Conservatives have been flogging the living shit out of a recent piece by Jim Manzi (not the Lotus guy but another Jim Manzi) in National Affairs. Bobo named it one of his essays of the year, and Chunky Bobo devoted a whole column to it.
I was thinking of reading it but, honestly, I just don’t trust conservatives enough to believe that they are reporting economic numbers properly. And I wasn’t impressed with Manzi’s pieces on climate change at NRO (they were pretty reasonable as NRO pieces go, but they weren’t very convincing).
Well, here’s Manzi on Europe from his vaunted National Affairs piece:
From 1980 through today, Americaâs share of global output has been constant at about 21%. Europeâs share, meanwhile, has been collapsing in the face of global competition â going from a little less than 40% of global production in the 1970s to about 25% today. Opting for social democracy instead of innovative capitalism, Europe has ceded this share to China (predominantly), India, and the rest of the developing world.
And here’s Kthug:
But as Jonathan Chait quickly pointed out, Manziâs definition of Europe included the Soviet bloc (!), so that he was attributing to social democracy an economic decline that was mainly about the collapse of communism. Chait also suggested that Manzi wasnât comparing the same dates for America and Europe; and most importantly, Chait pointed out that to the extent there has been a growth divergence, itâs almost entirely because America has faster population growth; since 1980, real GDP per capita in Western Europe and the US have grown at almost the same rate.
But I went back to Manziâs source of data, and it turns out that itâs even worse than that. If you use the broad definition of Europe, which includes the USSR, it did indeed have 40 percent of world output in the early 1970s. But that share has not fallen to 25 percent â itâs still above 30 percent.
The only thing I can think is that Manzi compared Europe including the eastern bloc in 1970 with Europe not including the east today.
Fail.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t include this Douthat gem on an earlier Manzi piece on climate change:
Everyone should read it: Conservatives will find a sensible blueprint for moving from the denialist fringe to the political mainstream, and liberals will get a taste of how a wised-up, heads-out-of-the-sand Right could kick their ass on the issue.
Update. I’m sorry if this sounds a little pissy “ha, ha conservatives suck.” I’m genuinely annoyed that I spent time gearing up to read what I thought might be a legitimately interesting conservative article only to find that it was a fraud.
Update update. Manzi responds here to Jon Chait’s criticism — I haven’t digested the first point Manzi discusses, but I don’t think I agree with the second. Perhaps Manzi will address Krugman’s criticism later.
In any case, not to sound too Andrew Sullivan about this, but it is nice to see a mostly fact-based, fairly reasonable discussion such as this.
Incertus
A right-winger using data dishonestly? Inconceivable!
Yutsano
Speaking as someone who considers the Euro overvalued on fundamentals alone (mishmashing 26 economies might make some political sense but putting Slovenia on the same plane as Germany is idiotic to me) I still see Europe as a force in the world economy for a long time to come BECAUSE of their social democracy instead of in spite of it. Besides by this criteria England should be a total basket case and last time I checked they’re doing just fine.
beltane
That’s just pathetic. By resorting to such overt cheating, Manzi has admitted his “argument” is crap. Anyone can make a point if they are entitled to create their own personal version of reality.
General Winfield Stuck
The Devil you say DougJ. But they are my go to guys for tawdry memes and illicit sex. One or twixt the other.
Robertdsc-iphone
Douthat has his head in the sand if he thinks the Right can kick ass on ANY issue. We just got done with 8 years of conservatism having their way on almost every issue & all we got was failed wars, a ruined economy, & a murdered American city. Fuck him in his chunky head.
General Winfield Stuck
It ain’t and they do, purple donkey dicks. Don’t get all soft and blubbery on us.
PurpleGirl
Opting for social democracy instead of innovative capitalism, Europe has ceded this share to China (predominantly), India, and the rest of the developing world.
So he thinks we still have strong manufacturing base here, that we haven’t sent millions of our jobs overseas, that almost everything you go to buy in an American store says “Made in China”. I’d like some of the drugs he must be using.
