The march of our domestic economic policies deeper and deeper into socialistic territory is often justified by liberals who will site Europe’s success; they having scouted ahead for us.

You will hear such things as hight tax brackets and universal healthcare are working for them – they’re doing just fine.

So why is it that there are signs Europe is calling a retreat and marching back our way?

Europe Has an Economics Lesson for Obama

Over the last decade, much of Europe has very quietly embraced market-based reforms that either draw inspiration from American successes or — on issues like retirement security — are even more market-oriented than many U.S. Republicans support.

The cutting of corporate income- tax rates is an excellent example of European market-friendly bipartisanship. Germany’s right-left coalition of Christian and Social Democrats implemented a large rate cut earlier this year, reducing the top marginal corporate rate to about 30% from 39%. Spain’s Socialist and Britain’s Labor governments have followed suit, reducing their countries’ top corporate rates.

These traditionally left-of-center parties understand that in a globalized economy, wealth and investment are mobile, flowing to those countries that provide hospitable investment climates. As part of a European Union where center-right governments in Greece, Denmark, Ireland and Eastern Europe have dramatically reduced corporate tax rates, they understand that they cannot help workers if they drive away the capital that employs and pays them.

Read that last sentence. Now read it again. Thank Ronald Regan for that one.

Mr. Obama’s main solution to the looming Social Security bankruptcy is to raise taxes on the well-off. To date, he has eschewed other solutions such as raising the retirement age or creating private Social Security accounts. But European center-left parties have no such reservations.

Take Sweden, for example. In the 1990s, a series of center-right and Social Democratic governments reached agreement on wide ranging pension reforms that include a private account option not too different than the one proposed by President George W. Bush.

Yah, but they’ll never give credit to Bush for the idea.

This new European consensus is founded, like all political calculations, partly on conviction and partly on necessity. European center-left politicians have slowly come to respect the power of markets. Much like the so-called “Rubin Democrats,” they recognize that the energy and innovation of market actors can better produce wealth than more traditional social democratic economic theory.

Necessity. Hey, soon we will have that in common!

Again, Sweden is an excellent example of this. Since 1932, Social Democrats have governed the country mostly without significant coalition partners, with the exception of the years when Sweden’s economy stalled and they had to cede power — 1976-82, 1991-94 and again in 2006 when the current center-right government took over. Even in egalitarian Sweden, voters will turn to the right if jobs are scarce and incomes stagnant.

Does this bode well for November? Does it hurt bad enough yet America?

This entry was posted by by Johnny Roosh on Sunday, July 20th, 2008 at 6:00 am and is filed under Conservatism, World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.