The rise of the light bulb fascist.

Apparently the European Union, and the bureaucratic thugs that run it, have inadvertently discovered a method of stimulating one area of the economy: prohibition.


Having learned nothing about drug and alcohol prohibition the EU has decided to ban the production and importation of conventional light bulbs. As a ritual sacrifice to the Goddess Gaia the EU technocrats have decided to phase out the conventional light bulb, in favor of the “eco friendly” but vision-unfriendly compact fluorescent bulb.

I know those bulbs are supposed to save us money, which I favor, but they don’t. I have one bulb in my room that is CFL, which is fine for watching television. But if I want to read I have to turn on the overhead light with three regular bulbs instead. In the lounge the three table lamps are CFLs as well, but all three have to be one to give any acceptable lighting in the room. I had one CFL on the back patio but dumped it entirely—dinners on the patio were impossible with the light it emitted. It was far too dark. So I’m no fan of these vision-destroying bulbs either.


But the technocrats in the EU want to “save the planet,” which usually means an assault on the property rights or freedom of individuals. And, in their wisdom they are phasing out conventional light bulbs. Der Spiegel reports on the results of the upcoming ban in Germany.

Hardware stores and home-improvement chains in Germany are seeing massive increases in the sales of the traditional bulbs. Obi reports a 27 percent growth in sales over the same period a year ago. Hornbach has seen its frosted-glass light bulb sales increase by 40-112 percent. When it comes to 100-watt bulbs, Max Bahr has seen an 80 percent jump in sales, while the figure has been 150 percent for its competitor Praktiker.
"It's unbelievable what is happening," says Werner Wiesner, the head of Megaman, a manufacturer of energy-saving bulbs. Wiesner recounts a story of how one of his field representatives recently saw a man in a hardware store with a shopping cart full of light bulbs of all types worth more than €200 ($285). "That's enough for the next 20 years."

It should be noted that Weiser favors EU action to ban his competition. No surprise there. Most large businesses are run by greedy individuals who prefer political redistribution of wealth to having to earn it in a competitive market. The problem, as they see it, with competitive markets is that consumers can’t be trusted to buy what you’re selling. Weisner thought the best way to force consumers to buy his product would be to impose a $7 tax on each regular light bulb sold in the market.

One marketing company reports that between January and April sales of regular light bulbs have jumped 20 percent. Sales of the “earth-saving” CFL bulbs shrank by 2 percent.

Spiegel notes that the normal bulbs are despised by the Greens because they give off most their energy in heat. True, that was one aspect of them I liked—at least when I was living in Berlin. Much of the year the weather is a bit cool and not only did the light bulbs allowed me to see well, but they helped heat up my apartment. (It was small enough that a few bulbs could do that.) The heat was a fringe benefit. When it was summer the benefit was less (though the last summer I spent in Berlin was rather chilly) but summer light is longer so I used the bulbs less anyway.

Bascially the EU bureaucrats have ignored the consumers completely. And the consumers are fighting back by stocking up on the bulbs. Spiegel notes that large numbers of people complain about the so-called “eco friendly” bulbs saying that the light “is colder and weaker and the high frequency flickering can cause headaches. Others have complained that the new bulbs are sold with fraudulent promises. The environmentalists promise these bulbs “las much longer than traditional bulbs” but Spiegel reports that tests found that half the bulbs “gave up the ghost after 6,000 hours of use—or much earlier than the manufacturers had promised.” (That corresponds with my experience of the CFLs I used, until now I just assumed I had a bad batch.)


Spiegel quotes lighting designer Ingo Maurer telling his custoers: “We recommend protests against the ban, civil disobedience and the timely hoarding of lighting implements.” One prominent art gallery, Hamburger Kuntshalle, has purchased 600 traditional bulbs so they can light their exhibits properly.

One MP, from my favored German political party, the Free Democrats, called the ban “light bulb socialism.” I would disagree. Socialism is state-ownership of the means of production. What many people confuse with socialism today is nothing more than raw fascism. Just ask Obama, he should know.

I suggest that when the ban is completed there will be a whole new industry created as a result: light bulb smuggling. Apparently politicians are just too damn stupid to ever learn from history, so they repeat it, over and over.

EU wants Australian in jail for opinions expressed in Australia.

In my view people ought to be free to say things that others find offensive. Many people think you ought to be free to say only the things they agree with and forbidden to express opinions contrary to their own. There is a large contingent of people who want to shackle the mind and padlock the lips. And those authoritarians are found on both the Right and the Left.