Notorious P.A.T.
Douthat sucks.
Mike G
Does Manzi have an actual argument? Apparently not, since he can’t make one without either bald-faced lies or culpable statistical negligence.
Putting aside the usual right-wing retarded abuse of numbers, why should the average person give a shit about their country’s share of global output in manufacturing, financial services or toaster ovens?
Unless you’re an economist, government wonk or the kind of flag-waving dipshit who gets a hard-on about national achievements because you have none of your own, isn’t standard of living a much more pertinent measure? There is supposed to be a correlation between national success, productivity and standard of living, but the real world frequently does not work that way.
Does an employee celebrate at their company’s rise in market share after seeing their pay and benefits slashed and half their co-workers laid off? Does an American factory worker cheer at the US rise in output as their standard of living plunges and their prospects dim, while their ‘declining’ European counterpart has better benefits, more vacation and is much less susceptible because of government policies and protections?
These right-wing dipshits wouldn’t even think to ask the question. They’d be too busy crying over the lower profits and tragically less-obese paychecks of European executives.
Incertus
@Robertdsc-iphone: Well, Americans also have notoriously bad memories, and we’re pretty easy to distract with shiny things like blowjobs and burning underwear.
kommrade reproductive vigor
This is like answering a personals ad from what’s supposed to be a girl who looks just like Kiera Knightley (only with bigger boobs) and being shocked when she turns out to look just like Rush Limbaugh (only with bigger boobs).
Turgidson
@Yutsano:
How is it necessarily different from us putting, say, Idaho and California on the “same plane”?
MikeJ
@Incertus: I’m not so sure of that. Clinton’s approval ratings went up after the blowjob story. The only people that hated him were republicans who already hated him, and villagers, who already hated him but didn’t want to say it was a social class difference.
Kyle
Department of Redundancy Department
asiangrrlMN
No need to apologize, DougJ. Conservatives do, indeed, suck–and not in a good way. I can’t imagine anyone citing this as an example of sound conservative thinking. As for Douthat, the less said, the better.
Tomlinson
Reagan Revolution?
They did all of that under the crushing boots of soshulizm, too.
soonergrunt
I don’t know what’s pissy about stating the blindingly obvious.
gnomedad
@Turgidson:
It’s OK with me as long as their underwear was searched.
El Cid
And here I thought I had learned so much from the valuable scholars of the Manhattan Institute.
Bret
Good thing Manzi didn’t visit the White House. Breitbart would have shit his pantaloons when he got a hold of the logs.
Cat Lady
Slow learner, DougJ. They got nothin’. If they had something, they wouldn’t need to lie about every. single. thing.
Rhoda
Conservatives may suck, but they’re motivated mother effers.
PPP apparently polled MA and has Brown up +1; they called VA and NJ too.
I blame the White House & Pelosi/Reid. And I mean that sincerely, they need to punch some Republicans nationally. The judicial confirmations (lack of them), the holds, and the constant filibustering are great issues that would play to the base but no one in leadership is making this a national issue. So, folks are blaming the party rather than the 60 vote hoops.
If people know a change in Congress will help pass stimulus, stop Republicans from shitting on folks getting unemployment (again, another story that should have been a democratic national hissyfit), they’ll come and vote the crazies out of power.
Jim Manzi
FWIW, I responded to this here:
http://theamericanscene.com/2010/01/06/more-reactions-to-keeping-america-s-edge
Best regards,
Jim Manzi
Keith G
Conservatives have a âpyramidâ problem. In that I mean that they are generally not for any broad programs that help to organize or build society. The things they are for tend to be individualistic and quite often seem venal.
As such conservative such as my brother tend to be against more things than they are for and what they are for are not necessarily the type of things that rally the general population.
That is why they must attack Europe. Not only do such attacks take advantage of our xenophobic nature, but since Europe is a land of broad-based social programs that seem to work, attacking Europe is a matter of survival. And if they have to lie about it, eh, they donât care.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
Damn!! And no one has even mentioned Chunky Resse Witherspoon yet.
