I'm always a bit unimpressed with arguments for and against the European model based on aggregate economic statistics. Not because such data isn't important in evaluating Europe's success -- it is -- but because it's somewhat hard to dismantle into component, causal parts. For instance, many folks will explain how Europe's social welfare policies have gummed up their economy. But is that true? What would America look like with the French health care system? Or Britain's paid family leave policies?
It's not clear. And how much of Europe's performance stems from demographic, cultural, geographic, and historical factors? Quite a bit, it would seem. And someone, somewhere, has surely sought to quantify this more precisely, but I never seem to notice such data intervening in these arguments. It's all rather puzzling.
As a more general comment on the European systems, they would seem to have certain elements worth lifting and specific portions worth dumping. Evaluating these policies in the specific rather than the aggregate would prove quite a bit more illuminative and precise than the for/against argument so often engaged which takes, as its purview, the entire European system.
