The New Poverty in France

John Rosenthal reports:

In Summer 2004, the New York Times declared that the great day had arrived: Europe had eliminated -- nay, "abolished," as if by a legislative act-- poverty: or, at any rate, its "desperate" variety. "Even America's defenders must admit to the persistence of poverty amid plenty," the Times reporter Richard Bernstein wrote in an August 8 piece ("Does Europe Need to Get a Life?"), "and, by contrast, the abolition of desperate poverty in Europe."

Bernstein attributed this remarkable accomplishment to the European "continent": a continent that notably includes Albania, for instance: a country with a per capita Gross National Income, according to World Bank statistics, of roughly $2,000 per year. But let us be generous and allow that Bernstein was taking poetic license in referring to the "continent" and really meant to refer just to the European Union. And let us be even more generous and assume that the triumphal claim of Europe's "abolition" of poverty was in fact only meant to apply to the "EU-15" and not also the 10 mostly Eastern European countries -- including, for instance, Slovakia (2004 per capita GNI: $6,480) and Latvia (2004 per capita GNI: $5,580) -- that entered the EU in May 2004. It will presumably take a bit of time still for the EU to work its poverty-abolishing magic on these new member-states.

But even with these limitations, this still leaves us with several Southern European EU member-states, the residents of whose poorest regions -- the South of Italy, for instance, or Extremadura in Spain -- will undoubtedly be especially delighted to learn that the poverty that they experience daily has been "abolished."

The "social model" leads to poverty.You'll want to read this whole one.