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The Birth of a New Kind of Dream
We love to vacation there. But, when we think of institutional Europe, what
comes to mind is an old and creaky set of governing institutions riding precariously
astride a moribund economy plagued by anti-market bias, inflexible labor policies,
bloated welfare bureaucracies, and an aging and pampered population. American policy
leaders and economists call it Eurosclerosis.
While many Americans dismiss Europe as outdated and out of touch, the reality,
on the ground, in the neighborhoods and communities, in corporate boardrooms, and in
the corridors of power, suggests a far different state of affairs. If the American way of
life is over-hyped, Europe’s cache has been woefully undervalued and undersold. The
long and short of it is America is unaware of and unprepared for the vast changes that are
quickly transforming Europe from a collection of disparate, and in the past, warring
nations, to a United States of Europe.
First, let’s begin with some facts. Europe, with its 455 million consumers, is now
the largest internal market in the world. It’s also the largest exporting power. And the
Euro is now stronger than the dollar—a reality few American economists would have
thought conceivable just four years ago.
Why then are so few Americans paying attention to the dramatic changes taking
place in Europe as it moves ever closer to a political and economic union? To a great
extent, the problem is perceptual in nature. We Americans, and most Europeans, still
compare individual European nations to the United States when it comes to relative
political and economic power.
But such comparisons make less and less sense.
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European states are becoming as much a part of the European Union as American states
are part of the United States. This fundamentally changes the way we make comparisons.
For example, rather than thinking of Germany in comparison to the U.S., we
should think of it in comparison to California—Germany being the largest state in the
European economy and California the largest state in the U.S. economy. When we begin
to shift the way we make comparisons, everything suddenly changes and we start to grasp
the enormity of what’s unfolding and the potential consequences for America.
Germany’s GDP of $1,866 billion (U.S. dollars) exceeds California’s $1,344 billion
GDP. The U.K., the European Union’s second largest state, with a GDP of $1.4 trillion,
is nearly twice as large as our second largest state, New York, with a GDP of $799
billion. France is nearly 50 percent larger than our third most powerful state economy,
Texas. Italy is more than twice as big as our fourth most powerful state economy,
Florida. Spain edges out our fifth biggest state, Illinois.
Although it may be painful for Germany, the UK, France, Italy, and Spain to have
their economies compared to California, New York, Texas, Florida, and Illinois, this is
the new frame of reference that’s emerging as European nations metamorphose into a
larger transnational political space with a single economy. The EU is, indeed, a new
superpower that rivals the economic power of the United States on the world stage.
In many of the world’s leading industries, it is European transnational companies
that dominate business and trade. European financial institutions are the world’s bankers.
Fourteen of the twenty largest commercial banks in the world today are European,
including three of the top four, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, and BNP Paribas. In the
chemical industry, engineering and construction industry, aerospace industry, food and
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consumer products industry, the drugstore retail trade, and the insurance industry, to
name just a few fields, European companies outperform their American counterparts.
Sixty-one of the 140 biggest companies on the Global Fortune 500 rankings are
European, while only 50 are U.S. companies.
All of this is not to suggest that European companies have suddenly leaped way
ahead of their American competitors. In some industries, European businesses are clearly
the market leaders, while in others, the U.S. companies still dominate. Rather, the
message is that European-based global companies are able to match their American
counterparts more often than not.
Much of the European Union’s potential depends on its ability to create a
streamlined and seamless internal trading market and commercial arena. The EU is in the
early stages of assembling a continental wide transportation network, an integrated
electricity and energy network, a common communication grid, a single financial
services market, and a unified regulatory framework for conducting business.
The
European Union has established what it calls Trans European Networks (TENS) covering
the transport, energy, and telecommunications sectors, with the goal of connecting all of
Europe under a single state-of-the-art high-tech grid. The price tag for uniting Europe is
expected to reach upwards of $500 billion and will be financed by both government and
the private sector.
Many difficulties remain in creating a cohesive internal market across Europe,
including integrating the ten new Central, Eastern, and Southern European member states
whose economies lag far behind the wealthier Western and Northern members. Still, the
positive accomplishments far outnumber the remaining obstacles. Equally important,
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with English increasingly becoming the lingua franca of Europe—it’s already the
language used in many university and graduate school courses, especially in the business
and science curriculums—Europeans will be able to exchange their labor, goods and
services with an ease approaching that of the internal U.S. market by the year 2020.
Americans are so used to thinking of our country as the most successful on earth,
they might be surprised to learn that when it comes to the quality of life, its no longer the
case. For example, in the European Union, there are approximately 322 physicians per
100,00 people, whereas in the United State there are only 279 physicians per 100,000
people. The United States ranks 26th among the industrial nations in infant mortality,
well below the EU average. The average life span in the 15 most developed E.U.
countries is now 78.2 years compared to 76.9 years in the United States.
