[Nono]

The frequent and mutual incomprehension between Europeans and North Americans is something that has interested me for a long time. I was born and raised in North America in an ultra-Anglo family that had already been there for a couple of generations. So Europe was in lots of ways a strange place when I came here all those years ago. Now it’s home and when I go back it’s North America that seems strange – while strangely familiar.

This period of post-US-election stagnation seems like a good time for this discussion. The triumphant and triumphalist American right wing know perfectly well that about half the country voted against them and that about the entire rest of the world hoped they’d lose. They’re pretty scathing about the rest of the world, aren’t they? And the rest of the world is shaking its collective head and trying to understand how this can happen.

A couple of weeks ago Jeremy Rifkin gave Swiss TV an hour-long interview about his new book The European Dream. I took some notes and have written them up because I was struck by the way Rifkin elucidates something that many millions of people on both sides of the Atlantic are wondering about. Here then is the gist. (It’s only fair to point that his voice went unheard throughout the entire interview, which he conducted with the aid of an interpreter. So this is not only a drastic summary but a translation as well – i.e. not Rifkin’s actual words. Bold print always looks a bit loud so I’ll put it into quotes, though strictly speaking it ain’t.)

Until the 60s-70s the American Dream more or less functioned as advertised: if you worked hard you had a good chance of making it and giving your children things you didn’t have. Today the US is 24th among industrialized countries in terms of gap between rich and poor. (In this respect, things are worse only in Mexico and Russia.) A third of Americans now say they don’t believe in the American Dream. There is a myth, unfortunately accepted by many Europeans, that the US is a dynamic economic colossus, whereas Europe is a sclerotic mess on the skids. But in Europe an extraordinary experiment is underway: 455 million people in 25 countries ranging from the Irish Sea to the Russian border building an economic and political union. Throughout history all other such constructs – including the US itself – were founded on a basis of exploitation and violence. After a thousand years of conflict culminating in two world wars, however, the Europeans stood back and said “Things can’t go on this way – we have to find a way to work together.” This is something completely new, and we don’t even know exactly what it is. The EU isn’t a nation state, it’s more of a network intended to bring the international into harmony with the local. Americans think they live in the world’s greatest country. Any mistakes belong to the past – they’re optimistic. But Europeans suffer from an inferiority complex. They only ever talk about Europe’s failures. The reality, however, is that the EU – not the US – is today the world’s biggest export market and has the largest home market. Over 20% more of the world’s top companies are European than American. Fourteen of the 20 leading banks are European. Europe leads in a whole range of major industries, from civil aviation to construction to food. Today companies in Germany (the most powerful economy force in the EU) view themselves as European, not simply German – just as companies in California (the most powerful economy in the US) view themselves as American, not just Californian. The Germans are now subject to pan-European regulations, just as the Californians are to American ones. Some Europeans say “Wait a minute – Europe is sclerotic, suffers high unemployment, etc. We should look to the US to see how to generate economic growth. The US has carried out radical reforms and largely dismantled the welfare state, lowered taxes and spurred capital flows, and in so doing has created a lean, competitive economy. What a power house!” But this ignores what has made the US economy strong over the past dozen years. What lifted it out of the 1989-92 recession? Flooding the country with credit cards, that’s what. People began purchasing like crazy on credit. The average American family’s saving rate has dropped in the past dozen years from 8% to less than 2%. Today, more Americans are affected by bankruptcy than by divorce, heart attacks or … school diplomas. Does that sound like a sturdy economy? It’s built completely on debt. The proof? The euro. In 1999 the Americans were snickering and saying that in six months time it’d be used as toilet paper. How is it that the euro has remained strong while the dollar has done nothing but sink? The answer is that investors no longer trust the dollar, seeing as how the US public is so deeply in debt and the US government has cut taxes while printing money to increase spending, thus sinking deep into debt itself. And has this somehow created jobs? Even in the glorious 90s, the effective unemployment rate in the US was 9% -- about the same as in Europe. How is that? Well, millions of Americans dropped out of the labour market and thus out of the statistics. Some found work again, yes, but many for only a couple of hours a week. They count as employed. We also stuck about two million people into prison: some 2% of the male work force. The fact is that over the past four years the US has lost, in net terms, 1.6 million jobs. When people say Europe should listen to the Americans because they know how to crank up the economy and create jobs, I tell them where such policies lead: enormous debt for your children, but no jobs for them. There is a lot of talk about Eurosclerosis and a dysfunctional labour market there. But Europe has a Golden Goose: integration. What it needs is to take full advantage of its size, with: · A single transport grid. · A single energy-supply system. · A single communication system. · A single body of legislation regulating the economy and commerce. · A single language – English – for the running of that economy. If you can manage that, you’ll be much better prepared for success in the emerging, technology-driven, network economy and you’ll be able