Bad healthcare. Limited vacation time. Lower life expectancy. "American exceptionalism" has never rung so hollow
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The term “American exceptionalism” is often tossed around by
politicians. Neocons, far-right Christian fundamentalists and members of
the Republican Party in particular seem to hate it when anyone dares to
suggest that some aspects of European life are superior to how we do
things. But facts are facts, and the reality is that in some respects,
Europe is way ahead of the United States. From health care to civil
liberties to sexual attitudes, one can make a strong case for “European
exceptionalism.” That is not to say that Europe isn’t confronting some
major challenges in 2014:
neoliberal economic policies and brutal
austerity measures are causing considerable misery in Greece, Spain and
other countries. The unemployment rate in Spain, the fourth largest
economy in the Eurozone, stands at a troubling 26%—although
Germany, Switzerland, Denmark and Iceland have lower unemployment rates
than the U.S. (5.1% in Germany, 3.1.% in Switzerland, 4.6% in Iceland,
4.2% in Denmark). But problems and all, Europe continues to be one of
the most desirable parts of the world. And the U.S.—a country that is in
serious decline both economically and in terms of civil liberties—needs
to take a close look at some of the things that European countries are
doing right.
Below are 10 examples of “European exceptionalism” and areas in which Europe is way ahead of the United States.
1. Lower Incarceration Rates
Benjamin
Franklin famously said that those who are willing to sacrifice liberty
for security deserve neither, and the U.S. is more dangerous than most
of Europe (especially in terms of homicide) even though it is becoming
more and more of a police state. The U.S. incarcerates, per capita, more
people than any other country in the world: in 2012, the U.S.’
incarceration rate, according to the International Centre for Prison Studies,
was 707 per 100,000 people compared to only 60 per 100,000 in Sweden,
72 per 100,000 in Norway, 78 per 100,000 in Germany, 75 per 100,000 in
the Netherlands, 87 per 100,000 in Switzerland, 99 per 100,000 in Italy,
103 per 100,000 in France, and 144 per 100,000 in Spain. Certainly, the
failed War on Drugs and the Prison/Industrial Complex are major factors
in the U.S.’ appallingly high incarceration rate, and unless the U.S.
seriously reforms its draconian drug laws, it will continue to lock up a
lot more of its people than Europe.
2. Less Violent Crime Than the U.S.
Major
European cities like Brussels, Paris, Berlin and Milan can be very bad
for nonviolent petty crimes like pickpocketing. The tradeoff, however,
is that much of Europe—especially Western Europe—tends to have a lot
less violent crime than the United States. Research conducted by the
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime found that in 2012, the U.S.
had a homicide rate of 4.8 per 100,000 people compared to only 0.3 per
100,000 in Iceland, 0.7 per 100,000 in Sweden, 0.8 per 100,000 in
Denmark and Spain, 0.9 per 100,000 in Italy, Austria and the
Netherlands, 1.0 per 100,000 in France, and 1.2 per 100,000 in Portugal
and the Republic of Ireland. Russia, however, had a homicide rate of 9.2
per 100,000 that year, but overall, one is more likely to be murdered
in the U.S. than in Europe.
3. Better Sex Education Programs, Healthier Sexual Attitudes
For
decades, the Christian Right has been trying to convince Americans that
social conservatism and abstinence-only sex education programs will
reduce the number of unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted
diseases. The problem is that the exact opposite is true: European
countries with comprehensive sex-ed programs and liberal sexual
attitudes actually have lower rates of teen pregnancy and STDs.
Looking at data provided by the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC), the Guttmacher Institute, Advocates for Youth and
other sources, one finds a lot more teen pregnancies in the U.S. than in
Europe. Comprehensive sex-ed programs are the norm in Europe, where in
2008, there were teen birth rates of 5.3 per 1000 in the Netherlands,
4.3 per 1000 in Switzerland and 9.8 per 1000 in Germany compared to
41.5 per 1000 in the United States. In 2009, Germany had one-sixth the
HIV/AIDS rate of the United States (0.1% of Germany’s adult population
living with HIV or AIDS compared to 0.6% of the U.S. adult population),
while the Netherlands had one-third the number of people living with HIV
or AIDS that year (0.2% of the Netherlands’ population compared to 0.6%
of the U.S.’ adult population).
4. Anti-GMO Movement Much More Widespread
Anti-GMO
activists are fighting an uphill battle in the U.S., where the Monsanto
Corporation (the leading provider of GMO seeds) has considerable
lobbying power and poured a ton of money into defeating GMO labeling
measures in California and Washington State. Some progress has been made
on the anti-GMO front in the U.S.: in April, Vermont passed a law
requiring that food products sold in that state be labeled if they contain GMO ingredients (Monsanto,
not surprisingly, has been aggressively fighting the law). And GMO
crops have been banned in Mendocino County, California. But in Europe,
GMO restrictions are much more widespread. France, Switzerland, Austria,
Germany, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and Greece are among the countries
that have either total or partial bans on GMOs. And in Italy, 16 of the country’s 20 regions have declared themselves to be GMO-free when it comes to agriculture.
5. Saner Approaches to Abortion
Logic
never was the Christian Right’s strong point. The same far-right
Christian fundamentalists who favor outlawing abortion and overturning
the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision of 1973 cannot
grasp the fact that two of the things they bitterly oppose—contraception
and comprehensive sex education programs—reduce the number of unplanned
pregnancies and therefore, reduce the need for abortions. But in many
European countries, most politicians are smart enough to share Bill
Clinton’s view that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare.” And the
ironic thing is that European countries that tend to be sexually liberal
also tend to have lower abortion rates.