But some go further than others. Let us consider the case of a man that many would find odious, Gerald Toben. Toben is a citizen of Australia. He runs an outfit called the Adelaide Institute which many people consider anti-Semitic. I agree with their analysis. Toben is, by all indications, an anti-Semite and travels in those circles.

In Germany the government has passed laws making it illegal to “question” the Holocaust. The law is quite vague. It says one may not “play down” the Holocaust or “defame” the dead. Numerous Jewish historians, however, have played down the numbers of dead during the Holocaust. They said previous estimates were too high. They are not bothered by the law as it is applied selectively. Toben, and others like him, are considered bad people by German law. And perhaps they are. But expressing an opinion doesn’t violate any natural right of an individual. As Thomas Jefferson expressed it, opinions neither pick one’s pocket or break one’s leg. They are not crimes, by which I mean, they violate the rights of no one.

Good thing for Toben that he doesn’t live in German, right? Wrong. Mr. Toben lives in Australia where freedom of speech still prevails on the matters he harps about. And he recently was flying through London. But his opinions are not illegal there either. And he never committed the offence of expressing an illegal opinion within Germany itself.

But the EU. issued an arrest warrant anyway. And the British government, under that warrant, arrested Toben on behalf of the German authorities. Germany asserts that Toben expressed his opinions on the internet and since Germans can read the internet they have the right to put Toben on trial in Germany. Note that Germany is claiming world-wide jurisdiction over what opinions one may express on the internet. And it appears the Labour government in the UK is willing to arrest people on behalf of Germany even if the offence is not a offence in England, or in the jurisdiction where the person physically resided when he expressed this opinion.

The arrest is contrary to British legal tradition, which held that an individual can not be arrested in the UK to be deported for a crime unless the “offence” is also a crime in the UK It is a good tradition. Consider the absurdity of enforcing all the laws of the world globally. Should a woman in Bristol be deported for Iran to face stoning for having sex outside marriage, especially if the act was committed in Bristol?

Toben offence did not take place within Germany or within the EU. His opinions were posted to his web site in Australia. He was in Australia when he posted his opinions. No crime was committed in Australia, no crime was committed in the UK, yet Toben is now in a London jail awaiting deportation to a nation which still hasn’t abandoned it’s old Nazi principle of controlling freedom of opinion.

One need not agree with Mr. Toben’s opinions in order to see how tyrannical the European Union is becoming. That the EU issued an arrest warrant for a man expressing his opinion in Australia is outrageous. Apparently the EU is taking it’s legal principles from George Bush and thinks it has world-wide jurisdiction.

These Nazi-like laws regulation opinion are morally wrong for Germany, they are morally wrong for the EU. But one could argue that these governments, as stupid as they are, have jurisdiction over the matter within their own borders. But for the EU to demand that individuals be arrested for expressing an opinion in Australia is downright tyrannical. The EU is asserting world-wide control of opinion and that is unacceptable. What is truly outrageous is that the Labour government in the UK would enforce such an arrest warrant.

I should also mention that the United States has asserted similar world-wide legal authority, with one difference which I will explain. The pickpockets in Congress passed a law which makes it a crime for any US citizen to have sexual relations overseas with anyone under the age of 18. For the record, most civilized countries have age of consent laws below that limit, as does most of the United States itself.

This means the federal government is asserting the right to try a citizen for something which is not a crime where the individual lives nor is it a crime where it took place. A citizen of Connecticut might be in Spain and have legal sex with someone who is 17. That same act would be legal in Connecticut. But the feds argue they have the right to apply a federal law in Spain even though they would have no right to enforce that law within the United States. This sort of claim to world-wide jurisdiction is a monstrous legal principle and a very dangerous one.

But one big difference between this imperialistic law from the US, versus the one from the tyrannical EU, is that the US law only applies to US citizens. The EU law is being used against an Australian citizen for an opinion he expressed outside the EU. That sort of world-wide claim is unique and highly dangerous.

EU politicians booted up with whips in hand.

Europe’s political classes are intent on doing what Hitler and Napoleon only dream of -- having total control of Europe.

There is much about the European Union that is good and much that is bad. It is good that they have basically pulled down the borders and allow the free movement of capital, labour and goods. The creation of this sort of free trade zone is beneficial to the individual nations and the European economy as a whole.

