…
Instead of just ridiculing the conservative argument, let’s take it seriously for a moment. Near as I can tell, they seem to be saying this: Liberals want bigger government. Europe has bigger government. Bad things are happening to Europe. Q.E.D.
Do conservatives have even a germ of a point here? No. It’s true that liberals admire some things that Europe does, and it’s also true that Europe has some highly destructive policies. But there’s almost no overlap between the two. By almost all accounts, the single most damaging aspect of European and French policy is the absurdly restrictive rules on firing employees, which discourage businesses from hiring anybody and result in high unemployment.
I’ve never, ever heard an American liberal call for emulating French labor regulations. You do, on the other hand, hear liberals praising France’s effective public transportation and, above all, its healthcare system. Tanner’s column doesn’t try to cite France’s advanced rapid transit as a cause of social decay, but it does mention its “universal national healthcare system.”
This is particularly laughable. France’s healthcare system does cover everybody, has far more doctors per capita than the U.S. and produces better health outcomes. Is this lavish socialist system bankrupting the country? Far from it. France spends about 10% of its national income on healthcare, as opposed to 15% in the U.S. In fact, we’re the country being bankrupted by its healthcare system, which is by far the most market-intensive in the advanced world. Skyrocketing healthcare costs are discouraging job growth and strangling the automobile industry, among others.
…
The monsters who eat escargot
“France is the latest country to fill American conservatives’ need for a foreign boogeyman that will keep liberals in their place.”