Can the European Welfare State Survive?  Can National Public Radio Survive?

NPR wants to convince listeners that the European welfare state is on its last legs.  While it tells listeners this, nothing in the piece actually supports this case.

For example, it implies that growth is grinding to a halt in Europe because of its generous welfare state, noting that Europe is expected to grow just 1.0 percent this year, while the U.S. is projected to grow by 3.0 percent.  Actually, GDP growth in the U.S. is projected as being close to 2.1 percent this year by the Congressional Budget Office and most other forecasters, but this is really beside the point.  More importantly, no one would draw any conclusions about growth based on a single year, especially one in the middle of a downturn.

Any economist could have explained to NPR that growth in the European Union (EU) is being constrained right now by lack of demand, not lack of supply.  This means that the cause of weak growth in the EU right now cannot be welfare state restrictions on supply but rather bad policies from the European Central Bank and the Bank of England (they claim to fear inflation, which in the real world ranks slightly below an invasion from Mars on the list of risks right now).  If the central banks pursued more expansionary monetary policy, there is little doubt that economies across Europe would be growing more quickly.  It is almost inconceivable that NPR could do a piece referring to Europe’s weak growth and not note this fact.

It is also important to note that Europe has much slower population growth than the United States.  Economists usually focus on per capita income as a primary measure of economic well-being, not total GDP.  (Indonesia has a much higher GDP than Denmark, but because it has 40 times the population, no one would claim that Indonesia is richer.)  The difference in population growth is approximately 0.9 percentage points, which means that per capita growth in the EU and the U.S. are projected to be very comparable this year.

The piece also briefly commented on the universal health care provided in Europe and implied that this may no longer be affordable.  It would have been worth noting that European countries pay on average less than half as much per person as the United States for health care.  In fact, the government spends more money per person on our private health care system than governments do in Europe on their more publicly controlled systems.  It is absurd to imply that a switch to a U.S.-type system would somehow save money.


Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR).  He is the author of False Profits: Recovering from the Bubble Economy.  He also has a blog Beat the Press, where he discusses the media’s coverage of economic issues.  This article was published CEPR’s “Beat the Press” blog on 14 July 2010 under a Creative Commons license.




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