Jim Manzi
FWIW, I replied to Jonathan here:
http://theamericanscene.com/2010/01/06/more-reactions-to-keeping-america-s-edge
Best regards,
Jim Manzi
Nellcote
Hey DougJ…did you feel the earthquake this afternoon?
edit: oh you’re not here till Tuesday. never mind :)
Saturated Fathead
This is an example of why conservatives hate science. They work backwards from their chosen answers.
And, because they do it, they assume everyone does.
Heresiarch
Uh, that’s pretty much what I come here for.
gnomedad
I am waiting for “Chunky Reese Witherspoon” as a Ben & Jerry’s flavor.
Yutsano
@gnomedad: They had a contest once where you could create and name a flavor. I wonder if you can still do that. I didn’t win of course even though I was really thinking outside the box dammit.
Keith G
@gnomedad: Dare I ask what âChunky Reese Witherspoonâ tastes like?
Robert Sneddon
There’s a certain amount of American exceptionalism (trans: “USA! USA! We’re no. 1!”) in this kind of reporting. An American I was discussing economics with recently[0] refused at first to believe that the European Union had a greater GDP than the US — last figures I saw was for 2008 where the EU’s GDP was 18 trillion dollars US vs. 14 trillion dollars for “We’re no. 2!”.
After the numbers had sunk in he then started making excuses and inventing reasons the numbers didn’t actually mean what they clearly meant and that the United States was somehow differnent from the European Union, well because. The only substantive point he could make on this subject was the the US has a population of 300 million and the EU totals about 500 million people and so the GDP per worker was higher in the US than in Europe. When I pointed out that this made the US the second-largest Western democracy he stopped replying to my posts.
[0] He wanted Europe to man up and commit hundreds of billions of euros each year to building a giant military machine to fight the dread spectre of two hundred ragheads with boxcutters hiding in caves. I pointed out that the only reason to build such a force was to fight the US in an all-out conflict since it’s the only military out there that is any kind of a threat to other countries. That might have contributed to his later silence, I don’t know.
Mike G
The Lotus Jim Manzi was a turbo-douchebag. Now it seems this trait is inherent in the actual name.
Ash
Sometimes I fee like Douthat is some sort of idiot savant. He has somehow made people believe that he’s reasoned and interesting and a good writer, when, in reality, he’s just a dumbass who writes lame shit and thinks he’s oh-so-clever.
Comrade Luke
Is anyone going to monitor and tell us how/when Bobo & Chunky Bobo (new favorite nickname) confess that the data is eff’d up and they were wrong?
Ha! That was a good one…
Comrade Luke
@Ash:
Thing is, Douthat is really just a Brooks in training. They’re basically the same, with Douthat being stupider. Brooks will teach him how to apply the right ointment so that stupid doesn’t burn as much and…viola, your next top-line columnist at the New York Times.
General Winfield Stuck
OT
Apparently life is cheap in Kansas, unless your a fetus.
Yep, no wingnut activist judge problem in this country. It’s all the dern libtard ones.
Litlebritdifrnt
I have not read all the comments, so forgive me if I am being irrelevant, but my fambly lives in the UK and they are doing incredibly well, despite the sochialist commie faschist government over there, they are healthy (thanks to the NHS), happy (thanks to a livable wage) and hearty (thanks to really good food despite your american protestations about how british food sucks), last time I looked Britain has not collapsed into a communist quagmire, and most people are doing quite well, better than well actually, so well that when my sister came over here to visit me she looked at my life and considered me her “poor relation” she could not understand how we were paying $300 a month for electricity when she herself pays a mere fourty pounds a month, she cannot understand how I pay $2.00 for a pound of carrots that she pays .05 pence for, she cannot understand that I have a septic tank, and do not have county utilities, this is the greatest and most powerful country in the world and yet we still put our shit into a hole in the ground. What the fuck?
shecky
This thing is still being hashed out by Manzi and his supporters on theamericanscene. I read the article back when it came out almost a month ago, and was really not impressed. With all the follow up since, even less so.
