Reflections on the EU

It's fashionable in America and in free-trade circles, like The Economist, to belittle the EU. The old story is that the EU nanny state is an undemocratic bureaucracy that not only meddles in the lives of its citizens but is an inefficient, bloated mess that kills economic growth and stifles innovation. Such arguments are bread and butter for the acolytes of Milton Friedman and the supply side zealots of various US administrations, like the crowd who have given us the wonderful economy we have today.

As I was driving to Friuli today I couldn't help but see another, very tangible reality in today's Europe. The well-maintained highways are crowded with big rigs from every part of the Old World, including countries that aren't even in the EU, such as Serbia, Croatia. Russia and Turkey. Lots of beautiful new cars from a few dozen countries zip along at 120 or more miles per hour, stopping for gas and food at clean, efficient rest stops. They all use the euro no matter where they come from and they painlessly use credit cards and gas up with fuel made according to common specifications. Border controls, where they exist, are perfunctory.

And consider: these modern citizens of Europe speak their own languages and maintain their national identities even as they share a European space, a European purpose, where within living memory they were slaughtering one another by the millions. If this isn't an impressive achievement, I don't know what is.

And consider this: while statistics show most Europeans living longer and healthier lives than ever--yes, despite the alleged horrors of socialized medicine -- an article in today's NY Times cited recent research findings that large swaths of America are living shorter and less healthy lives...for the first time ever. While lack of health insurance seems not to be a key factor in this ominous trend, who is to say really? Less access to health care promotes different, less healthy practices in daily life. Sometimes our people give up. Hopeless people and slaves do that.

This, with Tom Friedman's condemnation of our dumb-and-dumber energy policies, indicates a massive failure to come to terms with ANY of the big problems facing us. We Americans like to make jokes about Europeans' long vacations and the corruption of places like Italy. But let me tell you from this town (Udine) near the old East/West border: Europe works quite well, and in much of the Old World the average Giuseppe or Jose' lives a longer, healthier and maybe less emarginated life than in our country. And if I were poor and/or seriously ill, I'd stand a far better chance of living longer here and not bankrupting my children to do it.

We once had these ideals of helping one another and realizing our responsibilities to the common good. We are no longer that country. We lose.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Comments

[fredric koeppel]

brief but profound, mon ami. American, land of the free and home of the brave, has become the land of the super rich, a terrified and struggling middle-class, and a vast lower class whose life span is shortened by lack of education, poor diet, diabetes and high blood pressure and absence of medical insurance, all this presided over by an administration that blinds itself to any sensible solutions to the country's problems, while it enriches itself and its cohorts.

[gianpaolo]

I lived in Udine for 2,5 beautiful years of my life, so I can understand perfectly what you mean. Unfortunately, as you know, that's not the same all over Italy, or EU.
But I fundamently agree with you with the gigantic achievement of Europeans with the building of EU, and this shan't be forgotten now that is a time where someone might find it convenient to jeopardize this for political reasons.
Having said so, as an Italian I wouldn't mind to experience some of this free market thing I've always heard of. :-)
See ya soon.
Can you please update your blogroll, my blog is now here: http://poggioargentiera.com/

[terence]

I certainly don't suggest that all is good in Europe and all is bad in the US. If I hadn't been so tired last night I wouldve made the explicit point that both sets of goernments have formulated and enacted policies that have shaped their societies in profound ways over the past few decades. By and large Europe's decisions have been beneficial for its societies and the average person, while America's have not been. In a sense its been a matter of rationality over belief.