Transcription
Listening to media, I hear the United States is unique in the world. A place where business just abuses workers. No fairness, no equity, no concern for safety, no concern for children, even. Other countries protect workers and their families. We’re one of the few industrial countries in the world that doesn’t have paid leave. Our quality of life is not up to the other countries, you know. Europe is better. So much better!
You want to be like Sweden? Kinda. Sounds pretty good. If you are a worker, you don't want to live in Sweden. Economists, Sven Larson lives in Kansas now, but he was born in Sweden, where unemployment's now 10%. What do you do if you get fired? There's no job out there for you.
Years ago, America's economy grew neck and neck with the European Union's. But about 15 years ago, Europe’s growth stagnated. Today, America is 50% richer. Even though the EU has 100 million more people. Europe has experienced stagnant economic growth. When we don't have growth, we can't make life better for people. [bells ring] Europe’s become kind of a wine and cheese museum. Tourist money keeps it going, but there’s so little growth that the poorest U.S. state is now richer than most European countries.
Why? Because of the very same policies some Americans now want us to copy, like higher taxes. But what do you do when you run out of the rich? Then you tax the almost rich and then you run out of them. But in America, we now have absurdly rich people. If you add up all the value that these individuals have, it's nowhere near enough to pay for all the obligations that the federal government has.
The average workers in Sweden pay more in taxes than you do in the United States. You get free healthcare, free education. No, you get the right to free healthcare, but whether you actually get the healthcare or not is a different story. I have friends who have died in the Swedish healthcare system because they couldn't get treatment in time. Healthcare now!
American activists don't talk much about that problem. Instead, on taxpayer supported TV, they complain that: We, and Papua New Guinea are the only countries in the world that do not provide any paid time off for new mothers. You get 16 weeks in the Netherlands. Almost 70 weeks in Sweden. You can have one kid and then you're away for a year and then if you have another kid, you just perpetuate your maternity leave and you can be away for years.
Because of such laws, about 40% of the EU’s spending now goes toward welfare. They take care of people. But it also entraps you. They get stuck in low end jobs. They don't start businesses like we do because they don't have to. Meet the gypsies on benefits and proud! Maybe that's good enough. But who is paying for it, then? The more people who choose that lifestyle, the fewer people are paying taxes.
Even European media have begun to notice how innovation rarely happens in Europe. We wouldn’t have anything like an AI sector in this country, because of the EU AI act. That’s just one of the 395,000 pages of regulations that the EU has passed. Regulations are another reason Europe doesn’t grow. We have too many rules. The astounding thing is that the Europeans have more.
European rules can make it almost impossible to fire a worker. It’s not so easy to just let people go. Why would you hire anybody when you are essentially responsible for them for the rest of your life? What do you mean you can't fire them? If they don't show up, you can't fire them? You have to go through an extremely bureaucratic sequence. The government will decide whether or not you are right in saying this person is not doing his job.
Other regulations make entrepreneurship harder. Here in America, we allow people to, let's say you have a pickup truck. You can put a sticker on it that says, “Bob the carpenter,” and now you have a small business. You can go out and start making money. In Europe, you have to wade through fees. You have to talk to bureaucrats.
European rules also empower unions. In Sweden: They can act like a mafia. Force the utility companies to shut off power. They can stop garbage collections. They can stop the banks from processing your checks. Non-union Tesla got punished. Postal workers have been refusing to deliver license plates for new Tesla’s. Yes, unions have that power. Imagine trying to run a business in Sweden under those circumstances. It's very hard.
Thanks to union power, high taxes, and more rules, Europe now has zero of the world’s biggest companies. You have to go down all the way to the 20’s to find any European company. American firms leave Europe’s in the dust. My son has grown up here. The opportunities he's had are leaps and bounds better and bigger than what he would've had if we'd stayed in Europe.
Don't the governments see what this has done to their economies and change these rules? A lot of the politicians, they thrive on having a population that is dependent on government because they vote for you then. You get a lot of votes from a lot of people who depend a lot on government. Congratulations you are now United States citizens.
America still has this spirit of understanding that you can actually make life better for yourself, which I don't find in Europe. We have that spirit in America now, but it’s constantly challenged by America’s legions of regulators. If they aren’t adding new rules they think they’re not doing their job. So, let’s learn from Europe, and stop it! [swoosh] Thanks for watching. We learn from your comments so, if you have ideas about regulations to share, please, write them below. And if you want to help us make more videos like these, click that button. [music]