The Guttmacher Institute has
reported that Western Europe, factoring in different countries, has an average of 12 abortions per 1000 women compared
to 19 per 1000 women in North America (Eastern Europe, according to
Guttmacher, has much higher abortion rates than Western Europe).
Guttmacher’s figures take into account Western Europe on the whole,
although some countries in that part of the world have fallen below that
12 per 1000 average. For example, the UN has reported that in 2008,
Switzerland (where abortion is legal during the first trimester) had an
abortion rate of 6.4 per 1,000 women compared to 19.6 per 1000 women in
the U.S. that year. And Guttmacher has reported that countries where
abortion is illegal or greatly restricted tend to have higher abortion
rates than countries where it is legal: back-alley abortions are common
in Latin America and Africa.
Clearly, better sex education, easier
access to birth control and universal healthcare are decreasing the
number of abortions in Western Europe. So instead of harassing,
threatening and terrorizing abortion providers, the Christian Right
needs to examine the positive effects that sexually liberal attitudes
are having in Switzerland and other European countries.
6. More Vacation Time
In
2013, a report by the Washington, DC-based Center for Economic and
Policy Research (CEPR) showed how badly the U.S. lags behind Europe when
it comes to paid vacation time.
CEPR reported that 77% of private-sector companies in the U.S.
voluntarily offered their employees at least some paid vacation time
(with 21 days off being the average), but the U.S. has no federal law
mandating any time off. And that’s quite a contrast to Europe: CEPR
reported that government-mandated paid vacation time in Europe includes
35 days off in Austria, 31 days off in Italy and France, 34 days off in
Germany and Spain, 30 days off in Belgium and 29 days off in the
Republic of Ireland.
7. Universal Healthcare
The
U.S. made a small step in the direction of universal healthcare when
Congress passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010, but the U.S. is so
backwards when it comes to health care that implementing even the modest
reforms of the ACA (which doesn’t go far enough) has been an epic
battle. Meanwhile, every developed country in Western Europe has
universal health care, which is implemented in different ways in
different countries. Some European countries have single-payer systems
(the U.K. and Spain), while others have public/private systems (France,
for example) and others have systems that are essentially private and
have employer-based insurance but force insurance companies to adhere to
tough and strict government regulations. A 2014 article in The Atlantic reported that with Obamacare, the U.S.’ health care system may end up looking more like Germany’s—which
reporter Olga Khazan described as “multi-payer, compulsory,
employer-based, highly regulated, and fee-for-service.” But health care
reform still has a long way to go in the U.S., where giant insurance
companies call the shots and medical bankruptcies continue to be much
more common than they are in Europe.
8.Greater Life Expectancy
Easier,
more affordable access to quality health care is one of the things that
can increase life expectancy, and in much of Western Europe, people are
outliving Americans. According to the World Health Organization (WHO),
overall life expectancy (factoring in both genders) in the U.S. is 79
compared to 83 in Switzerland (85 for women, 81 for men), 82 in Italy,
Sweden, France, Spain, Iceland and Luxembourg, 81 in Norway, Austria,
the Netherlands, Germany, Finland and the Republic of Ireland, and 80 in
Malta, the U.K., Belgium, Portugal and Slovenia. It should be noted
that in some of the poorer parts of the U.S., life expectancy is well
below the WHO’s 79 average and is comparable to what one finds in Third
World countries: in 2013, a report by the Institute of Health Metrics
and Evaluation at the University of Washington found that life
expectancy for males was only 63.9 in McDowell County, West Virginia and
66.7 in Tunica County, Mississippi. So in McDowell County, the average
male dies 18 years younger than the average male in Switzerland.
9. Mass Transit Systems
For
the vast majority of Americans, living without a car is impractical.
Public transportation is woefully inadequate in most parts of the U.S.,
and only a handful of American cities make it easy to be without a car
(among them: New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia and Boston). But even
in those places, a car becomes a necessity in the surrounding suburbs.
Europe, however, has some of the best, most extensive public
transportation systems in the world. From London to Rome to Paris to
Barcelona, mass transit is a way of life for millions of Europeans.
And there are many advantages to that: less congestion, reduced air
pollution, health benefits (walking is great exercise), a vibrant street
scene/sidewalk culture and more productivity in the workplace (getting
to and from work is easier when the busses and trains are convenient and
run frequently). Plus, making it easier for people to be without a car
reduces the number of DUIs.
10. Europeans More Likely to Speak Foreign Languages
Barack
Obama offended a lot of xenophobic Republicans when, during his 2008
presidential campaign, he noted that the U.S. lagged way behind Europe
when it came to proficiency in a second or third language, but Obama was
right—and in 2012, a European Commission report on
foreign-language study in the European Union (EU) found that “on
average, in 2009/2010, 60.8% of lower secondary education students were
learning two or more foreign languages—an increase of 14.1% compared to
2004-2005. During the same period, the proportion of primary education
pupils not learning a foreign language fell from 32.5% to 21.8%.” The
report found that in the EU, foreign-language study often began as early
as six to nine years of age, which is quite a contrast to the
U.S.—where foreign-language study is a rarity at the elementary school
level and isn’t nearly as common as it should be at the middle school or
high school levels.
#Source:
10 things America does so much worse than Europe | Alex Henderson, AlterNet
This article originally appeared on AlterNet
This article originally appeared on AlterNet
Friday, Jul 11, 2014 02:00 PM +0300
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