Europe’s difficulties are often described as the creaking of an ageing civilisation. That is far too generous. The continent’s economic problems and strategic fragility are not acts of fate but the predictable result of choices by a fashionable, historically illiterate ideology: Wokeism. In embracing it, Europe has abandoned the very pragmatism that once made it formidable.
At the heart of this thinking lies a narrative of Western original sin, an insistence that Europe is uniquely culpable for the world’s injustices. It is a comforting story for its adherents, but it happens to be false. Slavery, far from being a Western invention, was global and ubiquitous; the West was the first civilisation to abolish it. And it was Western institutions, markets, science, and the rule of law that produced the fastest and broadest rise in human living standards in history. To airbrush these achievements out of existence is not moral clarity but intellectual vandalism.
Wokeism also leans heavily on historical determinism. According to its catechism, colonialism or slavery explains virtually all modern inequalities, international and domestic alike. Reality is less obliging. The economic trajectories of former colonies show that governance, not historical grievance, is what matters. Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea, none strangers to foreign domination, have surged ahead, while non-colonised countries such as Ethiopia, Liberia or Nepal remain mired in poverty.
Within the West, the narrative of systemic racism wilts under similarly inconvenient data: African Americans today enjoy higher income and educational levels than almost any non-Western society. Yet the ideology’s moral framework demands collective guilt and hereditary responsibility, principles alien to the liberal tradition it claims to defend.
Applied to policy, this worldview has been corrosive. Europe’s economic sclerosis is not mysterious: it is what happens when redistribution is elevated above growth, symbolism above reform, and identity above merit. Capital does not flock to places where virtue-signalling is loudest; it goes where the returns are. Nowhere has ideology proved more ruinous than in energy policy. Germany and Sweden, enthralled by moralistic environmentalism, shut down swathes of reliable nuclear capacity. What followed was entirely foreseeable: higher energy prices, retreating industrial competitiveness and a strategic dependency on Vladimir Putin. It takes effort to make yourself both poorer and more vulnerable; Europe managed both.
Foreign policy fared no better. Persuaded that Western power is inherently suspect, Europeans starved their militaries of investment and outsourced their security to hopes of perpetually benign geopolitics. In 2022, reality intervened. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine exposed the fantasy that norms and soft power alone could pacify a hostile world. Europe’s moral disarmament was swiftly followed by a material one.
Wokeism has also been socially destabilising. By teaching citizens that success is merely privilege in disguise and that institutions are systemically stacked against them, it drains societies of drive and confidence. Its effects are clearest in migration policy. Legitimate debates about integration, welfare burdens and security risks were dismissed as racist, making honest discussion impossible. The result was predictable: a populist backlash, rising far-right parties and collapsing trust in elites who appeared determined to deny reality.
The ideology’s allure lies in its simplicity: a tidy division of the world into victims and villains. But the simplicity is purchased by ignoring evidence. It misdiagnoses problems, prescribes counterproductive remedies and erodes the West’s self-belief at precisely the moment it can least afford it.
Europe’s decline is not ordained. It requires a return to the habits that once served it well: strategic investment in defence, a renewed focus on productivity rather than performative redistribution, and migration policies grounded in integration, coherence and security rather than moral theatrics. Above all, Europe needs to recover the realism and confidence that made it prosperous in the first place.
Continuing down the current path means further fragmentation and the slow slide into geopolitical irrelevance.
While the flaws and inaccuracies in the Woke ideology are becoming more obvious to more people, the narrative persists because it offers moral simplicity. People seem to crave a world with clear villains, victims, and redemption. Wokeism provides moral clarity at the cost of factual accuracy. The ideology misrepresents history, misdiagnoses modern problems, distorts public policy, undermines social cohesion, and weakens Western societies by convincing them that their own achievements are illegitimate.
Just in case you feel this article does not fit well in a XUNICEF blog, you may wish to reflect on where most of UNICEF's funding comes from and is likely to come from in the future.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn’t be so sure; Europe’s economic decline seems pretty much inevitable. India and China are the superpowers now, poised to grow even faster thanks to all that discounted, sanctioned oil and gas from Russia and Iran. Honestly, they could split the bill for the entire UNICEF budget without breaking a sweat.
