Europe's social model

Instapundit has a link to a great article in The Washington Times regarding Tony Blair's comments about "Europe's social model" and how it is failing to live up to the economic standards set by the United States. Some highlights:

The European social model is an elusive concept, but probably best described by U.S. author Jeremy Rifkin in his best-selling book "European Dream."
"The American dream puts an emphasis on economic growth, personal wealth and independence," he writes. "The new European dream focuses more on sustainable development, quality of life and interdependence." Americans, says Rifkin, live to work, whereas Europeans -- with their six-week vacations and 35-hour working weeks -- work to live. Another fundamental difference is welfare provision. Most Europeans accept high taxes and lower growth as a price to pay for cradle-to-grave social security support, free healthcare and education, subsidized public transport and strict environmental standards, whereas Americans tend to favor low taxes over high government spending.
Few EU decision-makers want to abandon a social model that has become almost synonymous with the European way of life, but some are beginning to question whether it is sustainable given the club's dwindling workforce, ageing population and sluggish growth rates. Modernizers like Blair also wonder how Europe can compete against emerging economic giants like China and India, not to mention the United States, with high taxes, restrictive labor laws and tightly-regulated markets.
"Some have suggested I want to abandon Europe's social model," Blair told the European Parliament last month. "But tell me: what type of social model is it that has 20 million unemployed in Europe, productivity rates falling behind those of the United States; that is allowing more science graduates to be produced by India than by Europe; and that, on any relative index of a modern economy -- skills, R&D, patents, IT -- is going down not up."

Read the whole thing. It's worth it.