The Western world, at a most crucial time geopolitically, lacks direction everywhere. Instead we have drift, drift, drift
Last month an article in the Wall Street Journal “created a sensation” in Europe, according to the French journalist Nicolas Bouzou who used a column in the French magazine L’Express to rebut it. Tom Fairless, the author of the original article, had written that Europeans were growing poorer while Americans were growing rich.
Alas, Bouzou could only quibble with the data provided by Fairless, who, he claimed, should have used purchasing power per head statistics rather than simple GDP figures. Then he could have written that, if current trends persisted, the EU would leave the club of rich nations only in 2050 rather than in 2035 as Fairless had suggested. Bouzou also conceded that Fairless had been correct to point to Europe’s ageing population, with its preference for long holidays, early retirement and security of employment, as a cause of low growth. Europeans should realise the consequences: lack of economic resources leading to domestic and external insecurity and the inevitable need to follow America’s lead geopolitically.
At almost the same time as Bouzou’s article appeared, the journalist Andrew Neil wrote an analysis of European wealth. Among the points he made was that fifteen years ago the GDP of the Eurozone was about $14 trillion while the US was only marginally bigger. Today that of the Eurozone is just under $15 trillion while the USA’s is $25 trillion, 60 per cent bigger than the Eurozone’s. The result is that the average European country is now poorer per head than every US state save Mississippi and Idaho. Yet with an annual income of $50,000 Mississippians are better off than the French. Neil’s article uses a wealth of statistics to demonstrate how relatively worse off in many ways the EU is than the USA.
Unfortunately for us, the UK is more like Europe than America: overtaxed, over-regulated and lacking any strategic plan for growth. We also have another trait in common with the EU: political paralysis or stasis.