But the EU bureaucrats are not satisfied with doing a few good things. They wish to meddle across Europe and control every product, every laborer, every business and every euro that is earned. They want a political body which has complete control over the European continent.

The first set of measures I discuss encourage competition and wealth creation. But the rules and regulations that the political class wish to impose destroy both competition and wealth. In reality the good from the first set of measures will be wholly undone by the pernicious effects of the second kind of measures.

These are morons who want to impose European-wide regulation regarding such unimportant issues as the length of sausages. The political classes are obsessed with control and with their own alleged ability to centrally plan every aspect of human existence. And they don’t want anything to get in the way of their aspirations to achieve power. This includes their flagrant disregard for democratic processes.

Consider that the EU treaty, what is supposed to be a constitution fo Europe, was actually put to a vote of the public in France and the Netherlands. This “constitution,” that is hundreds of pages long and is a monument to dirigistic attitudes of the petty bureaucracy, was turned down by the French voters and by the Dutch voters.

So what did the political classes do? They simply said “thank you” to the voters and then said their approval or disapproval doesn’t matter. After both France and the Netherlands rejected this monstrosity of a constitution the EU political elite announced that future votes were not needed. They also said that they would tinker with the document a bit here and there and that was all that needed be done.

As for the voters having a say as to whether or not they approve of the new tinkering, well the bureaucratic elite says that is no longer necessary. In other words they told the voters in both those nations: “Screw you, we intend to go ahead with this no matter what you think.”

Ireland had to put the popularity of the EU treaty to a vote. Signing the EU treaty requires Ireland to change its own constitution and that requires approval from the electorate. The Irish voters turned out to vote on the matter in larger numbers than expected and the EU was handily rejected by them.

So here is a third time when the actual voters are allowed to speak on the matter and the third time that they have said, “No, thanks.” And once again the EU political elite it making it clear that they don’t give a damn what the people actually want. All that matters is what the political elite want. One wire service reports: “European leaders vowed Saturday to press ahead with a major EU reform treaty despite Ireland’s shock rejection....”

Actually the polls showed the measure going to defeat. The only people “shocked” by the rejection were the political classes who are used to the voters obeying their orders. Jose Manuel Barros, the president of the European Commission, “insists the Lisbon Treaty is still ‘alive’ and has urged other countries to continue ratifying it, as 18 EU members have already done.” Now not that the other EU members ratified the treaty by avoiding allowing their voters to have any say in the matter. In each case the political ruling classes have forced the measure through the local parliaments and refused to allow any public expression of approval on the matter.

Jean-Pierre Jouyet, a petty French government official, said that there is “no other solution” to this rejection problem than to force the matter to another vote. This sounds like a promise to keep bringing the matter up, again and again, until the voters relent and give the politicians what they are demanding. But Irish politicians are saying such a move is politically impossible for them. They are saying there is no chance of a second vote and that a second vote could be worse. In this election the turnout was high and the margin of defeat significant enough not to ignore.

The left-of-center Guardian newspaper says that German and French politicians are moving “to isolate Ireland...after the Irish dealt the architects of the union’s new regime a crushing defeat.” As they note these bureaucrats are: “refusing to take ireland’s no for an answer... by trying to ringfence the Irish, while demanding that the reform treaty be ratified by the rest of the EU.”

The original promise was that every EU nation would have to approve the treaty for it to come into force. French and German politicians say that those promises should be ignored -- after all what are political promises for, if not to be broken. They demand the “other EU states ratify the treaty as soon as possible to quarantine the Irish, and then come up with some legal manoeuvre enabling the treaty to go ahead.” German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said: “We’re sticking firmly to our goal of putting this treaty into effect. So the process of ratification must continue.”

Angela Merkel, the great sell-out of German politics, said, “We must carry on.”

What we have is a stand-off. The political elite of Europe are lusting after the power that the EU treaty offers them. The people of Europe like the free movement of labor, capital and goods but don’t want brainless bureaucrats in Brussels ordering them about on every niggling matter. The politicians are telling the people that they should shut up and that their wishes really aren’t important. Certainly those few nations that allowed the matter to go to a vote faced the embarrassment of rejection so, for the most part, the political classes simply never allowed the public to have any say in the matter.

The Guardian says that it appears that the EU politicians want to offer some “soothing words” on various issues to the Irish and then “stage the vote again”.

