Bell replies
Bell, Daniel
Peter Glotz's reply reminds me of the old witz: the young boy is asked, "Hans, where is your right ear?" "Right ear?" He raises his left hand, reaches over his head, and touches his right ear....
...The problem is they are not...
...But as the Economist concludes: "As even prosperous cities like Hamburg, Rotterdam and Paris can testify, the European model has proved insecure and unsustainable...
...Examples of such places can be found across Europe...
...But how, given the heavy demographic weights that Europe, especially Germany, faces with rising aged populations...
...And this was the humane response...
...The "solution" is to create more jobs, rather than helping people get by without them or in sharing the "misery...
...Peter Glotz responds that "in the next ten years the social welfare systems . . . have to be intelligently restructured...
...the welfare state, that most generous of European inventions, would help them to help themselves...
...I am not defending a brutal capitalist system, and we are both appearing in Dissent, a socialist magazine that is now willing to confront questions that socialists tended to ignore in the past...
...Yet as the Economist comments: "Unfortunately, job-creation is something for which Europe seems to have lost the knack...
...I made two points: (1) that the welfare state is becoming a difficult burden for most European economies to bear, largely because of the pressure of the trade unions...
...The premise of the welfare state was that the losers would be looked after...
...The debate on poverty in Europe today revolves around solutions such as worksharing, enhanced social benefits, and the like...
...One can afford "restructuring" with economic growth...
...So, with the reply...
...I quote it to document some of the issues raised in my original article: When America was discerning the early outlines of its underclass in the 1970s, Europe had no poverty debate to speak of...
...Europe needs wisely conceived immigration laws...
...More than 40% of the 17 million unemployed in the European Union have been out of work at least a year...
...So, too, with my essay...
...A third of the industrial jobs had disappeared in the past 15 years...
...The disappearance of some kinds of jobs would not be an issue if new jobs were springing up to absorb those affected...
...The first part is an unworthy to quoque...
...452 • DISSENT...
...Europe needs a new wave of industrial and economic expansion...
...But how...
...Pangloss, and his old associate, Professor John Kenneth Galbraith, have not yet raised their hands—either right or left...
...In Europe . . . there are millions in danger of slipping beyond the point of no return...
...residents of Griesheim . . . view their neighborhood as a ghetto—the Bronx in Frankfurt...
...POSTSCRIPT: Since writing my reply, I have read the somewhat frightening report "Europe and the Underclass" in the Economist of July 30, 1994...
...Peter Glotz gives the answers, and I quote each successive topic sentence: Europe must complete the process of unification...
...and (2) more important, that Europe (especially Germany, as the economic leader) is failing to make the necessary transitions to postindustrial sectors and is still concentrated (especially in its export industries) in the older industrial sectors...
...Unemployment was 40% higher than the national average...
...There were some poor people in Europe's cities, certainly, but it was assumed they would not stay that way for very long...
...As to the first, I cited the observation of the Italian left-wing economist Luigi Spaventa, then minister of the budget in the caretaker government, that Italy can no longer afford the welfare benefits being paid out, and that Germany is now lengthening the retirement age, to come into effect years from now...
...Many Frankfurters will name Gallusviertel and Gutlwuviertel as areas to avoid...
...Public order can easily become fragile...
...But these are illusory...
...a third have never worked at all...
...Two decades on, that confidence seems tragically misplaced...
...But I am afraid that Dr...
...Hamburg, Europe's richest city measured by income per head, had by 1990 Germany's highest proportion of millionaires—and its highest proportion of people on social welfare...
Vol. 41 • September 1994 • No. 4
