Sunday, August 17th ....

I made a throw-away comment the other day about how interesting it might be for our politicians to look to Europe for inspiration, rather than the US.  It occurred to me that we rarely hear about Europe except in derogatory terms: welfare society, the old man of the world, and so on, so I got on-line and downloaded a book, Europe's Promise by Steven Hill, subtitled Why the European Way is the Best Hope in an Insecure Age.  Mr Hill is an American writer, and advocate for electoral reform in the US.

He has written a very clear and compelling account of the development of Europe following the wholesale destruction of World War 2.  European leaders at the end of the war realised that Europe needed to be re-invented, following centuries of warfare.  All the old institutions had been destroyed, leaving a clean slate on which to draw up a new vision.

It's important to realise that these were Conservative leaders like Winston Churchill, Konrad Adenauer, and Jean Monnet.  It wasn't a socialist revolution although many Americans sneer at what they have tagged 'creeping socialism'.

Churchill and the others were not interested in soviet-style communism but they were also determined not to adopt the Wall Street capitalism of USA.  They were prescient enough to realise the problems that were developing under that model.  Instead, they planned a new beast: social capitalism, where the undoubted benefits of the capitalist model provided the energy and resources for the development of a fairer society with benefits across the spectrum.  His book is 519 pages and, while it doesn't avoid talking about the inevitable problems, it demonstrates the extraordinary success in the 27 countries of the European Union and countries like Switzerland and Norway which haven't chosen to join yet.

Some of the elements which underpin the successes are:  birth to grave support from government to supplement the relatively high wages; fewer working hours and more holidays to achieve a better work/life balance; development of advanced technologies; investment in alternative energies, superior public transport; free education at all levels, a fair sharing of the nation's resources. Sure, their taxes are a little higher but the benefits are obvious.  From time to time, the ups and downs of the economy put pressure on the largesse but the benefits to the people are a much higher priority than military spending, for example and, if cuts need to be made, they are made in lower priority areas.

As I read the book, I couldn't help but be impressed by the different attitudes between Australia and Europe.  European economies work for the benefit of society; Australia seems to expect our society to work for the benefit of the economy.

I've avoided talking about the US in this post but, clearly, that is a failed society and we should be avoiding adopting any ideas in Australia which are based on that corrupt model.