Krugman: How American Capitalism Fails—and Northern European 'Socialism' Succeeds—at Job Creation

"Our political discourse is dominated by reverse Robin-Hoodism — the belief that economic success depends on being nice to the rich, who won’t create jobs if they are heavily taxed, and nasty to ordinary workers, who won’t accept jobs unless they have no alternative."

France, a country that the American media and conservatives particularly love to bash, is having particular success in employment rates. Krugman reports this "startling, little-known fact: French adults in their prime working years (25 to 54) are substantially more likely to have jobs than their U.S. counterparts." Also, the French take more vacations and retire earlier than we do. How horrible! Who would want to live in a place like that.

But, getting back to Krugman's main point: "On the core issue of providing jobs for people who really should be working, at this point old Europe is beating us hands down despite social benefits and regulations that, according to free-market ideologues, should be hugely job-destroying."

I’m sure that many people will simply refuse to believe what I’m saying about European strengths. After all, ever since the euro crisis broke out there has been a relentless campaign by American conservatives (and quite a few Europeans too) to portray it as a story of collapsing welfare states, brought low by misguided concerns about social justice. And they keep saying that even though some of the strongest economies in Europe, like Germany, have welfare states whose generosity exceeds the wildest dreams of U.S. liberals.

http://www.alternet.org/economy/krugman-how-american-capitalism-fails-and-northern-european-socialism-succeeds-job-creation

It is enlightening to see the relentless conservative campaign to portray Europe as an economic failure. It certainly serves their purposes to "prove" that high safety net levels, taxation and wages dooms a country to economic failure. Conservatives don't like any of those things.