Is Europe obsolete?

Europe is officially beyond parody.\nI was in a class the other day when this fact was lost on one person. Unfortunately, that person was the professor, who had nothing but good to say about the "European experiment." This surprised a few people, as it should have. It doesn't take an economics degree to see that, short of totally overhauling the socialist structure of modern European economies, all talk about European ascendancy is absurd in the extreme. \nIn Belgium last summer I learned why. The "giver-ment," as I was taught to say, failed to spread advantage across the general public as widely as America's system of "cowboy capitalism." The European economies are all held under fraying welfare systems. (If you can't maintain the plush state benefits on French tax rates, when can you?) Though I had never held much faith in state-run economies, it was not until I entered the genial company of a transatlantic crew of religious supply-siders that I realized just how right I was. Employees at The Wall Street Journal's European headquarters in Brussels were true believers, part of the faithful. And their Bible was "The Seven Fat Years." \nIn it, Robert Bartley credits America's regaining of its economic and political footing to Ronald Reagan. Reagan utterly refuted the reigning conventional wisdom, which held that low-inflation economic growth was no longer possible and that America was in decline. Good economic stewardship has less to do with the deficit than it does with keeping tax rates low, holding government spending to priorities and keeping the dollar vibrant. Reagan's reformist policies along these lines -- cutting confiscatory tax rates, prodding the Federal Reserve's anti-inflationary drive and discarding price regulations -- produced "seven fat years" of prodigious economic growth. \nThe 1970s hit Europe hard too, but unlike in the United States and Great Britain, reform was shunned. Guess what folks there grumble about most these days? Clue: It's not international terrorism. Europe is beleaguered by a declining population, unassimilated minorities, low growth, high unemployment and a strange reluctance to defend itself against foes that do little to hide their opposition to Enlightenment values. For Europe to slow -- and eventually reverse -- its decline, it must liberalize trade policies that currently account for poor productivity, loosen the tightly regulated labor markets that add huge costs to the hiring of workers and reduce the suffocating effect of high taxes. \nDuring the first week of my internship last summer, my boss, the editorial page editor, proposed a business lunch in which the Journal would foot the bill. And far be it from me to object. En route to a delightful cafe, he explained to me that, in the new world economy, nations were either on the cutting edge or on the trailing edge. He was of the opinion that Europe was doomed to watch its own version of "That '70s Show" for a long time to come. \nNow that we know even more about these ratings, I think this show needs to be canceled.