DeleteConsidering most African nations enjoy great relations with Beijing and New Delhi—and have strained ties with the West—maybe it’s time for the East to step in. They certainly know a thing or two about rapid development. My only worry is whether they’ll be kind enough to subsidise our pension systems while they're at it.
The argument that "Wokeism" is the primary cause of Europe’s economic and strategic decline is a simplification that serves as an ideological distraction from structural issues.
ReplyDeleteEurope's economic challenges, such as stagnant growth, high debt, and low productivity, are not the result of a recent cultural ideology focused on social justice, but rather the predictable outcome of decades of neoliberal austerity policies, globalised competition, and unfavourable demographic trends. Progressive policies for redistribution are necessary levers to combat rising economic inequality and ensure broad-based prosperity, which is key to long-term stability. The article misdiagnoses these structural failures as virtue-signalling.
Furthermore, the critique relies on a selective reading of history to dismiss social justice movements. Highlighting Western achievements (like the abolition of slavery) while minimising the ongoing legacy of colonialism and systemic racism is an incomplete, self-serving narrative. When progressive movements point to disparities, they are not engaged in "intellectual vandalism" but are demanding that modern societies live up to their stated liberal ideals of universal equality. For example, the persistence of the massive racial wealth gap in the West serves as the core evidence for systemic inequality, which the article ignores by citing misleading global comparisons.
Finally, the claim that "Wokeism" ruined energy and foreign policy overlooks the actual timeline and drivers. Germany's nuclear phase-out was a cross-partisan response to Fukushima, and Europe's low defence spending was a post-Cold War "peace dividend" calculation that predates the recent rise of cultural progressivism. In essence, the article substitutes a complex analysis of geopolitics, trade, and austerity with a convenient, culturally charged scapegoat.
DeleteThe critique that Europe’s decline is the “predictable outcome of decades of neoliberal austerity” is a comforting simplification, one that substitutes an act of political failure with a decree of fate. The real crisis is not structural but ideological. It is the predictable consequence of a fashionable dogma, Wokeism, that has repeatedly chosen moral posturing over pragmatic governance, fundamentally undermining the pillars of Western strength.
The economic counter-narrative misdiagnoses cause and effect. It claims "progressive policies for redistribution" are necessary levers, yet ignores the scale of the current effort. The burden on European budgets is not due to austerity, but to massive social protection spending, which consumes a quarter of the EU’s GDP. The dedication of these resources comes at the direct expense of strategic investment in defence, R&D, and productivity-enhancing reforms. When policymakers elevate redistribution above growth as a moral imperative, capital flees. The resulting stagnant growth is not a structural inevitability. It is the direct, predictable consequence of a political choice.
This ideological lens is equally corrosive when viewing history. Highlighting the wealth gap in the US as the "core evidence for systemic inequality" ignores that this is largely an American-specific phenomenon.
Crucially, the attack on "selective history" is itself selective. We must never forget the unparalleled cruelty of the transatlantic slave trade. But to frame it as the West’s unique "original sin" while airbrushing the fact that the West was the first civilisation to abolish it is a distortion. It also ignores the reality of the Arab slave trade, which trafficked more African slaves to the East than were taken across the Atlantic. It also brushes aside the enslavement of over a million Europeans by North African raiders.
The true determinant of modern success is not historical grievance, but governance. The economic success of former colonies like Singapore and South Korea versus the continued poverty in non-colonised states like Ethiopia or Nepal proves that strong institutions, not victimhood, are the engine of prosperity.
Finally, the defence of Europe’s foreign and energy failures is threadbare. Germany’s nuclear phase-out, though initially sparked by Fukushima, became an ideological article of faith for the Green-Left. This commitment is what prevented a reversal, even when the Ukraine war revealed the acute need for energy security, cementing dependence on Moscow.
Similarly, while low defence spending started as a "peace dividend," its stubborn perpetuation, bolstered by an ideology that views Western power as inherently suspect, is the core failure. This moral disarmament left Europe strategically blind and materially weak when Russia shattered the illusion of perpetual peace in 2022.