All we can say for sure is that the European power elite in the various governments are livid that the people had any say over who shall rule them. The assumption of most such politicians is that the voters are utter fools with no rights but those granted by the beneficent, and superior, political classes. While, now and then, some pretence of concern for “democratic processes” has to be made, the reality is that the public is a horse and the politicians are the riders, booted up, spurs attached, with whip in hand.

The EU vs the US: Who is Economically Better Off?

My off-hand remark that the average standard of living in the European Union is lower than in the United States was meet with howls of protest. First, as I said would be the case, Europeans denied it adamantly. And many did so in the most bigoted fashion possible. Second, people who are on the political Left howled as well since they love the European welfare states and pretend that they are more prosperous than they are. Of course I get the same howls and dishonesty from the Right when I point out that some of their own myths are false.

In spite of all my criticism of the United States I was accused of being a “patriot” toward the US. In spite of actually living in Europe I was accused of knowing nothing about living in Europe. I made three statement of facts concerning living standards in Europe.

1. I said Europeans had a lower income on average.
2. I said they are taxed more heavily.
3. I said they pay more on average for goods and services.

If you earn less, keep less of what you earn, and face higher prices then the inevitable conclusion is that you can not purchase as much as people who earn more, are taxed less and pay lower prices. I made no other claims in this matter though you would have thought I had argued that George Bush was a knight on a white horse instead of the evil, incompetent man that I actually think him to be.

I did not set out to prove my points regarding Europe as they were secondary to the issue at hand in that blog post. Now I shall do so.

Europeans earn less on average.

The GDP per capita of nations is considered a standard measure of wealth. And these days most people use them adjusted for purchasing parity. That takes into account that spending a $1 in Burundi gets you more than spending $1 in London. So I checked what is the GDP per capita (PPP) for various countries. Germany is $31,900, France is $31,100, Denmark is $37,000, Austria is $34,600, Poland is $14,300, Sweden is $32,000, Spain is $27,400, Netherlands is $32,100 and the UK is $31,8000. The average for the EU is $29,476. The average for the United States is $44,190. The World Factbook has numbers that are very similar: $44,000 for the US and $29,900 for the European Union.

Now some people will compare one nation in Europe to the entire United States instead of comparing the EU average to the US average. That is cheating. For instance Delaware has a much higher per capita GDP than does Mississippi, just over twice as much. No country in Europe beats Delaware on this index. Cherry picking the specific European countries can make the stats look better than the average does as would cherry picking which states one uses for the US.

Instead we take all 50 states all the members of the EU as two groups and compare them. And that gives us the figure of $29,476 for the EU and $44,190 for the US. By the way since these are adjusted for purchasing power that also takes into account the disparities in cost of living. And thus this answers both my first assertion and my third, which I shall address further anyway.

It was asserted by one European commentator that the average American earns something like $23,000 per year. I know that is absurd. So I went to the Labor Department for New York state and went through their data base of hundreds of professions and checked the median annual wage for those occupation. Out of hundreds of positions listed I found only a handful paying near that level. And according to the state of Indiana the “average wage per job in the United States was $36,167 in 2002” I would assume that in the five years since then the average has increased. The same site says wages were increasing at a rate of 3.57% per year. If that remained true that would mean the average today is around $43,100. Well above the bogus $23,000 level that was claimed.

And then there is the undeniable fact that the average US worker keeps a much larger portion of his income and goods and services are less expensive in the US. In addition the average European is almost twice as likely as to be unemployed. The US unemployment rate for last year was 4.6% while for the Euro-zone it was 8.9%.

This unemployment rate is important because people who have zero income are not counted in the average annual wage. Strictly speaking a country of five people, where one is employed at $100,000 and four earn nothing has an average wage rate of $100,000. But the country, where four of the five work for $50,000 and one is unemployed, has an average wages of $50,000. The first country tries to pretend it is better off. In reality the second is. In reality I argued that the incomes of zero must be added in. In that case we discover that in truth the average income in the first country is just $20,000 ($100k divided by 5) while in the second it is $40,000 (4 times $50,000 is $200k divided by 5).

