The Obama administration is getting into the global-warming beads and kaftan just as everyone else is beginning to toss ‘em into the recycling bin. Same with government automobiles: Been there, drove that — from Eastern Europe to Northern Ireland.
There’s something weirdly parochial about Obama, the supposed “citizen of the world.” A recent piece of mine about “the Europeanization of America” prompted Randall Hoven of
The American Thinker to respond that this was unfair . . . to Europeans. He has a point. While the U.S. is going full throttle for Scandinavia-a-go-go, the Continentals have begun to discern to the limits of Europeanization. In 2007, government spending in Europe averaged 46.2 percent of GDP; in America it was 37.4 percent, of which 20 percent was federal. A mere two years later, federal spending is up to 28.5 percent, so, even if state and local spending stand still, we’re at 46 percent: the European average. But, as Randall Hoven points out, the real story is that we’re at 46 percent and climbing, the Continentals are at 46 percent and heading down. In 1993, government spending averaged 52.2 percent in Europe, and 70.9 percent in Sweden. The Swedes have reduced government spending (as a fraction of GDP) by almost a third in the last 15 years. Their corporate tax rates are lower than ours. And that’s before Obama’s raised them. Last week, the donut chain Tim Hortons, which operates on both sides of the border but is incorporated in the state of Delaware, announced that it was reorganizing itself as a Canadian corporation to take advantage of Canadian tax rates.
“To take advantage of Canadian tax rates”? What kind of cockamamie phrase is that? And who’d have thought any columnist south of the border would ever have cause to type it?
The Europeans have figured out you can be too European for your own good, and are trying to re-acquaint themselves with the real world. But not Obama. Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead! Male unemployment has hit ten percent? The stimulus is a bust? It’s stimulating nothing but non-jobs like Executive Stimulus Coordinator for Community Organization Stimulus Assistance Programs? Hey, let’s spend even more, even faster, even less stimulatingly!
President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, and their chums are spending at a rate that threatens American stability. And, except for the scale and the dollar figure, it’s all been tried before, and it’s all failed before. There’s nothing cool about Obama. He’s a non-stop square dance, swinging us around till we’re dozy and he’s got all the dough. Happy Independence Day.
— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is author of America Alone. © 2009 Mark Steyn< Back 1 2 