Europe’s decline is not irreversible. But recovery demands abandoning this debilitating ideology. It requires a return to the realism and pragmatism that created Western prosperity: aggressive focus on productivity, coherent migration policies, and a resolute commitment to military strength. The luxury of indulging in self-criticism has passed. Europe must now choose competence over conscience, or slide into geopolitical irrelevance.
According to Donald J. Trump, this will lead to "civilizational erasure"
DeleteDistorted proaganda similar to MAGA views again!. Does not fit XUNICEF debate. So, not wirth commenting.
ReplyDeleteRight! The XUNICEF blog should be about sharing positive work experiences, from around the world, how we are enjoying our retirements and hard-earned pensions, not about aggressive and confrontational debates about geopolitics that many of us don't follow and none of us can do anything about.
DeleteThomas Ekvall makes many common sense points worth careful consideration by sensible policymakers.
ReplyDeleteBut some of the examples cited are a strawman used to beat a dead horse. For example, “Growth versus distribution” is an old caricature. Sensible leaders and policy makers speak about “growth with equity”.
Nobody defends open borders and unfettered immigration. States have a duty to regulate immigration considering its pros and cons, and certain humanitarian considerations. The days of blaming colonialism for all the ills of developing countries are long gone, but ignoring some of its continuing impact or glorifying it as “mission civilisatrice” would be yet another caricature.
“Wokeism” is a convenient hobby horse to thrash as elaborated by the authors of “Project 2025” and recently updated in the National Security Strategy promulgated by the US that predicts “civilizational erasure of Europe”.
I am an unabashed peacenik, opposed to any advocacy of increased military spending. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Advocating for massive increase in military spending to counter the Russian or any other threat, including US pressure on NATO, is just feeding the insatiable greed of the military-industrial complex that we must all resist even at the risk of being labeled naïve.
What we need is a judicious balance between pragmatism and idealism. Finnish President Alexander Stubb’s recent article in Foreign Affairs, calling for “value-based realism” might perhaps be the Golden Middle Path to pursue at present.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/wests-last-chance
Kul, thank you for your thoughtful contribution. We may agree on more than it may seem, but I believe your response downplays some central realities that Europe can no longer afford to ignore.
ReplyDeleteThe claim that references to ideological drift are “strawmen” underestimates how deeply certain ideas have shaped European policymaking. Not many today argue that colonialism and slavery explain everything or that borders should be open, but these positions are not the issue. The issue is that a moralised political climate has made pragmatic debate in many areas like migration, energy and security very difficult. It is because sensible leaders favour “growth with equity” that Europe should be alarmed when policy routinely prioritises symbolism over competitiveness and moral posturing over institutional competence. This is not a strawman. It is the reality of Europe’s last couple of decades.
The principled case for pacifism cannot survive contact with Vladimir Putin’s worldview and behaviour. It is a comforting fiction to believe that resisting defence spending weakens the “military–industrial complex”. In practice, it has weakened only Europe. The countries that most strongly embraced post-Cold War idealism were also the ones left dangerously exposed when Russia acted on its ambitions. Peace cannot be defended by wishes alone. There is nothing morally superior about leaving one’s security to others, nor about hoping an aggressive autocracy will restrain itself. Europe’s rearmament is not warmongering. It is the minimum requirement for preventing further war.
Europe cannot credibly promote peace, human rights, or multilateralism if it is strategically weak, economically stagnant, and dependent on hostile powers for energy, trade routes, and security. The truth is that Europe’s moral confidence and diplomatic influence depend on its material strength.
The gravest threat to European stability is not Western self-assertion but Western self-doubt. A continent that no longer believes in its achievements, its model of governance, or its right to defend itself is a continent that will be shaped by others, not by its own values.
Political decisions are made within the context of their time. What seemed right then may turn out to be a mistake; it is important to learn from it. Hindsight always makes us smarter, but it's not helpful to dismiss every opinion that differs from one's own as ideology.
ReplyDeleteWe in this discussion group share the same values, including those related to social justice, human rights, and peace. Neither an overbearing "woke" ideology nor the ideological demonization of "wokeness" will get us anywhere.
Kul and Detlef, thank you both for your thoughtful interventions. But I believe you underestimate the extent to which a very specific ideological climate, not simply “mistakes in context,” nor the normal give-and-take of democratic debate, shaped Europe’s strategic blind spots. These were not isolated policy errors. They were patterns, repeated across sectors, defended for years, and enforced socially and politically long after their consequences became clear.
