Given Europe's struggles with the consequences of contemporary progressivism, we should think twice about adopting their current “solutions.”
americanmind.org
The real problem is civilizational. Europeans are unwilling to preserve their industrial base and control their borders, leaving the continent increasingly weak and largely defenseless. The leaderless
American empire may be creaking, but Europe is in worse shape, hemmed in by dismal demographics, high taxes, suffocating regulation, and an entrenched bureaucracy that makes California seem like a libertarian paradise.
The real problem is civilizational. Europeans are unwilling to preserve their industrial base and control their borders, leaving the continent increasingly weak and largely defenseless. The leaderless
American empire may be creaking, but Europe is in worse shape, hemmed in by dismal demographics, high taxes, suffocating regulation, and an entrenched bureaucracy that makes California seem like a libertarian paradise.
Europe’s decline can be seen in its rapidly shrinking portion of the global economy. It is hard to find any indicator that the continent is gaining global market share as
money continues to pour into the U.S.
For the last 15 years, European wages have fallen while those in the U.S. have continued to rise; the eurozone economy grew about six percent, measured in dollars, compared with 82 percent for the U.S., according to
International Monetary Fund data.
European quality of life is dropping, its
industrial base eroding, and there seems little promise of future improvement. Europe now lags in virtually every major advanced industry, from software and space to
automobiles. Of
the top 50 tech firms only three are located in Europe; the list is dominated largely by the United States with China second.
Foreign investment has plummeted and by 2022 accounted for $100 billion less than the U.S.
Much of this decline is self-inflicted, which suggests some valuable lessons for us. A critical problem lies in E.U. climate policy, which has tended to be more extreme, and widely implemented, than in a more divided, decentralized United States. These policies are already eroding food production and
sparking higher prices.
Developing nations need more food production from exporters, but by Europe’s banning or restricting critical fertilizers, or the enforced culling of herds, they will have to get it elsewhere. This comes at a time when Europe’s old African and South American colonies are
losing interest in ties with France and
Britain and increasingly look elsewhere, notably China and Russia, for capital, goods, and natural resource development.
