Useful column by Paul Krugman on the dystopia that Europe isn't. The trans-Atlantic employment gap has largely disappeared, their economies are growing a bit faster than ours, they're exceeding us in adoption and penetration of broadband and cellular technologies, and so on. That's not to say their economic model is obviously superior, but nor is it clearly inferior. It's basically some good things (universal health care), some bad things (restrictive labor rules), some well-intentioned-but-poorly-implemented things (Italy), and a lot of stuff that's not particularly comparable because of context and circumstances. But this refrain you hear during the Republican debates, that we can't implement anything that resembles any feature of any European country because Sweden is some sort of unimaginable hell, is just silly. They do some things better and some things worse, and we'd be well-advised to carefully consider which things fall in the former category and whether they can be successfully imported. (Image of The Eiffel Tower used under a Creative Commons license from Flickr user Leucippus.) DON'T FEAR EUROPE.
Useful column by Paul Krugman on the dystopia that Europe isn't. The trans-Atlantic employment gap has largely disappeared, their economies are growing a bit faster than ours, they're exceeding us in adoption and penetration of broadband and cellular technologies, and so on. That's not to say their economic model is obviously superior, but nor is it clearly inferior. It's basically some good things (universal health care), some bad things (restrictive labor rules), some well-intentioned-but-poorly-implemented things (Italy), and a lot of stuff that's not particularly comparable because of context and circumstances. But this refrain you hear during the Republican debates, that we can't implement anything that resembles any feature of any European country because Sweden is some sort of unimaginable hell, is just silly. They do some things better and some things worse, and we'd be well-advised to carefully consider which things fall in the former category and whether they can be successfully imported. (Image of The Eiffel Tower used under a Creative Commons license from Flickr user Leucippus.) 