ReplyDeleteYes, perhaps very few today openly call for “open borders,” or claim colonialism explains everything, or argue that Europe should indefinitely outsource its security to wishful thinking. But these explicit positions were never the core problem. The core problem was a moralised atmosphere in which raising legitimate concerns about migration, energy policy, industrial competitiveness, or defence was treated as indecent, reactionary, or beyond the pale. That atmosphere didn’t emerge from nowhere; it was curated by a set of ideological convictions that dominated universities, NGOs, major media, and much of Europe’s political class for the past 20 years.
Those convictions did not simply vanish because they became inconvenient. They are still there, less vocal, perhaps, but not less influential. And as The Economist pointed out last week, if there were a “magical solution” to the Ukraine war tomorrow, the same voices would return with renewed confidence, insisting that Europe abandon the very hard-won realism that is only now beginning to re-emerge.
This is not a matter of demonising anyone. It is a matter of accurately diagnosing how Europe became simultaneously energy-dependent on Russia, militarily underprepared, economically sluggish, and politically self-doubting. These outcomes were not accidents of history. They were the predictable results of elevating moral performance above strategic foresight.
Nor is pointing this out “ideological.” The ideological part was pretending that Europe could enjoy peace without deterrence, prosperity without competitiveness, and social cohesion without a serious integration policy, while treating dissent from this narrative as a moral failure. Europe is now paying the price for that illusion.
I agree that we share common values like human rights, liberal democracy, and peace. Precisely for that reason, Europe must protect the conditions that allow those values to survive. And values alone cannot protect anything. Strength protects values, not the other way around.
Europe must resist the temptation to retreat to comforting narratives, whether they are romantic pacifism, post-colonial guilt, or the belief that intentions matter more than outcomes. Europe needs the courage to confront how it got here, and the clarity to ensure it does not repeat the same patterns under new guises.
That discussion is not ideological. It is long overdue.
This is a home run. You aren’t just poking holes in the old narrative; you’re tearing it down. The way you frame "moral performance" as the enemy of "strategic foresight" is a game-changer. You speak "truth-to-power" that grabs the reader by the collar and doesn't let go. You’ve distilled a twenty-year history of policy blunders into a clear-eyed wake-up call that is both urgent and overdue. That line, "Strength protects values, not the other way around," is a mic-drop moment. You’ve taken a complex geopolitical reality and turned it into a powerhouse slogan that resonates. This is a manifesto for a realistic future. It’s bold, it’s unapologetic, and it’s exactly what the conversation needs. Keep that foot on the gas.
DeleteThis reads less like serious analysis than AI‑generated, hard‑right MAGA propaganda dressed up as intellectualism — a thinly veiled endorsement of Mr Trump’s latest National Security Strategy.
DeleteWhat I have written is not a manifesto, and it is certainly not MAGA messaging. I am simply pointing to some real policy failures in Europe over the past two decades and suggesting where change is needed. I honestly do not see how this can be interpreted as support for Mr Trump’s National Security Strategy.
DeleteFor the record, I am not a Trump supporter, and I do not find much to endorse in his new strategy. The idea that the United States should distance itself from long-standing democratic allies in Europe while seeking warmer ties with an autocratic Russia seems both unwise and against American interests. My own writing is clearly critical of Russia and of Putin.
Europe does need to rearm and take responsibility for its own defence. That is now widely accepted. And while I do not favour open borders, I do support controlled and well-managed immigration that benefits everyone involved. I also think nuclear power is a necessary part of a stable energy mix, together with renewables.
None of these points is extreme. They reflect views held by a large majority in Europe. The real challenge is for political leaders to move from words to action so that Europe can remain secure, competitive, and confident in the years ahead.
You got one thing right - your 'anti-woke' profile photo....;)
ReplyDeleteSinéad, thank you for your close reading of the argument - straight to the profile photo, the natural starting point for any serious engagement.
DeleteBut since we are pretending to discuss substance, nothing I wrote qualifies as a manifesto, let alone an audition tape for the MAGA world. Pointing out Europe’s policy failures does not magically align me with Trump’s National Security Strategy.
