I caught a story on MSNBC this morning that made me cross my eyes a bit. Now, I’ve been reading for over a year about Europe’s encroaching economic problems, relating to both its socialist systems and demographic challenges. So, I was a bit incredulous when the article began with this:

Jan. 22, 2007 issue - By rights, Europe should be celebrating. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the founding Treaty of Rome in 1957, and the European Union is on a roll. Its economy is outperforming the United States. Unemployment is falling. The Union’s prosperous embrace has taken in post-communist Eastern Europe. Impoverished countries such as Ireland, Portugal and Spain have become comfortably middle class while health care, free education, housing, clean water and decent roads can today be taken for granted by all.

This seemed a bit incongruous with… well, with everything I’d read about Europe in the last year. Ireland and Great Britain had done fairly well, having mostly eschewed “communism-lite” for a more American-style capitalism, but most of the economies of “Old Europe” were said to be fairly well battered. Ah, but reading on, we get closer to the apparent truth in paragraph 5:

Berlin’s attitude is sweet music in France. Both candidates for the Elysée in May adopt a hawkish protectionist tone on trade and reject reform of the EU’s wasteful agricultural subsidies. Each seeks scapegoats for high unemployment and low growth by railing at the European Commission in Brussels or the European Central Bank in Frankfurt.

So, Europe’s economy is a worker’s paradise based on… high unemployment and low growth.

Hmm. Where have I heard this before?