20/10/2004 4:10:11 pm
If You Lose the Jumping Contest - Throw the Yard Stick Away. When the EU:s Lisbon Agenda was invented in 2000, the proud aim of its reforms was to close the GDP gap with the US by 2010. By then, US GDP per person was about 50 % ahead, now it is farther ahead and the gap is still widening. Now, this is what European policy makers agreed on at a seminar in Brussels: "No more comparisons with the US." Thus, they seem unable to do the economic reforms in Europe necessary in order to increase growth and prosperity. So the comparison with the US gets ever more embarassing and they scrap it. If you don?t look, it doesnt?t exist. It is like losing a jumping contest largely and throwing away the stick that you do the measuring with as the solution. Where is the Europe where capitalism once started, where is the spirit that created the industrial society, where is the Europe of the single market?