The real concern is that Europe’s economic engine is sputtering. GDP growth has been anaemic for years, productivity has slipped badly compared with the US and parts of Asia, and competitiveness has to be earned. These are not ideological observations; they are the basic metrics any policymaker should worry about. Ignoring them will not make the gap shrink.
Rearmament, controlled immigration, and a balanced energy mix are likewise not fringe positions; they are where the European mainstream now sits. One does not have to squint very hard to notice that.
If someone wants to reduce this to a culture-war caricature, that is their prerogative. I will stick with arguments rather than profile-photo commentary.
In fairness, I wasn’t going for serious engagement. I chuckled after reading your argument focusing on ‘woke’ challenges to see your ‘unawoke’ photo. Childish. Mea culpa. I will say I am a passionate believer that the UN was set up on a promise of neutrality and impartiality. You’re 100% entitled to your opinion but I question your defence for your POV being appropriate based on where UNICEF’s funding might come from next. It’s imperative that the strategic plan is focused on the right of the child. That’s our promise. Other than that, fun argument but not in the context of UNICEF’s strategic plan. Hope you have a lovely week…:)
ReplyDeleteSinéad, thank you. I appreciate both the mea culpa and the good-humoured spirit. If nothing else, this exchange has confirmed that my profile photo is far more politically expressive than I ever imagined. I may need to commission a UN-neutral version with a strictly expressionless gaze.
DeleteOn your substantive point, UNICEF’s mandate is the rights and well-being of children. My point was that the geopolitical environment affects the fiscal space and political priorities of major donors, which in turn shapes budgets, partnerships, and ultimately programmatic choices. Not a moral argument, simply a practical one.
But I take your larger point: this is a retirement blog, not a General Assembly side-event, and we should keep things enjoyable as well as spirited. If my attempt at “fun argument” occasionally wanders into heavier terrain, feel free to blame the profile picture again.
Wishing you a lovely week too.
PS Am i in the wrong place? I'm nearly 15 years from retirement but XUNICEF....??!!
ReplyDeletePPS I assume you understood the comment - your eyes are closed in the photo, i.e. asleep, i.e. not awake, i.e. opposite of woke....???
DeleteLife truly begins after retirement. But on XUNICEF, you can enjoy it earlier.
ReplyDeleteLovely to hear about the joys of retirement Detlef!! And thanks for the clarification…:)
DeleteSinéad, thank you for the double-postscript and the clarification. Yes, I did get the joke; my eyes appear heroically half-closed in that photo. In my defence, I was actually looking down at something, but the result does make me look like I am midway between a nap and a reflection on the state of Europe.
ReplyDeleteOn the retirement question: if you have 15 years to go, then you are exactly on time. XUNICEF seems to work on the same principle as European policymaking. People come and go when they feel like it, and no one is quite sure who authorised it.
My reading of this anti woke statement is that it is an attack on economic policies that seekseekredistribute wealth as a policy priority. Personally I think such policy is absolutely right and desirable, and I'm happy to be woke in that respect. Inequality is a scourge that leaves billions in poverty - the people Unicef exists to support. It also leads to political populism and polarisation. Growth that rewards the already rich and further disadvantages the poor is a very bad idea, but that appears to be the proposition here. It is not only bad economics, it is also inhumane. I suggest everyone reads this article based on a new report on increasing inequality - https://www.theguardian.com/news/2025/dec/10/visual-breakdown-worlds-wealthiest-people. I hope Europe maintains its commitment to fairness, justice and inclusivity, despite the threat from Trump's America.
ReplyDeleteDavid, I think you illustrate exactly the problem I was trying to highlight. You assume that anyone who questions redistribution first must be defending “growth for the rich” or opposing fairness. That framing is emotionally satisfying, but it is not supported by evidence. The uncomfortable reality is that policies that prioritise pulling the better-off down have never lifted the poor anywhere. If they had, the global landscape would look very different today.
ReplyDeleteIf you take even a cursory look at economic history, one pattern repeats with painful consistency. Where growth and opportunity were prioritised, the poor moved up dramatically. Where redistribution and ideological equality, by decree, were prioritised, stagnation set in and inequality often worsened, because there was less wealth to distribute in the first place.