I’m hungry for some reasonable right of center ideas. I think a lot of the country is, too. As much as I think the Obama Administration is doing about as good as any could, there is a serious need for an opposition with real ideas. The objective here isn’t left vs right warfare, but improvement of the lives of Americans and those under the influence of America. That Manzi’s article seems to have caught the imagination of so called serious conservatives says to me that they’re really starting from scratch. They forgot all that stuff they learned back in high school. This isn’t even sophomore work here.
Notorious P.A.T.
I couldn’t think of a way to link CRW and Europe.
Douthat was only hired because the Times needed a conservative columnist and he was the least bad one they could find. And anyway he was replacing Bill Kristol so he could write his columns by choosing words at random and still be an upgrade.
Notorious P.A.T.
Well we have to spend more on our military than every other country in the world, in case the USSR finds a time machine and comes forward into the present.
Notorious P.A.T.
Defense spending per capita: (2007)
USA — $1,756
United Kingdom — $990
We’ve got our priorities straight!
Thadeus Horne
@Keith G: Probably a little salty with an over flavor of raspberry. Just a guess.
joe from Lowell
I remember that feeling from my days reading Reason.
Sometimes, it would take a couple days before I realized the article I just read with the interesting, novel perspective as, in fact, piffle.
Morbo
DougJ, how do you write this post without including Charles Murray’s brain excretion from Paris? Shorter Murray: I counted a lot of black people in this neighborhood, so Europe as we know it (i.e. white) will soon cease to exist.
Dr. Loveless
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
Fixted.
AhabTRuler
@Yutsano: It always goes back to the deeper vs. wider issue. Those that want to expand the Union to as many members as possible what to limit the extent to which the Union penetrates each member. The people that want fuller integration are more conservative about admitting new members. Each perspective is defensible, but the real problem is Turkey.
@Turgidson:
Or Mississippi and anything.
Comrade Dread
Not to mention the fact that he blames Europe for not choosing free market capitalism and then goes on to say that much of the lost share of economic output from Europe has shifted to China, an autocratic, still communist (in name) regime.
If only Europe could be more like the Chinese…
JasonF
@shecky:
The problem is that the conservatives have spent the last 30 years moving the Overton Window so far to the right that there isn’t really room for real ideas on the right any more. Look at the recent health care debate. We didn’t talk about implementing a British-style government-managed system. We didn’t talk about a Canadian-style single-payer system. The crazy, left-wing idea was a robust public option, the compromise was a weak public option, and even that compromise got abandoned. The right was left to argue that the recipe for fixing health care was letting everyone save for their future health expenses tax-free and, of course, tort reform. But what choice did they have? Anything less crazy is considered left-wing at this point.
Chris S.
A further point: isn’t that the time period that Kohl and Thatcher started to dismantle many of the social democratic aspects of their countries?
matoko_chan
You know…..they are just desperate for some street cred…..and they got nothing.
Screw measurements.
The reason that Wallstreet melted down in an econopalypse of greed, according to Manzi’s schtick, is failure of the social cohesion paradigm that enforced mores and taboos like not lying, cheating or stealing.
You have heard it all before…..the family unit, the sacredness of marriage, the unmarried welfare sluts and depraved libertines that are destroying this country……but the simple truth is that white christian conservatism aka white patriarchy is a fail paradigm for social cohesion because of cultural and demographic evolution.
So social cohesion fail is what is causing the problems with education, the market, and immigration in this country.
Manzi’s solution is….wait for it……deregulation!
lol
Instead of proposing a social cohesion paradigm to replace the failed one, Manzi wants LESS regulation. So this country is evolving a new social cohesion paradigm….and that might just be social democracy.
At some levelâŠ.you have to acceptâŠthat social cohesion and/or regulation are the only things that can keep the invisible hand of the market from punching everyone in the face.
Church Lady
@DougJ: You had to “gear up” to read something????