Children in 12 European nations now rank higher in mathematics literacy than
their American peers, and in 8 European countries children outscore Americans in
scientific literacy.
When it comes to wealth distribution—a crucial measure of a
country’s ability to deliver on the promise of prosperity—the United States ranks 24th
among the industrial nations. All 18 of the most developed European countries have less
income inequality between rich and poor. There are now more poor people living in
America than in the sixteen European nations for which data is available.
America is also a more dangerous place to live. The U.S. homicide rate is four
times higher than the European Union’s. Even more disturbing, the rates of childhood
homicides, suicides, and firearms-related deaths in the United States exceed those of the
other 25 wealthiest nations, including the 14 wealthiest European countries. Although
the United States is only 4 percent of the world’s population, it now contains one-quarter
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of the world’s entire prison population.
While the EU member states average 87
prisoners per 100,000 people, the U.S. averages an incredible 685 prisoners per 100,000
people.
Europeans often remark that Americans “live to work” while they “work to live.”
The average paid vacation time in Europe is now six weeks a year.
By contrast,
Americans, on the average, receive only two weeks. Most Americans would also be
shocked to learn that the average commute to work in Europe is less than 19 minutes.
When one considers what makes a people great and what constitutes a better way of life,
Europe is beginning to surpass America.
Europe’s rebirth is propelled by a new European Dream that, in many respects,
contrasts sharply with the older American Dream. Nowhere is that more so than when it
comes to the question of defining the meaning of personal freedom. For Americans,
freedom has long been associated with autonomy. If one is autonomous, he or she is not
dependent on others or vulnerable to circumstances beyond his or her control. To be
autonomous one needs to be propertied.
The more wealth one amasses, the more
independent one is in the world. One is free by becoming self-reliant and an island onto
oneself. With wealth comes exclusivity and with exclusivity comes security.
For Europeans, however, freedom is not found in autonomy but in embeddedness.
To be free is to have access to many interdependent relationships.
The more
communities one can access, the more options one has for living a full and meaningful
life. It’s inclusivity that brings security—belonging, not belongings.
The American Dream puts an emphasis on economic growth, personal wealth,
and independence. The new European Dream focuses more on sustainable development,
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quality of life, and interdependence. The American Dream pays homage to the work
ethic.
The European Dream is more attuned to leisure. The American Dream is
inseparable from the country’s religious heritage and deep spiritual faith. The European
Dream is secular to the core.
The American Dream depends on assimilation: We
associate success with shedding our former ethnic ties and becoming free agents in the
great American melting pot. The European Dream, by contrast, is based on preserving
one’s cultural identity and living in a multi-cultural world. The American Dream is
wedded to love of country and patriotism. The European Dream is more cosmopolitan
and less territorial. Americans are more willing to employ military force to protect what
we perceive to be our vital self-interests. Europeans are more reluctant to use military
force and instead favor diplomacy, economic assistance, and aid to avert conflict and
peacekeeping operations to maintain order.
That isn’t to say that Europe has suddenly become a utopia. For all of its talk
about preserving cultural identity, Europeans have become increasingly hostile toward
newly arrived immigrants and asylum seekers. Ethnic strife and religious intolerance
continue to flare up in various pockets across Europe. Anti-Semitism is on the rise again
as is discrimination against Muslims and other religious minorities. While Europe’s
people and countries berate American military hegemony and what they regard as a
trigger-happy foreign policy, they are more than willing, on occasion, to let the U.S.
armed forces safeguard European security interests. Meanwhile, both supporters and
critics say that the European Union’s governing machinery, based in Brussels, is a maze
of bureaucratic red tape. Its officials are often accused of being aloof and unresponsive
to the needs of the European citizens they supposedly serve.
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The point, however, is not whether the Europeans are living up to their dream.
We Americans have never fully lived up to our dream. Rather, what’s important is that
Europe has articulated a new vision for the future that differs from our own in
fundamental ways. These basic differences are crucial to understanding the dynamic that
has begun to unfold between the 21st Century’s two great superpowers.
Two hundred years ago, America’s founders created a new dream for humanity
that transformed the world. Today, a new generation of Europeans is creating a radical
new dream—one they believe is better suited to meet the challenges of an increasingly
interconnected and globalizing world in the 21st century. Perhaps our friends in Europe
have something to teach us.
This essay was adapted from Jeremy Rifkin’s new book The European Dream: How
Europe’s Vision of the Future is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream
(Tarcher/Penguin, 2004)
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