Mickey Kaus continues the US vs Europe culture wars, relying on the tried-and-true argument of lower US unemployment. He writes
” German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder is entitled to a bit of schadenfreude, but generalizing from the U.S. accounting scandals to the general inferiority of U.S.-style shareholder-oriented corporate governance seems a leap. (“Now it has been revealed that egotism practiced at the top under the catchphrase ‘shareholder value’ is worth less in macroeconomic terms, but also as far as the companies themselves are concerned ….”) What’s Germany’s unemployment rate again? Oh, yes — 9.5 percent. [Thanks to kf reader A.E.]”
Unfortunately, going to his source, The Nando Times, we find:
“Last month’s increase was exclusively due to the former communist east Germany. Western Germany, which accounts for most of the nation’s economic output, reported a 7.6 percent jobless rate for June, unchanged from May. ”
The US (5.9 per cent) still looks to have an advantage, but add in 2 million mostly unemployable people locked away in prisons and jails, and the difference is pretty much zero. This was a great argument for the late 90s, when the US rate was 4 per cent and falling, but it’s run out of legs today.