A Little Context on Europe

By Kevin D. Williamson

Tuesday, April 05, 2022

 

I haven’t had the chance to delve as deeply into David’s subtly titled Eurotrash book yet, but, as the resident Europhile, I do have a few thoughts about Kyle’s review of it.

 

One: It seems to me that the British National Health Service tells us almost nothing about the various health-care systems of Europe; the Europeans think so little of British health care that there is almost nothing like the NHS in the European Union or elsewhere in Europe. The Germans don’t have a state monopoly system like that, nor do the French, the Swiss, etc. You can say that Great Britain is European, but you’ll have to fistfight Charlie Cooke. As I see it, the NHS isn’t Eurotrash — it’s Anglotrash.

 

You might not like the health-care system in Sweden, but there are aspects of it that conservatives should be carefully considering: For one thing, it is highly decentralized, something that should be of interest to us as the government share of health-care spending in the United States tops 50 percent. You might not like the Swiss system, either, but there are aspects of it that conservatives should be considering: While it is heavily regulated, it is mostly private, with no “free” government-provided health care.

 

Two: Most Western European countries do have higher taxes than the United States does. (Many middle and upper-class Americans would pay lower taxes in Switzerland, but it’s an outlier.) However, the tax bills aren’t really all that radically different: Total tax revenue as a share of GDP is just over 27 percent in the United States, as compared to 28.5 percent in Switzerland, 33 percent in Spain, 37 percent in Germany. Significantly higher in Europe, but not exactly shocking. Where the United States and Europe are even closer is in in the much more telling metric of government spending as a share of GDP: 38 percent in the United States, 41 percent in Spain, 43 percent in the Netherlands, 44 percent in Germany. So the United States has similar spending but lower taxes — that being so, it will not surprise you to learn that the United States carries a lot more public debt than most European countries — more than any European country save Italy, Greece, and Portugal. This is where there is a truly radical difference: The United States carries almost twice as much public debt (as a share of GDP) as Germany, well over twice as much as Switzerland or Sweden, and more than three times as much as Norway or Denmark.

 

Our low taxes relative to spending aren’t economic liberty — they are part of a deeply irresponsible fiscal policy.

 

Three: I agree that the innovative technology economy is something that Americans should be proud of, and it is a sign of our economic dynamism. But the fact that the United States is home to more of the largest Internet companies would be more compelling if it weren’t for which country is No. 2. China has eight times as many Internet companies in the top 40 (by market cap) as Western Europe does, but I don’t think China is eight times better as a society — I don’t think it is better at all.

 

Four: On the related matters of culture and life expectancy, “Americans are fat and homicidal” would not immediately leap to mind as my opening line in the case for American superiority.

 

Conservative anti-Europeanism is something that we should be reevaluating. The United States is going to need broadly likeminded allies in our contest with China, and the liberal democracies of Europe and the Anglosphere are where we are going to find most of them. It would be an ironic tragedy if we let American chauvinism undermine American interests.