European opinion leaders just don’t get it. Instead of celebrating president Obama as the new messiah they should put all their bets on failure for both them and us. The man in the White House is keen to emulate the European social democratic model.
An excellent article in the WSJ observes that the very European welfare state has been subsidized by the American taxpayer for half a century. It was only thanks to the very expensive American defense umbrella that the Europeans were able to ignore military expenditure and instead spend like mad on welfare.
It was the strong American consumer demand, driven by free market economics, that provided an excellent market for European products - but perhaps not much longer. If president Obama gets his way both enormous benefits for Europeans will vanish.
As Jeff Durstewiz concludes:
The great irony here is that the European model American leftists envy couldn’t survive without the despised cowboy counterpart. If the U.S. economy weakens because of increasing regulation, heavy-handed unionization, and higher taxes and debt to support an expensive social agenda – all policies Mr. Obama and the Democrats in Congress are pushing hard – it will hurt Europe.