to consolidate your achievements in the realm of collective welfare. And Europe should be careful not to sacrifice those achievements: · Education – America may, currently, have the best universities in the world, but the European public school system is way ahead, with far better results in mathematics and science. · Health care – You live a full year longer than we do on average. You have more doctors per head of population. You have a lower infant-mortality rate (the US has only the 27th best rate in the world owing to higher poverty). · Leisure – We have two weeks of paid holiday per year, you have four, and more statutory holidays. So you have more time to enjoy life than we do. · Murders – We have four times as many as you. · Prisoners – Twenty-five per cent of the world’s prisoners are in the US. Yes, maybe we’re richer than you are – for the moment. But you have a higher quality of life. My advice: Don’t throw it all away when, through integration, you can consolidate it. The American Dream and the European Dream are fundamentally different. Freedom lies at the centre of both. But when an American says the word “freedom”, he means something quite different from what a European means when he says the same word. The American (this is how his parents have raised him to think) means autonomy, mobility and self-reliance: not to be dependent on any broader community and not to feel responsible for it either. For Europeans (that’s how they’ve been raised to think) freedom means relations with and access to the wider community that give your life meaning. These differences are based on respective history. The founders of the American nation arrived from Europe 2-300 years ago at the end of the Reformation and the beginning of the Enlightenment. They brought both these with them; and both have remained basically static in America since. Americans are sons of Europe but with the basic outlook that Europeans had 200 years ago. If the great reformers Jean Calvin or Martin Luther were to come back to Earth today, they would certainly feel more at home in the American heartland than they would in Europe. René Descartes, John Locke and Adam Smith – the architects of the Enlightenment – would likewise feel more at home in America. This also helps explain US militarism: since Reformation Protestantism has remained frozen in time, the idea that evil forces lurk, in perfectly concrete terms, is a strong one in America, as is the notion that there’s no negotiating with them. Contrast this with the European idea of dialogue and cooperation. The Reformation and the Enlightenment were very different things. The former held that you suffer for Christ in this world and you are then redeemed in the next. The latter said: Strive for happiness in this world by accumulating material wealth. So what united these two currents of thought, the one theological and the other philosphical? The individual stood at the centre of both, that’s what. Martin Luther and especially Jean Calvin said: You face God alone -- no ecclesiastical authority comes between you and Him. John Locke said: You are alone in nature. Adam Smith said: You are alone in the marketplace. For the archetypal American frontiersman, this was reality: you and the horizon. He had no social network. So there he was alone with God and solely responsible for his material well-being to boot. No wonder that religion is taken a lot more literally in the States, the most Protestant holy-rolling country in the industrialized world. Having a much more direct, individual relationship with God, Americans are more optimistic and thus more willing to take risks. In Europe on the other hand, the ideal of the individual never really made it. Up to the 18th century society was close-knit: people lived in or around already crowded, walled cities, with a paternalistic Catholic church and a basically feudal-aristocratic system that tempered any idea of individualism. By the time the 20th century rolled around, the idea of income redistribution was already gaining ground, i.e. you might well find yourself alone in the marketplace, but any wealth gained there should also be used for the general good. The American Dream is to amass personal wealth. The Europeans tell us “You’re only interested in money!”. But that isn’t true. Money is a means to ensure freedom. In the States we’re taught from day one to make sure we have enough, because neither state nor society is going to help us if we don’t. Traditonally any boy in America – Ford, Rockefeller, Gates – could become a millionaire. But in Europe, with its feudal history and class-ridden society, it was hard to rise. So people found an alternative: improving the quality of life in society as a whole. America is growth-crazy. No problem: pollute and move on. But Europe is much more into sustainable development, because its geographic limits were reached long ago. Even before the 18th century, Europe was broken down into tiny goegraphical units, with town and land closely linked. People were obliged to learn the value of conservation. Planning came naturally. To conclude, the American Dream says that the individual can successfully shape his own life. The European Dream is collectivist and based on an ideal of the general quality of that life: · There should be no great gap between rich and poor. · Cultural diversity (in this vast potpourri of cultures) should be respected; each has a contribution to make. · Sustainable development and respect for our fellow creatures. · Quality of life for the entire community. · Social and human rights. · World peace. That is the European Dream. And you didn’t even know you had one; you thought only the Americans had a dream. This is a dream, of course, a hope for the future, and like the American one it will never be fully realized. Big deal. The European Dream is the world’s first global, transnational dream. Just consider things like the SARS epidemic, a Wall Street scandal, a worldwide computer virus, and you realize that no man is an island, that the dream of the totally self-reliant individual simply does not work any more. We’re interdependent now. The European Dream is the way forward, not the American Dream.