I had coffee the other evening with a German lawyer. “You know,” he said, “in Germany, we don’t even have a lot of the [menial] jobs that you have here in the states. Like those people who fill your grocery bags at the supermarket – in Germany, the stores can’t afford them. A lot of the jobs in the US seem to exist just so people can work. In Europe, we take care of everyone, so no one has to have a job like that …”
It was a very European thing to say.
Umbrella
During the European Middle Ages, the elites – the monarchy, the nobility, the church – had a duty to care for the lower classes. Ideally, the nobility had a (‘God-given’) responsibility to care for the poor, while the poor had a(n equally ‘God-given’) responsibility to reciprocate – to pay taxes, to fight in wars, to support the system. These aristocracies gradually evolved into what we see today; nations requiring all children to attend state-run schools, nations in which adults pay more than 50% of their income in taxes to a state which funds their education, transportation, healthcare, retirement, and everything else.
The European states are all grown up today, but at heart, they still recall those early aristocracies. Europeans are, on average, more likely than U.S. citizens to feel the government has a responsibility to care for them — and that they in turn have a responsibility to support the government. In other words, the social net in Europe functions like an umbrella, a government hand sheltering willing dependents. In one form or another, this approach has been a sociopolitical reality in Europe for the better part of the last 2000 years. Often, it works stunningly well. For example, check this commentary on the Danish Economy, from Foreign Affairs (March/April 2008):
On the one hand, the Danes are passionate free traders … On the other hand, Denmark spends about 50 percent of its GDP on public outlays and has the world’s second-highest tax rate, after Sweden; strong trade unions; and one of the world’s most equal income distributions. For the half of the GDP that they pay in taxes, the Danes get not just universal health insurance but also generous child-care and family-leave arrangements, unemployment conpensation that typically covers around 95 precent of lost wages, free higher education, secure pensions in old age, and the world’s most creative system of worker retraining.
So the Danish economy is some kind of Clintonian wet dream; a place where widespread government control produces a fair social scene, and – at the same time – a globally competitive economic entity. Could we reproduce this in the US? Not according to me – or to the author, Kuttner, who continues,
… with appropriate caveats, Danish ideas can indeed be instructive for other nations grappling with the enduring dilemma of how to reconcile market dynamism with social and personal security… Yet Denmark’s social compact is the result of a century of political conflict and accommodation that produced a consensual style of problem solving that is uniquely Danish. it cannot be understood merely as a technical policy fix to be swallowed whole in a different cultural or political context. Those who would learn from Denmark must first appreciate that social models have to grow in their own political soil.
The Copenhagen Consensus: Reading Adam Smith in Denmark
Robert Kuttner, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2008 (pp.78-9)
Kuttner concludes that, while instructive, the Danish system and solutions can’t be swallowed piecemeal by other countries. I would add, especially in the U.S., which never fit under the umbrella model to begin with.
Rowboat
Across the Atlantic, we in the United States look at the (Western/Christian) culture we share with Europe, and want to emulate the social systems we see working so well. Socialized healthcare, tight gun control, state-supported (and limited) higher education all seem simple at first glance, and add immeasurably to the quality of life modern Europeans enjoy. We’re then disappointed when transplanted reforms don’t flower here.
Even before 1776, we were a group of pioneers, people who wouldn’t or couldn’t fit under the Old World’s Umbrella – we were landowners who wanted more than Britain or Spain or France could provide. We were jailbirds who’d decided servitude here was better than eventual freedom, there. We were pioneers who wanted more for our children – in short, the U.S. was built on the backs of misfits, rebels, individualists, and immigrants. Our culture and government have always reflected this.
Practical Implications
I”m not sure how this plays out in the Real World today; for example, I don’t know how universal healthcare for the U.S. should look different than universal healthcare in Europe. Perhaps we should drop the issue down to the state level – an individualized, grassroots approach might have the kind of effects we want. Perhaps we should open more free clinics at the lower level. Perhaps everyone should get four free visits a year. Perhaps we should pass out healthcare vouchers and let individuals choose. Perhaps we should do something else entirely.
Especially today, as we draw nearer to the 2008 elections, we must remember that the United States has a very different political birthplace than Europe, despite our many cultural similarities. We’ve always functioned under a rowboat model; in its cleanest incarnation, government on this side of the Atlantic is nothing more than transportation for the ideas and ingenuity of the people driving it – a government Of the People, by the People, and for the People, if you will.
All I know for sure is that copied solutions won’t work for the U.S., whether they’re copied from England, or Denmark, or even a near neighbor like Canada. We need solutions tailored to our culture, that takes us into account; our strengths, our weaknesses. We need solutions that take into account the millions of immigrants – legal and illegal alike – that add immeasurably to the energy and drive of this country. We need a system that takes into account our penchant for violence, our fetish for rebellion, our predilection for rugged individualists, our admiration for stupid, honorable choices, our mercantilism, our repressed hypersexuality, our need to be heard, our constant soul-searching and redefinition – as individuals, as a culture, as a country.
We need, in short, a system that is built for us, from scratch – not one adapted from somewhere else. In the United States, we’ve spent centuries learning how to row our own boat, how to stay above the flood; in the end, deserting the rowboat for an umbrella may be harder to do than to say – especially when dry land is getting so hard to find.
