How much better is Europe, really?

[Wyatt Earp]

How much better is Europe, really?

La Lanterne Rouge wrote:

I'm not sure that the skyscrapers in Chicago (which are the best in the world) are really that jarring, are they? They're not really any more incongruous that Blenheim Palace, say? Apart from well worn stone cottages what does Europe really offer in terms of non-jarring architecture that America doesn't have?

Seriously: your Stately Hames are an interesting example, I think. I don't for a moment accept that they jar with their environments, but in many cases that's because their environments have been remodelled to harmonise with them. Which is perhaps good for neither of our cases.

[WOM]

How much better is Europe, really?

so much more of the land in those places is pretty much unihabitable anyway

Why do people always say this? Most of Canada is habitable, it's just a fuck of a long way from the things you'd want to be near. Only the far-reaches of the north are what you'd call 'down-right inhospitable' [as are a few parts of Toronto]. The rest generally has roads, trees, potable water, electricity, etc. They're just miles away from, you know, jobs, shops, schools and a good cup of coffee.

And speaking of architecture, we do it best when it has a distinctly Canadian feel. The was I'd best describe it is "made from materials that look to be gathered right from the spot on which the place was built". Ron Thom did this well. Concrete poured into rough-hewn board forms. Wood. Glass. S'bout it.

BC does it nicely, as Amor could likely attest. Better than Ontario, for sure.

[Reed John]

How much better is Europe, really?

Most of Canada is habitable, it's just a fuck of a long way from the things you'd want to be near.

I chose my words poorly. I think I meant "urbanizable." Much of Canada is very habitable but just not able to sustain many people. Other than oil and mineral extraction, what sort of economy do the Territories sustain?

One can never be too sure how oil is going to change things, but I just don't see Yellowknife or Whitehorse becoming sprawling metropolises like Phoenix, Orlando or Las Vegas, places which were once wastelands (they still are, in a different sort of way, perhaps) until the invention of AC.

[Ginger Yellow]

How much better is Europe, really?

We're faced with that here too with our Social Security and Medicare, but of course those benefits aren't as generous

The US government spends as much on healthcare as a proportion of GDP as any other developed nation. Total healthcare expenditure, including private insurance, is double the European average. Of course, coverage isn't universal, but the same demographic pressures apply.

[Reed John]

How much better is Europe, really?

We actually spend more on healthcare/GDP than Europe, but the social security benefit isn't as generous, I don't think. Also, I was under the impression that the free nursing home-type places in Europe were better funded than over here.

[WOM]

How much better is Europe, really?

I see them moving in opposite directions.

[WOM]

How much better is Europe, really?

Bit of both. America really does seem to do its own thing, and doesn't seem to like adopting the 'best practices' of other countries. Europe, though, seems to learn from others' mistakes. That's broad and general, of course, so you could shoot plenty of holes in it. But that's the way it feels.

And, banal as this observation clearly is, the more I learn about the extent of corporate/lobbyist influence in US government, the less I believe change is achievable. It doesn't seem as bad in Europe.

There was a program on last night about the handguns coming across the border into Canada, and I was astounded at how influential the NRA and the gun manufacturers are when it comes to gun control policy in the US. I mean, you know they're powerful, but I don't think you realize how pervasive and influential they are. It's utterly astounding.

[Reed John]

How much better is Europe, really?

That lobbyist stuff is the key.

Even if McCain and Palin were as clean and corporate-influence free as they claim to be (which they aren't, obviously), it wouldn't matter. They can't "stand up to big oil" in this fucking town any more than I could "stand up" to the Russian mafia (if they came after me. To be clear, as of today, I don't think the Russian mob is after me.)

Obama seems to have fewer obligations to powerful interests, but that might be bad too because it means that he'll have a hard time getting things accomplished.

[Houdi Elbow]

How much better is Europe, really?

Taxes are so high in Sweden, I have to assume that there are trade-offs compared to the lifestyle we have in the US or even in Britain. Obviously, if you're low-income, you'll be a lot better off in place that offers so many essential services for free, and that's great. But perhaps there are things that middle-class people here take for granted that are out of reach for most over there. I don't know what those things are though.

I didn't see much poverty and most people seemed to enjoy a very high standard of living. On the other hand there didn't seem to be many super rich types either.

[Reed John]

How much better is Europe, really?

Yeah. I was just thinking like maybe Swedes don't own as many cars as we do or don't have as many TV channels as we do or pay too much for beer or coffee or something like that. Nothing that would stand out as equating to a lower standard of living, but just little things here and there.

Maybe all their furniture is from Ikea. That would save a lot of kronir or whatever.

[ursus arctos]

How much better is Europe, really?

They do pay a ridiculous amount for alcohol (which is a state monopoly). And a lot of people do have Ikea furniture, though that is most common in second houses (which a lot of people also have, at least those who live and work in Stockholm). There is, in general, a significant social value on modesty (not penury, but definitely not flaunting wealth), that means that people seem quite content to live with "less stuff" than their US counterparts.

But that is one of the prices you pay with any more egalitarian system of income distribution; one's ability to hit the jackpot and live like a rock star/Donald Trump is limited.

Of course, in my book, that is a very good thing.

Back when I was looking at these kinds of issues professionally (the 80s), I had pretty much convinced myself that there was going to be a convergence of models around a "social democratic" point that was a lot closer to the Nordic model than that of Reagan's US. Mitterand's victory in France and what struck me as the sheer unsustainability of the Thatcher and Reagan regimes helped me reach that conclusion. I was, of course, grievously wrong, in part (I think) because I massively over-estimated the political appeal of a more egalitarian distribution of wealth.