As economist Don Boudreaux noted in an editorial in the Christian Science Monitor noted one way the French, as an example, inflate their average wages is my keeping low wage employees unemployed. The US has millions of immigrants, legal and illegal, who are absorbed into the work force each year. And Americans are younger than Europeans on average and have higher birth rates meaning more young workers enter the force each year. As Boudreaux noted: "If lower-skilled workers enter the labor force in unusually large numbers, the average wage rate will fall without necessarily reducing any worker's pay. Indeed, the typical worker can even see his real-wage rate rise while the average rate falls!" He notes that "A less-flexible economy, such as France's, which makes it difficult for lower-skilled workers to find jobs, will not "suffer" any such fall in its average wage rate." These sort of distortions are routinely left of the debate by the advocates of European socialism.

Europeans pay more in taxes.

The OECD surveys the tax burden in their member states, as measured by tax revenues as a percentage of GDP. The higher the percentage the higher the average tax burden per nation. Since the OECD covers the United States and most of Europe it is a helpful index to use. The five nations with the highest tax burdens were all in the EU: Sweden 50.8%; Denmark 49%; Belgium 45.8%; Finland 44.9%; France 44.2%. The United States was listed at 25.4%. The lowest EU country on the list was Ireland at 30%.

The EU doesn’t deny that is a high tax region, actually the highest taxed region in the world, so I’m perplexed as to why some of my readers want to pretend otherwise. The European Commission Taxation and Customs Union recently released their 2007 index Taxation trends in the European Union (pdf). The opening paragraph of the report states:

The European Union is, taken as a whole, a high tax area. In 2005, the last year for which detailed data are available, the overall tax ratio, i.e. the ratio between total tax revenues and GDP, in the 27 Member States (EU-27) amounted to 39.6 % (in the weighted average; see Table 1); this value is about 13 percentage points above those recorded in the United States and Japan. The EU ratio is high not only compared with these two countries but in general; amongst the non-European OECD members, only New Zealand has a ratio that exceeds 35 per cent of GDP.

We know the US tax burden measured by the percentage of GDP consumed by taxes is 25.4%. Comparing that to individual European countries shows that the rates in Europe are much higher, as the EC admits. In comparison the UK is 37%; Netherlands 38.2%; and Germany 38.8%. And I have mentioned the five very high rates in the EU earlier. But what matters is the average and according to the European Commission that figure is 39.6%. And if the EC knows what they are talking about every country in the EU has a tax burden higher, many significantly higher, than in the United States. In recent years the EU tax burden average was depressed by the admission of relatively low tax states in eastern Europe but the EU is doing its best to force those nations to increase their tax burden to stifle competition within the EU.

Europeans pay more on average.

As I noted above the PPP adjustment takes cost of living into account already. So all I am doing is offer some further comparisons. If I were to purchase an ear of corn at my local store it would cost me $1.36. The store I use is connected in some way with A&P in the US (at least they stock many A&P items) so I pulled up a random store in the US in New Jersey (not one of the cheapest states either) and they had ears of corn on sale for 16¢. Recently when I was spending a few months in the UK I remember the price for an ear of corn there was about $1.00 each.

The US store sells Barbeque sauce for 79¢ and I recently paid $6.80 here but that might be excused since it was "imported". Two liter bottles of Pepsi are $1.25 each while I would pay about twice that for 1.5 liters (actually I stopped buying soft drinks due to the prices). The potatoes I buy in Europe are slightly more expensive but they are very small, potatoes and not of the quality of the Idaho baking potatoes. A store one bus ride away does stock similar potatoes but at a much higher price plus the bus trip is $3 so I rarely purchase there unless I have to be there for another reason. The food items I picked here are items I have priced or purchased within the last few days and are merely examples.

Take petrol as another example. According to the Automobile Association of Ireland the average for one liter of petrol in the US was € .58 during June. The cheapest petrol in Europe, in comparison, can be purchased in Estonia for € .87. Here are a few other countries to compare to the US rate of € .58: Germany € 1.35; France € 1.08; Netherlands € 1.08; UK € 1.45; Italy € 1.21. The average cost for petrol is double to triple what the price is in the US. Of course those high prices have knock on effects on other goods and services as well.

One popular index is the cost of living index for various major cities in the world. They use New York City as the base rate. And New York City is the most expensive American city. It is still cheaper than many European cities. London is scary when one looks at prices. For instance a tube ticket there is almost three times the rate for a subway ticket in New York. A music CD that costs € 13.22 in New York is € 19.17 in London. A burger meal that is € 4.32 in New York is € 5.74 in London.

