Europe’s Policy of Failure

There’s been a lot of hype about the latest issue of Foreign Policy Magazine. The cover story is called ‘A World Without Islam‘. But buried in that issue is a far more interesting story on European economic education.The article is a survey of European high-school economics textbooks. If you are from Canada or the states, you probably remember how stale our textbooks were – with chapters on macroeconomics, chapters on the history of corporations, and chapters on home spending. Boring but useful. The Buckley’s mixture of high school education.

In Europe, economics is far more colourful. Granted that colour is red. Here are a couple quotes from European economic textbooks:

Economic growth imposes a hectic form of life, producing overwork, stress, nervous depression, cardiovascular disease and, according to some, even the development of cancer

The past 20 years have “doubled wealth, doubled unemployment, poverty, and exclusion, whose ill effects constitute the background for a profound social malaise,” the text continues. Because the 21st century begins with “an awareness of the limits to growth and the risks posed to humanity [by economic growth],” any future prosperity “depends on the regulation of capitalism on a planetary scale.”

The article explains that these textbooks are imbuing students with anti-capitalism, and these beliefs are eventually having an impact on public policy and on economic success. When it comes to policy, the relationship is straightforward. If you’re taught that capitalism causes cancer, then you won’t be voting for the party that wants freer markets.

I was mildly surprised at how a biased economics education effects economic success, or rather affects economic failure:

Edmund Phelps, a Columbia University economist and Nobel laureate, contends that attitudes toward markets, work, and risk-taking are significantly more powerful in explaining the variation in countries’ actual economic performance than the traditional factors upon which economists focus, including social spending, tax rates, and labor-market regulation. The connection between capitalism and culture, once famously described by Max Weber, also helps explain continental Europe’s poor record in entrepreneurship and innovation. A study by the Massachusetts-based Monitor Group, the Entrepreneurship Benchmarking Index, looks at nine countries and finds a powerful correlation between attitudes about economics and actual corporate performance. The researchers find that attitudes explain 40 percent of the variation in start-up and company growth rates—by far the strongest correlation of any of the 31 indicators they tested.

You can read the rest of the article on-line.

On a COMPLETELY unrelated matter, here’s the latest draft IRP for British Columbia’s “Social Justice 12″ curriculum.

An IRP (Integrated Resource Packages) is a component of the provincially mandated school curriculum. Browse through it and you can witness the hobbling of my province. Why? Well, students will learn important life skills like how to:

identify a range of contributing factors to social injustice (e.g., fear, greed, poverty, alienation, apathy, conformity, ecological destruction, unequal distribution of or access to resources, limits on education, power imbalance, misuse of power and authority, ideology of competition, feelings of entitlement, differing belief systems)

[emphasis mine]

Read the rest of that here. Scroll down to ‘Social Studies’ and click on ‘Social Justice 12′.

Belgium a Lesson for Liberals

According to the latest issue of the Economist, Belgium has served it’s purpose. Judging from how the Brussels government reacted to anti-Islamization protesters earlier this week, I’m inclined to agree.

The breakup of Belgium is being discussed right now because Belgium is in its third month without a government. Time Magazine explains why this has happened:

Yves Leterme, the Flemish Christian Democrat whose party did best in the June 10 parliamentary elections, was expected to build a coalition with the francophone Christian Democrats, as well as the two liberal parties. But that planned ‘Orange-Blue’ coalition collapsed in acrimony after Leterme insisted on a government platform that would wrest more power from the already weak central government and hand it over the increasingly powerful regions. They already control transport, housing, agriculture and education, but Leterme — playing to his base among prosperous Flemings who resent paying taxes to subsidize lagging Wallonia — sought to add taxation, social security, economic policy, immigration and nationality. The Francophones balked, Leterme stepped back from efforts to form government, and Belgian politics are in a curious state of suspension as the country struggles to find an alternative government coalition.

Money from Dutch-speaking Flanders is being sent in increasing amounts to French-speaking Wallonia and the Dutch want to change this. Why? Because the politics of ‘need’ don’t work, need begets need. This from a Flemish paper:

The reality is that the French-speaking people take whatever they can and make more and more demands. It will never be enough. One must be not hostile, but also not naive. [source]

The Flemish aren’t alone in this situation – many regions around the world are being milked by their less prosperous cousins. But the naivete that sustains this exploitation is apparently becoming harder to maintain.

From Slovenia’s “Bookkeepers” revolution in 1991 to the victories of Italy’s Northern League, and Catalonia’s “Sovereignty” , the Atlases of the world are shrugging off their dependents. Are there any lessons for Canada in this? Only a Liberal could deny that there are – but then again, only a Liberal needs to learn these lessons.

Brussels Civics Lesson

This is from the Brussels city council’s website on “Taking Part in Public Life“:

All too often, you hear people complaining that this is wrong and that is wrong, and that ‘they’ are not doing the things they should for us. ‘They’ are the politicians, heads of associations, all those who should be working for us…

So in many cases, instead of ‘moaning’, why not take the time to act, to do something about the things we’re not happy with: why shouldn’t we too take part in public life?

That’s a rhetorical question in Europe’s Muslim-controlled capital. To commemorate September 11th, people from around Europe had planned to do something about the things they weren’t happy with – in this case, it was to demonstrate against the Islamization of Europe. Naturally, their demonstration was banned by Brussels’ government and the riot police were sent out to meet the demonstrators:

From the Brussels Journal:

Here are some video images. The grey-haired man whom we see being attacked by the police first is Luk Van Nieuwenhuysen, the Vice-President of the Flemish Parliament. Shortly afterwards we see the police maltreating Frank Vanhecke, a member of the European Parliament and the party leader of the Vlaams Belang. We see how he is handcuffed and pushed into a police bus. Afterwards we also see the police “taking care” of Filip Dewinter, the VB group leader in the Flemish Parliament. We see how his arm gets caught between the closing doors of the bus. An Italian MEP and a French MEP were also arrested. The demonstrators were kept in cells for seven hours and released this evening.

Read the rest…

[UPDATED:]