Robertdsc-iphone
Shecky, I’m genuinely curious. Since St. Ronnie of Raygun’s time, conservatives have held sway over so much of the nation. They’ve had their time to do their thing and the country is all the poorer for it. What could the right possibly bring to the table that could improve the country in any way that has either been tried and failed or rejected by the American people?
Mari
@Litlebritdifrnt:
The UK is, however, the kind of place where you can be arrested for carrying a camera in public and jailed for carrying a Leatherman or for putting the wrong things in your garbage bin. This is in addition to ubiquitous surveillance of public movements, formal monitoring of all Internet use, and national-level Internet censorship.
Modern Britain is not a European success story. If you want to make the case that the US has fallen behind, you’re better off raising continental Europe as an example.
Kyle
Theyâve had their time to do their thing and the country is all the poorer for it. What could the right possibly bring to the table that could improve the country in any way
Improve the country?
Their class of people (the upper 1%) are doing way better than three decades ago, and that’s all that counts to them. They dream of a low-tax, low-service corporatist state, with them in their villas behind barbed-wire walls with armed guards, and gobs of desperate cheap labor outside, addled with fundamentalist Jeebus propaganda so they don’t get uppity.
Johnny Pez
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Not to mention that cool space/time rift they’ve got in Cardiff.
mclaren
It’s not just a matter of conservatives getting it hopelessly laughably wrong…America as a whole has been hammering away on Europe and Japan for decades now.
We’ve heard dire predictions. Gloom. Doom. Horror stories. Europe is dying, Japan is collapsing, these societies are headed for oblivion. They have rejected the pure true church of laissez faire capitalism and they doomed, doomed, I tell you, DOOOOOOOOOOOOOMED.
Meanwhile, people in Europe and Japan live in cleaner and far more crime-free cities than the wretched huddled masses of America. People in Japan and Europe can watch hi-def TV on their cellphones, they get dirt-cheap superfast broadband Americans can’t even dream of, they have magnificent ultramodern subways that run on time and super high-speed train systems that whiz around at 200 mph… Meanwhile American struggle with crap like Amtrak and the dirty grimy sludgy New York subway system.
The populations of Japan and Europe live in relative freedom while Americans get brutalized and tasered to death and pepper sprayed by crazed thug cops. The people in Europe and Japan get free or low cost college, while young people in America now find themselves crushed under a staggering load of $150,000-dollar college debt they can’t even legally discharge with bankruptcy.
In every possible way, life is infinitely superior for people who live in Europe or Japan. Looking at America, they must feel like the astronaut Charlton Heston when he visited the planet of the apes.
But those heretical Europeanized societies refuse to believe in cannibalistic zero-safety-net capitalism, so they must be scourged, pilloried, hammered, slammed, castigated, hounded, finger-pointed and condemned by every doomsaying economist and pencilk-neck social scientist in America.
It’s really pathetic. Like watching an AIDS-infected 98-pound weakling screaming at Mr. Universe about how much better off the AIDS victim is and how handsome and how manly and how rought and tough and buff he is compared to that pathetic Mr. Universe with all the muscles and the gleaming white teeth and the good looks.
Seriously, America…WTF are you thinking? Stop it. Just stop. Stop with the condemnation of Europe. You’re embarrassing yourself, America. You’re just making yourself like ridiculous. Clean up your fucking streets and build some working high-speed trains and fix your goddamn broken health care system and your broken higher education system and get those millions of non-vilent druggies out of your black hole gulags and back into productive society then maybe you can start to think about lecturing Europe. Until then, America, STFU and sit down.
DougJ
You had to âgear upâ to read something????
Arguments based on statistics require a lot of concentration. There’s no point in reading them unless you’re going to be serious about it.
shecky
Robertdsc-iphone:
I’d say a good start would be freer markets that are actually freer. Civil liberties that extend beyond the right to own a firearm. Basically look to the libertarian side of the spectrum for inspiration.
Sure, the GOP has always claimed to advocate these things. They’ve talked sweet to that faction for decades to keep the support for that elite. But the reality is that they are just as prone to get into
protectionist schemes as Democrats, run deficits, and piss on civil liberties when they’re advocated by folks other than white evangelicals.
