By JAMES K. GLASSMAN [Commentary] – Why are taxes so high in Europe? Certainly not to maintain a strong defense but rather to pour money into a welfare state that provides lavish support to retirees, perennial students, and others who aren’t working. In other words, Europeans have chosen to have workers support non-workers in their leisure. This is a social choice to which voters are, of course, entitled, and a choice that seemed deserved and even prudent given the achievement of the economic success that Keynes had predicted back in 1930.

Paul Krugman, who would later win a Nobel Prize himself and serves as cheerleader for Euro-economics, wrote five years ago that

Americans are doing a lot of strutting these days, but a head-to-head comparison between the economies of the United States and Europe—France, in particular—shows that the big difference is in priorities, not performance. We’re talking about two highly productive societies that have made a different tradeoff. … And there’s a lot to be said for the French choice.

Well, not really. GDP per capita in the U.S., at purchasing-power parity, is 41 percent higher than in France. With their taxes and their labor regulations, the French and other Europeans have taken the leisure side of the tradeoff to an extreme.

France is not wealthy enough to retire. No nation is.

Continued at Commentary | More Chronicle & Notices.