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June 02, 2005
A "Spot-On" Column
In today's N.Y. Times, the paper known 99% of the time or thereabouts for butt munching Old Europe while extolling their superiority to the U.S. under a GOP administration, there is a column by David Brooks titled Fear and Rejection that expresses the opinion that American liberals are, once again, being proved wrong. How? By failing to perceive that their goals for the United States have already been tested over time in Western Europe and found to be seriously lacking in favorable results.
Read the column here.
"The Western European standard of living is about a third lower than the American standard of living, and it's sliding. European output per capita is less than 46 of the 50 American states and about on par with Arkansas. There is little prospect of robust growth returning any time soon."
"Once it was plausible to argue that the European quality of life made up for the economic underperformance, but those arguments look more and more strained, in part because demographic trends make even the current conditions unsustainable. Europe's population is aging and shrinking. By 2040, the European median age will be around 50. Nearly a third of the population will be over 65. Public spending on retirees will have to grow by a third, sending Europe into a spiral of higher taxes and less growth."
And the above is what the liberals want for the rest of us? Our so-called "cultural elite", with all their self proclaimed intellectual superiority, are as dumb as the proverbial box of rocks. Even confronted with the truth glaring out of the reality that is the example set by today's Western Europe, they are determined to lead us down their Utopian trail to economic and cultural disaster.
The references made by the columnist to the Western European median age, by 2040, of 50 with one third of the population being 65, while not cited in the piece, are a result of a severe decrease in child births in the last couple of decades. Younger generations are having less babies, and less babies means less future taxpayers to support them when they retire, and it stands to reason that this, in turn, means that in order to take care of the old folks a few short decades from now, the thinned down working generation of that time will have to be taxed almost to starvation.
Do we really need to be there tomorrow, just so a few "cultural elite" jackasses can score some political victories today?
Posted by Seth at June 2, 2005 11:19 PM