And the boots on the ground were always worse. Does anybody think the yokeltarians are really interested in freer trade with China (or anywhere), for instance? Or think they worry about assholes like Sheriff Arpaio stepping out of bounds?
DougJ
DougJ, how do you write this post without including Charles Murrayâs brain excretion from Paris? Shorter Murray: I counted a lot of black people in this neighborhood, so Europe as we know it (i.e. white) will soon cease to exist.
Because that was just stupid and the Manzi piece is, I believe, in good faith even if it may be flawed.
DougJ
@Jim Manzi
Thanks. I updated with a link to your reply.
The Other Steve
I thought the US was a socialist nation? Isn’t that where Obama has taken us?
Sophist
I’m all for putting Mississippi on a plane.
I’m just not sure who’d be willing to let it off the plane once it lands.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Call the Repairman!
Fix’t.
Hold it… just how many members do you want to fit in this “Union” and isn’t it the members who do the penetrating of this “Union” you speak of?
;)
Steeplejack
@Jim Manzi:
What Manzi apparently still doesn’t get, even after his “response” linked above, is that people shouldn’t have to read every essay with a dictionary, an atlas and a special decoder ring to navigate through his definitions that are “technically true but [contextually] nonsense.”
To take just one example, he is caught in his original piece lumping in the Soviet Union and its satellite states with the Western Europe economies. That is madness. But in his response he says, “I used the word Europe as per its dictionary definition. I apologize for any confusion the wording might have created; as always, such confusion is the fault of the author, not the reader. I donât think, however, the statement is misleading. The basic conclusion that Europe has ceded enormous global GDP share, while the U.S. has retained close to constant GDP share, holds for any reasonable geographic definition of Europe, for any time periods beginning in the 1970s or 1980, and when using any data source that I investigated for comparing currencies.” (Emphasis mine.)
Kee-rist, Manzi. Yes, the dictionary definition of Europe you link to is “a continent in the W part of the landmass lying between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, separated from Asia by the Ural Mountains on the E and the Caucasus Mountains and the Black and Caspian seas on the SE.” But what the fuck does that geographic definition have to do with your economic “analysis”?!
Should we look forward to a piece in which you analyze the economy of “Korea”? After all, Korea is a “peninsula 600 miles long and 135 miles wide in East Asia between the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan.” Just ignore the fact that half of it is arguably the world’s most repressive, xenophobic dictatorship, wracked by famine and utter failure by almost any measure, and the other half is a fairly successful democracy that produces great barbecue and surprisingly good cars.
The point is that, if I have to go through such mental contortions just to establish the basic “definitions” and starting points of your argument, I’m not likely to find the ensuing fine points of your “analysis” very persuasive.
Fail. Epic fail. And he is desperately trying to rebunk in his response.
Kenneth Almquist
Manzi:
Who, exactly, would be invading Europe today if it weren’t for American military guarantees? In general I’m in favor of a strong America, but here Manzi seems to be channeling right-wing paranoia.
MrPinko
Deutschland ĂŒber alles.
superking
I’m not that smart, but I don’t know that Manzi is saying anything important. If we assume for the sake of argument that he has his numbers right, he still needs to draw the causal link between social democracy and the decline in relative GDP. As it’s 3:37 am, I have not taken the time to read his first piece. Sorry.
But let’s think about this: He’s talking about the percentage of world economic production that each country/region accounts for. This in a relative measure. It doesn’t mean Europe is shrinking, it just means that it isn’t growing at the same rate as some other countries.
What other countries would those be? Well, there was no NAFTA prior to 1994 and China received most favored nation status in 1980 and joined the WTO in 2000 at roughly the same time that its MFN status was made permanent. I’m not familiar with India’s trade relations, but they are part of the WTO, as is Brazil.
