EDITORIAL: Cracks in the welfare state
Even Europeans are starting to recognize limits
Those urging America to adopt more collectivist, government-run approaches usually fall back on some reference to the European model. "We're the only major industrialized nation that doesn't have ..." state-run medicine, whatever.
But there are signs that clouds are gathering over yet another bevy of collectivist utopias. Civitas, a nonpartisan British think tank, recently scolded the British National Health Service for "putting the patient last." Civitas reports the government-run system's monolithic nature, lack of competition, burdensome regulation and wasteful redundancy lead the NHS to serve the bureaucrat, not the patient.
To our north, in Canada? "We all agree that the system is imploding," said Dr. Anne Doig, incoming president of the Canadian Medical Association, in an Aug. 14 interview with The Canadian Press. The Canadian model has some "very good things," Dr. Doig warns, but Canadians "have to understand that the system that we have right now -- if it keeps on going without change -- is not sustainable."
Many Europeans seem to be getting the message, as replacing "greedy" free-market competition with "beneficent" government-run monopolies has led to increasing economic stagnation.
In Germany, which will hold national elections Sept. 27, the pro-labor Social Democrats are headed to their worst showing in at least a generation, paving the way for the easy re-election of centrist Chancellor Angela Merkel, reports The Washington Post.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the Social Democrats' candidate for chancellor and Ms. Merkel's chief rival, unveiled a plan last month that he promised would create 4 million jobs and bring "full employment" to the country by 2020. But surveys found that only one in seven Germans -- who have heard it all before -- found the proposal believable. Pundits mocked it as a modern-day version of the Five-Year Plans that never worked in communist East Germany.
"The main problem is that people think the Social Democrats have no economic competence," says Manfred Guellner, the chief pollster for Forsa, a leading German survey firm. "They have this impression that they cannot rule, cannot govern."
The Social Democrats are the junior partner in an unwieldy coalition government led by Ms. Merkel's Christian Democrats. Ms. Merkel is hoping to ditch the Social Democrats and form a new government with the Free Democrats, a smaller party with a libertarian bent that favors pro-business policies.
A Forsa poll released Wednesday showed that 57 percent favored Ms. Merkel for chancellor, compared with 18 percent for Mr. Steinmeier.
The story is similar for left-wing parties across Europe. In France, "The Socialist Party is in tatters and poses little threat to President Nicolas Sarkozy," The Post reports. In Italy, "The weakness of the leftist opposition has helped Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a billionaire, weather a series of personal scandals. In Britain, voters are poised to toss out the Labor Party, which has ruled since 1993."
Social Democrats in Europe have warned for years of the dangers of untamed markets and unchecked globalization. Markets certainly do misallocate resources, on occasion, creating winners and losers. The question is whether heavy-handed government interventions make the inevitable sorting out go any better, or instead merely stretch out the necessary corrections as powerful bureaucrats intercede to save their friends from the otherwise inevitable results of their own miscalculations.
Are Europeans ready to abandon the welfare state? Not yet. But it certainly seems to have dawned on them that such stultifying "compassion" can go too far.
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