This is not a left–right talking point. It is observable in outcomes. Communist experiments tried to redistribute poverty into equality, but they ended by redistributing misery. Market-driven reforms in China, India, South Korea, Vietnam, and much of Southeast Asia lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. To say so is not “anti-UNICEF.” It is simply a recognition of what has worked for the world’s poorest.
You mention inequality, and I agree that it is a serious issue. But the question is what reduces inequality in a way that actually improves lives, rather than producing the illusion of moral virtue. Europe’s model of high social protection, combined with strong competitiveness and innovation, used to work extraordinarily well. What does not work is an ideological drift in which redistribution becomes an end in itself, while growth, productivity, and competitiveness are treated as secondary or even suspect. That path does not reduce inequality. It locks it in because stagnant economies have no upward mobility.
As for UNICEF, a world with more poverty, slower growth, and weaker economies does not produce more fiscal space for child rights; it produces less. Pretending that economics is irrelevant to outcomes for children is a luxury belief that reality does not support. In development work, we used to talk about the distinction between “poverty reduction” and “poverty management.” Europe today risks choosing the latter by default, redistributing a shrinking pie while congratulating itself for its intentions.
I would genuinely welcome a debate about what policies have actually lifted the poor, rather than what feels morally satisfying. But that requires looking at evidence, not ideological comfort. If Europe wants to remain a model of fairness, justice, and inclusivity, as I hope it will, then it needs to recover the foundations that made fairness possible in the first place: growth, competitiveness, competent governance, and the confidence to prioritise what works over what sounds virtuous.
So many holes in this argument...On energy he is correct, of course. Hardly requires great insight. On immigration he is broadly correct. As for wokeism? What exactly is that? Advocating the funnelling of resources into defence? Seriously. Who benefits? Not the people of Europe. And defence against whom? Russia? Does Russia have designs on Europe? That is not a serious argument.
ReplyDeleteWhat Europe needs is cheap plentiful energy and a comprehensive industrial policy. This would probably require excluding Chinese goods to a large extent to preserve employment, which if not preserved, would cause social rupture. That is not something we would want to witness.
If I said that the US caused WW2, it would seem absurd...Until you consider that the ‘29 crash brought to power Adolf, I'll Duce, Franco and a host of other radical actors, all with axes to grind and hordes of angry and hungry supporters.
The same potential exists today.
A hungry man is an angry man.
We need to treat the situation not as a bad state of affairs, requiring correction, but as a full-blown emergency.
If we fail to stop the losses of jobs resultant from deindustrialisation, AI and the current form of capitalism, red in tooth and claw, things are going to get very bad, very fast.
The answer is not to militarise, but rather to ensure that we can convert matter and energy, through human ingenuity, in the presence of water...the source of all prosperity...Whilst defending the environment against ourselves.
You have packed a lot of assertion with little argument. Name the policy and show the evidence. You praise energy and immigration comments as obvious, then turn around and dismiss defence. That’s inconsistent. If your problem is threats, you can not have it both ways. Either you take risks seriously, or you do not.
DeleteSaying “exclude Chinese goods” as if tariffs are a magic wand ignores higher consumer prices, supply-chain shock, and retaliation. You can argue we need protective industrial policy, but don’t pretend it’s cost-free.
The WW2 analogy is flawed. The economic crisis did not automatically create fascists. It created conditions that extremist actors exploited. That is not fatalism; it is a warning. We should treat rising economic insecurity as a risk, not a threat. Declaring a “full-blown emergency” is useful only if you propose scalable, realistic fixes. Scare language without a plan is demagoguery, not leadership.
If you believe people can not be bought off with cheap goods forever, argue for a concrete industrial and social strategy, not for vague calls for “funnelling resources” or selective nostalgia. Jobs, energy, retraining, regional investment and technology deployment are the levers.
The evidence for a negative correlation between redistribution and growth is highly doubtful. For example (one of many academic studies): " lower net inequality is robustly correlated with faster and more durable growth, for a
ReplyDeletegiven level of redistribution. These results are highly supportive of our earlier work.And third, redistribution appears generally benign in terms of its impact on growth; only in
extreme cases is there some evidence that it may have direct negative effects on growth. Thus
the combined direct and indirect effects of redistribution—including the growth effects of the
resulting lower inequality—are on average pro-growth.