Of the major cities in the world, as I stated already, New York is the most expensive in the United States. Yet in Europe it would be cheaper than London, Copenhagen, Geneva, Zurich, Oslo, Milan, or Paris.

Of course one can compare specific items and find bargains in different places. The question is not whether a specific product costs more, less or the same but whether all products, on average cost more or less. That is precisely what purchasing power parity takes into account.

The average income in Europe is lower than in the US. The average American is allowed to keep more of his income than is the average European And when it comes to spending the money which is left over the average price of goods and services are lower in the US than in the EU.

Are these the only measures of well-being? No. I never claimed otherwise. Are there problems in the US? Of course, there are problems everywhere. And there are some in the US that are significant. I think the loss of Constitutional rights in the US, under the current regime, has been frightening. I believe the US has been moving rapidly toward a police state but the same is true for the UK as well. And US foreign policy is harmful to the whole world. And I don’t believe the Democrats will reverse any of this. But then I have made my position on those issues well known here.

Is this blind loyalty to the US? If so I would be living in the US. The reality is that the economic conditions in the US are vastly better than in Europe, especially in the old EU nations that have decrepit economies and demographic trends that are disastrous. Just because I despise Bush and various aspects of American culture (like the fundamentalists) that doesn’t mean I’m going to lie about the economic conditions. Unfortunately many people who share my dislikes about such aspects of America feel they are justified in distorting the truth.

Everything is taxed and subsidized.

The bureaucrats in Brussels, the headquarters of the European Union, are just as anxious to micromanage the lives of others, and to dictate to them, as those in Washington. In other words the people in Brussels are just another version of George Bush -- that ought to upset both Bush and the EU-acrates. Admittedly the Europeans aren’t as likely to torture you but sometimes you’d wish they would as that might be an improvement over the constant Nannying and harassment.

EU bureaucrats spend millions per year to “educate” people. Now I think there is very little doubt that smoking is bad you. You really ought not do it.

The EU claims that “some 80,000 people a year in the EU” are killed by “passive smoking”. No source for that is listed. And from what I’ve seen it is very tenuous to claim that passive smoking is this dangerous. Suffice to say the EU is intent on making Europe smoking free.

Oddly the EU benefits from people smoking. Most EU countries are welfare states that are in deep trouble. They promise pensions to their citizens along with health care and can’t deliver on the promises without constantly raising taxes higher and higher. But by doing that they destroy jobs and create high unemployment requiring massive welfare benefits. And they end up on this downward spiral. Smokers actually offer them some relief. One is that they pay massive taxes for the “privilege” of being allowed, by their political masters, to smoke. The other is that smoking does, on average, shorten their lives and that benefits the welfare state’s bottom line. While there are increased health costs due to smoking the reduced life expectancy means they collect pensions for a shorter time than non smokers. The result tends to be a net gain for the welfare state.

While the EU spends train loads of money to make Europe smoke free it then spends more train loads of money to subsidize tobacco production.

In an exchange in the British parliament one House member asked the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs “what subsidies are available at (a) EU and (b) national levels to producers of tobacco in the European Union?”

The answer was that: “The European Union adopted budget for tobacco premiums in 2006 was € 920 million...” That’s a lot of cash folks. But we are assured that these subsidies are tied to “a quota system” and that “any tobacco grown beyond quota will only fetch market prices and no premium.” Now don’t you feel better?

The first 350,600 tons of tobacco produced fetches the farmer market value plus extra money from the European Union. And then anything over that will “only fetch” market prices. Oh, those poor farmers! They only get paid above market prices for their tobacco on 350,600 tons. The subsidy to grow tobacco is about 20 times higher than the subsidy to grow grain. There are something like 135,000 people, in Europe, paid by the EU to grow tobacco. You’d think with all these subsidies they could grow decent farm produce in Europe -- but from what I see they can’t. Vegetables are awful in Europe and the meat quality is pretty low. I’ve concluded that one reason the French use so many sauces is to cover up the quality of the meat.

But then subsidies tend to lower the quality of one’s goods and ultimately make one less competititve and more likely to fail.

The EU-acrates will note that a good deal of the tobacco is exported, much of it to poor nations. So the EU subsidizes cancer for the world’s poor. How nice of them! Of course, because of the higher death rates, they also send foreign aid to these countries to try and reverse some of the effects of smoking. It appears that the EU subsidizes everything! But to even things out they also tax everything! And Europeans like to think Americans are stupid?