspapers, leading to more media
pluralism, a better-informed citizenry, more people reading newspapers,
and a higher level of what political scientist Henry Milner calls "civic
literacy".  In the US, we are still stuck with corporate media
gatekeepers, media monopolies, an astonishing loss of political ideas
and a poorly informed citizenry.

In the economic realm, Europeans have developed practices such as
"codetermination", which provides meaningful worker representation on
corporate boards of directors, and powerful works councils in the
workplaces.  There is more of a legal balance of stockholder and
stakeholder rights, forcing business leaders to confer more extensively
with their workers and labor unions.  There also are continent wide
minimum labor and environmental standards, including more union-friendly
laws.

Taken together, these fulcrum institutions work coherently to form the
basis of a "European Way" that is distinctly different from the
"American Way".  This provides a rough blueprint of where institutional
development in the United States needs to go in the 21st century.  Those
who care about the future of our country should take their cues from
Europe.

URL: http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=16900

Please also see:

"We're all Europeans now" by Will Hutton, The Observer/UK (April 25 2004)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1202849,00.html

"Leading By Example" by Christian Weller, TomPaine.com (April 29 2004)
http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/10323

"Europe Growing Uneasy over Alliance with US" by Julio Godoy, 
Inter Press Service (May 13 2004)
http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=23725


Bill Totten,  http://www.ashisuto.co.jp/english/