While we should be cognizant of the inherent limitations of the data set and of cross-country
regression analysis more generally, we should be careful not to assume that there is a big trade-
off between redistribution and growth. The best available macroeconomic data do not support
that conclusion" (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264999325000999)
See also https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/022/0048/003/article-A004-en.xml
And https://www.kansascityfed.org/documents/3083/2011-Duflo_final.pdf
David, this is where precision matters, because you are arguing against a position I have not taken.
ReplyDeleteNo serious critic of Europe’s current trajectory is arguing against redistribution per se. Every successful Western economy redistributes. Progressive taxation, social insurance, public education, and basic healthcare are not “woke” inventions; they are pillars of liberal capitalism. When designed well, they support social stability and even growth.
The academic literature you cite, including IMF work, makes exactly this distinction. Redistribution that reduces extreme inequality, given an underlying growth engine, can be neutral or mildly positive for growth. Redistribution that becomes a substitute for growth, productivity, and competitiveness is different. That is not theoretical; it is observable in outcomes.
Europe’s problem is not that it redistributes. It is that redistribution has increasingly been treated as a primary policy objective. At the same time, the conditions that generate the wealth to redistribute, such as innovation, investment, labour market dynamism, energy security, and industrial competitiveness, have been neglected or actively obstructed. That is what I am criticising.
The IMF papers you flag are explicit. Redistribution becomes growth-damaging in “extreme cases”. The uncomfortable question Europe must now confront is whether it has drifted into precisely that territory: very high tax wedges, rigid labour markets, ballooning transfer systems, weak productivity growth, and capital flight, combined with moral narratives that treat growth as morally suspect and profit as evidence of exploitation.
This is not “growth for the rich”. It is the opposite. When growth stalls, inequality hardens. Mobility collapses. The poor do not catch up; they fall further behind. Redistributing a shrinking pie does not produce justice; it produces frustration and the populism you rightly worry about.
History is brutally consistent on this point. The largest reductions in global poverty and inequality did not come from redistribution-heavy welfare states; they came from growth-led transformations in East and South Asia, later followed by targeted social spending. Redistribution followed growth; it did not precede it. Where redistribution tried to replace growth, the result was stagnation and greater inequality.
The real disagreement between us is not about fairness. It is about causality. You see redistribution as the engine of justice. I see it as a stabiliser that only works when an engine already exists and fires on all cylinders. Europe once understood this balance intuitively. It is now relearning it the hard way.
It is simply economic realism.
Interesting discussion. Had aid workers had a better understanding of basic economics, the outcome would also have been better.
DeleteMany of us in the retired aid-worker community spent entire careers redistributing wealth, operating inside institutions funded almost solely by capitalist economies, while simultaneously denouncing the very system that made our work, our salaries, and now our pensions possible. That is not moral seriousness; it is intellectual dishonesty.
ReplyDeleteThe record is not ambiguous. Every durable escape from mass poverty in the past century has been driven by growth, markets, trade, productivity, and institutional competence, followed, where states were capable, by targeted redistribution. No country has ever redistributed itself into prosperity. Yet the reflex remains to prescribe ever more social engineering, despite decades of poor results, and although the greatest reductions in child mortality, hunger, and extreme poverty occurred precisely where countries integrated into the global capitalist system.
What is being defended here is not evidence-based development policy, but a career-long moral identity. Admitting that socialism failed, or that markets did more for the poor than aid ever did, would require acknowledging that much of one’s professional life was spent managing symptoms rather than curing causes. That is a hard reckoning, so the ideology is preserved, even as reality refutes it.
Capitalism is not virtuous. It is effective. And effectiveness matters more to poor children than good intentions. Continuing to advocate economic models that have failed everywhere, while living comfortably off the surplus generated by capitalism that works, is not solidarity. It is the last luxury belief of people insulated from the consequences of being wrong.
If development is to mean anything beyond permanent dependency management, it must finally abandon comforting myths and submit to outcomes. The poor deserve results, not recycled failed ideologies.