Whether attributable to masochism, restlessness or simple intellectual laziness, it is fashionable in liberal circles to advocate a more European model for America. 

According to these self-appointed arbiters of cultural and moral correctness, the United States would be better off to emulate the supposedly more sophisticated, prosperous and happy Europeans. 

In what may come as a surprise to many Americans, however, the hard facts clearly show otherwise. 

As is usually the case with leftist thought, the straightforward realities refute their worldview.  Not only are Americans substantially wealthier than our European counterparts, but we’re markedly happier as well. 

Here are the facts:  Western Europe is only as wealthy as the United States was in 1989, and they will not achieve our 2008 level of wealth until 2024. 

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), whose numbers can be examined at webnet.oecd.org/wbos/, per capita gross domestic product (GDP) within the European Union of Fifteen stood at $27,897 in constant U.S. dollars in 2007.  Incredibly, that’s below where the United States stood in 1989, when its per capita GDP was $27,997. 

Probing more deeply into the comparisons, Germany’s per capita GDP stood at $28,145 in 2008, which America reached in 1990.  France’s most recent per capita GDP level was $27,325, which finally caught up to America’s 1988 level, and the supposedly utopian Swedes reached $32,289 in GDP per capita in 2008, which the U.S. reached ten years earlier in 1998. 

But this reality isn’t just limited to GDP wealth and productivity data. 

For example, European unemployment rates during the 1990s consistently hovered approximately 50% above American unemployment rates.  And as economists Arthur Laffer, Stephen Moore and Peter Tanous report in their wonderful new book The End of Prosperity , economic growth rates of E.U. nations between 2001 and 2006 were only half that of the United States.  The authors further point out that the French economy grew by only 1.3% between 1980 and 2000, and Germany grew by only 1.5% during the 1990s. 

The sad fact for Europeans is that the very programs they’ve implemented in order to create a more socialistic society – capitulation to powerful labor unions, higher taxes, more bureaucratic regulation of industries, limitations on employers’ ability to hire and fire, unsustainable welfare benefits, etc. – have had the opposite effect.  Because of those policies, Europe has suffered from long-term chronic unemployment, slower growth and less entrepreneurial innovation. 

In contrast, America maintained one of the lowest tax rates of the industrialized world during the past 25 years, and pursued relatively free-market policies compared to our friends across the Atlantic.  As a result, the American economy posted positive growth during 288 out of 300 months between 1982 and 2007, and GDP grew 3.4% during that span.  Also during that period, America witnessed dramatic increases in median income and total wealth, while inflation and interest rates remained remarkably low. 

It’s understandable, of course, that Americans are frightened by the current economic turbulence.  Moreover, some instinctively assume that the more socialistic European economies would provide greater refuge from these difficulties.  This is an unfortunate and misplaced delusion, however, because things are actually worse in Europe.  Preening liberals who attempt to place blame for our current downturn on “free market” principles must therefore explain why Europe is in even worse shape. 

Faced with this real-world data, Europhiles and self-immolating liberals typically retreat to the urban legend that “Europeans may be poorer, but they’re happier.” 

Once again, however, the opposite is true. 

As American Enterprise Institute President Arthur C. Brooks has reported, Americans actually score significantly higher than Europeans on happiness surveys.  In the 2002 International Social Survey Programme spanning 35 nations, some 56% of Americans reported that they are “completely happy” or “very happy” with their lives.  In contrast, only 44% of Danes, 35% of French and 31% of Germans reported that they were either “completely happy” or “very happy.” 

So much for the myth that Europeans are either better-off and/or happier than Americans. 

These realities don’t provide a basis to gloat so much as a necessary disinfectant for the notion that America should adopt more European economic and social policies.  The facts say otherwise.