It's also worth noting that the Nordic countries have moved away from the "confiscatory" levels of taxation that were common in the 70s and 80s. The top personal income tax rate in Sweden is no something like 33%.

[Pietro Paolo Virdis]

How much better is Europe, really?

(2004)
Of approx. 9 million
11% were born outside Sweden
20% have an “immigrant background”

1. Finland (189 341)
2. Yugoslavia (75 099) *
3. Iraq (67 645)
4. Bosnia-Herzegovina (53 959)
5. Iran (53 241)
6. Norway (45 087)
7. Poland (41 586)
8. Denmark (40 921)
9. Germany (39 548)
10. Turkey (34 083)

I would have never guessed there are more Germans here than Somalis or Ethiopians, who all seem to be living in Gothenburg.

* Which would include Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo

Can't be arsed looking up more recent statistics. This will give you an idea.

[Pietro Paolo Virdis]

How much better is Europe, really?

Reed, only reason you need to not turn Swedish is that we have a moron-prick of a lame dick national football coach.

Lagerbäck emigrate!

[Ball Comrade]

How much better is Europe, really?

Taxes are coming down here too, and we also have a right wing government. One thing they did when they came in was to announce that they weren't too bothered about the collective economy wide wage agreement, whereby all the trade unions and all the employers had a big fuck off meeting and decided what people would earn for the next 3 years.

The benefits of that are that you know pretty much exactly what other people are earning (so long as they're not foreign and therefore easier to fuck over) and it does hold down inflation. I imagine Americans would see this as something akin to communism, and when it didn't happen in this negotiation round a lot of negotiated deals were much higher than they would otherwise have been.

This had negative effects for those at the bottom, as their deals were shitter than they would have been if cleaners and engineers had been negotiating together. On top of that inflation has increased massively in the last couple of years, which disproportionately hits the poor.

The government wants to move towards a more Estonian system, with flat taxes and all that. It's not that big a shift, as income tax is not a huge part of the tax burden. Municipal tax is a flat percentage of income, for instance. But I suppose many Finns want to have more money, and these ideas are attractive to them.

And then there is the government's attitude towards subsidies. A wood pulp mill in Lapland was closed down recently, because the timber to keep it running was too expensive. The government was a major shareholder in the company, Stora Enso, but did nothing to stop the shutdown. This is a major shift for a Centre Party PM, as those fuckers have built a party on the kind of 'earmarking' for rednecks that Palin likes so much. In Urho Kekkonen's time public expenditure was spread throughout the country on a scrupulously even basis, and they have kept the rhetoric from that time, at least.

But they're a countryside party and now one quarter of the population live in the greater Helsinki area. They have to adjust, and some form of economic 'freedom' is going to be part of their platform in future.

On the monopoly front, I think the betting monopolies are considerably more evil than Alko. At least Alko does a good job of restricting alcohol supply, the betting monopolies are seen as cash cows and politicians often want to expand the availability of fruit machines. Here's a good article on gambling addiction in Finland. And I haven't even gone into the effect Veikkaus has on football here. They have a big budget for schmoozing important people and journalists, and so they don't get that much criticism.

That kind of leads to the next point, about corruption. This is a small country, and things are decided by small groups of important, connected men. That of course leads to corruption, but nobody calls it that. Here's a blog post outlining the argument.

Then there is the climate change thing. Finland's CO2 emissions are higher than any other European country, and people don't give much of a fuck about that. Public transport is appalling outside Tampere and Helsinki, and it is generally assumed that you need a car to live pretty much anywhere. Sceptics are still given airtime here, even on 'serious' news programmes.

On the plus side, hockey is much cheaper here than where you live. There are many more good things about living here, and I wouldn't want to live in America, but sometimes things seem a bit grim.

[Ball Comrade]

How much better is Europe, really?

Pietro Paolo Virdis wrote:

Reed, only reason you need to not turn Swedish is that we have a moron-prick of a lame dick national football coach.

Lagerbäck emigrate!

Would you say he's as bad as Baxter?

[ursus arctos]

How much better is Europe, really?

The gambling addiction thing is quintessentially American, I'm afraid. Lotteries and "Indian/riverboat/card room gaming" have become the absolute favourite way of raising money for state governments who are increasingly strapped for cash (often as a result of Reagan-era tax-cutting initiatives). It's the political equivalent of crack (and creates significant opportunities for corruption, as any analysis of Louisiana politics will reveal).

[tee rex]

How much better is Europe, really?

I suspect that if we had a closer look at a few European legal systems, they might fall foul of the US Constitution. Governments telling you when you can mow your lawn or publish opinion polls, that kind of thing. Not every democracy comes with a First Amendment thrown in.

Can anyone cheer Reed up with a "you can't do that here" story?

[ursus arctos]

How much better is Europe, really?

Unfortunately, "our" own government hasn't been paying much attention to the Constitution lately.

Though it is of course true that many Americans would find the degree of government involvement in daily life in the rest of the "developed world" to be excessive.

[Mitch]

How much better is Europe, really?

Can anyone cheer Reed up with a "you can't do that here" story?

Well, being able to elect your local government officials is something the US has over us, isn't it?

And around here, we've just had the county boundaries fiddled with for no good reason ("Cheshire" no longer exists); I can't see the US government getting away with doing the same to the state boundaries.