Steyn on Germany

Folks, if you ain't readin' Mark Steyn, you ain't readin'.

In his Telegraph column, Steyn looks at the recent elections in Germany, and what the results might mean.

Steyn highlights the problems Germany is facing:

Germany is dying, demographically and economically. Pick any of the usual indicators of a healthy advanced industrial democracy: Unemployment? The highest for 70 years. House prices? Down. New car registration? Nearly 15 per cent lower than in 1999. General nuttiness? A third of Germans under 30 think the United States government was responsible for the terrorist attacks of September 11.

While the unemployment, real estate and car sales may be reversible, that last number suggests the German electorate isn't necessarily the group you'd want to pitch a rational argument to.

Steyn is not hopeful that Germany will change for the better anytime soon:

According to recent polls, 70 per cent of Germans want no further cuts in the welfare state and prefer increasing taxation on the very rich. In April, only 45 per cent of Germans agreed that competition is good for economic growth and employment.

In other words, things are going to have to get a lot worse before German voters will seriously consider radical change.

Lately Europeans have used Hurricane Katrina to say socialism is the better way, that capitalism just leaves a bunch of greedy savages fighting each other for available resources. Yet, Steyn correctly points out that those living under these European socialist systems are exceedingly greedy themselves:

Guardian and Independent types have had great sport with America over the last couple of weeks, gleefully citing the wreckage of New Orleans as a savage indictment of the "selfishness" of capitalism.

The argument they make is usually a moral one - that there's something better and more compassionate about us all sharing the burden as a community. But the election results in Germany and elsewhere suggest that, in fact, nothing makes a citizen more selfish than lavish welfare and that once he's enjoying the fruits thereof he couldn't give a hoot about the broader societal interest. "Social democracy" turns out to be explicitly anti-social.

And I haven't even mentioned the story whose headline was "Frenchman lived with dead mother to keep pension."

Just read him. I'm going to give up blogging.