So, it very well may be that the U.S. occupies an important position in the world economy. We have a huge consumer economy that is fed by production in other countries. Before the expansion of free trade since the early 1980s, most of our trade would have been with Europe. Since then, manufacturers have moved to other countries where labor is cheap–China, India, Vietnam, Mexico–and those economies of those countries have grown. Their relative growth as a percentage of world output would show up as a relative decline of Europe’s economy while the U.S. as the sort of keystone would stay pretty much the same.
Now, let me emphasize that I don’t know whether this is the case or not. Just speculating and I’ve never even taken an economics class in my life.
However, if this is the case, it doesn’t have to be the fault of social democracy. We can easily imagine a world where Europe since WW2 has been comprised of 15-20 American-style laissez-faire economies that were split by political divisions and otherwise not well integrated in the way they actually have been. Even in this world, if the U.S. is operating as the keystone and those European countries are developed, i.e. they have a high standard of living, then it would be likely that manufacturers would leave them for lower labor costs regardless of the social/political principals driving their economic rules.
Just a thought.
Steeplejack
@superking:
Nicely argued. (Unlike Manzi.)
On a related question, what is your position on moles?
Little Dreamer
@Mike G:
He’s just doing it the way his mama taught him to in “homeschool”! Be nice now, idiots can’t be held accountable for lack of education.
Just kidding!
;)
Little Dreamer
@mclaren:
Actually, people in America are too busy cheerleading how good they have it, they have no idea how bad it actually is. It’s that foam finger mentality, it will never go away.
RobW
Why, that would be the global islamic caliphate. Or, as someone else put it, 200 guys with box cutters hiding in caves.
Common Sense
@Turgidson:
For that matter how is it different than forcing Georgia and Pennsylvania to do so in the 18th century– when we did the same thing? Or Hawaii in the 20th for another recent example?
Nancy Irving
My favorite remark in this discussion came from Chait:
“At this point, Manziâs figures should have been removed from his article and placed into a protective home for abused statistics.”
Svensker
@mclaren:
After we got back from a trip to France, we visited some family and my wingnut SIL told us how France is a horrible place with everyone living in poverty under Sharia law. She refused to believe me when we told her she was wrong.
Bob K
And the final takeaway is supposed to be what? Socialist economic policies suck? Who were the people that bent over backwards begging China for money to fund our phony war on terror in Afghanistan and Iraq? Let’s reject European socialism and welcome our new communist overlords with open arms.
matoko_chan
look, manzi’s whole argument is a tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Markets aren’t revolutionary, they are evolutionary.
The fail of the white christian conservative paradigm of social cohesion, aka white patriarchy, has CAUSED this country to begin EVOLVING a new paradigm.
That paradigm is social democracy.
Unless the white christian conservative party can come up with a new social cohesion paradigm, they fail.
Deregulating the markets simply wont fix the inequality gap, the education problem, or the immigration problem.
Manzi is just proposing a retread of trickle-down and that FUCKIN’ DOESN”T WORK!
All i can say is Manzi has simply gone insane.
tant pis
Shenda
The flaws in Manziâs argument are as follows:
1. He uses different date ranges for Europe and the US (sometime in the 1970âs for Europe and 1980 for the US.) This alone invalidates his conclusions.
2. Exactly which European countries he included is not clear.
3. He does not control for population. (In 1980 the EU 27 population was ~ 10% of the worlds population in 2009 it was ~ 7%. The US has held mostly steady at about 5%)
The best way to correct these errors, in my opinion, is to use the EU 27 for Europe, use the same date range (1980-2009), and use per capita GDP to correct for population changes. This results in a GDP per capita growth of 38.50% for the US and 38.28% for Europe, a difference of 0.21% in favor of the US, which is not a whole lot.
If you do not correct for population, the EU 27 percent of total world GDP declined from 36% in 1980 to 29% in 2009, while the US went from 26% to 27%. This is a 7% drop for Europe, not the 15% stated by Manzi.
Keeping this in mind, I still think Manziâs article is worth reading. He does make some good observations. Just donât trust any numbers that he cites.
Source: http://www.ers.usda.gov/Data/Macroeconomics/