Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?: How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life [Hardcover]

Thomas Geoghegan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 10, 2010

The acclaimed labor lawyer and prizewinning author Thomas Geoghegan asks: where are we better off—America or Europe? In an idiosyncratic, entertaining travelogue that plays on public policy, Geoghegan asks what our lives would be like if we lived them as Europeans. Sneaking out of his workaholic American life, he takes five trips where he tries to understand so-called European socialism firsthand. Though he first tries France (which has become a rhetorical stand-in for the continent as a whole in many Americans' minds), he eventually ventures into Germany to see what some call the "boring" Europe. There he finds the true "other"—an economic model with more bottom-up worker control than that of any other country in the world—and argues that, while we have to take Germany’s problems seriously, we also have to look seriously at how much it has achieved. Social democracy may let us live nicer lives; it also may be the only way to be globally competitive. This wry, timely book helps us understand why the European model, contrary to popular neoliberal wisdom, may thrive well into the twenty-first century without compromising its citizens' ease of living—and be the best example for the United States to follow.

Germany is more generous than the U.S.:
The average number of paid vacation days in the U.S. is 13, versus Germany’s 35
New mothers in the U.S. get three months of unpaid job-protected leave and only if they work for a company of 50 or more employees, while Germany mandates four months’ paid leave and will pay parents 67% of their salary to stay home for up to 14 months to care for a newborn.
U.S. life expectancy is 50th in the world, compared to Germany’s 32nd.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Labor lawyer and Europhile, Geohegan (Which Side Are You On?) makes a passionate case for the high-tax, regulation-heavy model of life on the Continent. Using Germany as a model, he argues the middle class is the real beneficiary of European social democracy--its members reap free education, free child care, free nursing home care, guaranteed vacation time, and generous unemployment payments--while their white-collar American counterparts struggle to pay for the same. "Europe is set up for the bourgeois," writes Geohegan. "America's a great place to buy kitty litter at Wal-Mart and relatively cheap gas. But it's not set up for me, a professional without a lot of money." While he's quick to acknowledge that critics seize on labor's costs and prominence as a potential path to the collapse of the system, he's convinced of the framework in place. The narrative unspools in a chatty, anecdotal style; it's jumpy, appealingly digressive, and winning, all the more so for being such an unabashed polemic that refuses to be resigned to the rising rate of inequality in the U.S.
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Review

[C]lever and immensely appealing.
—The Nation

Witty and ironic—and to the point. . . . [A] necessary primer.
—Financial Times

Geoghegan’s passing comments are entertaining and his acerbic wit fun as he buttresses his case with hard facts. . . . [P]olitical economics with a human face.
—Chicago Tribune

[T]ruly eye-opening.
—St. Petersburg Times

Geoghegan . . . once again entertains and instructs us. And by showing that a more humane form of capitalism is not only possible but actually succeeding in the heart of Europe, he also gives us hope.
—Alternet

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: New Press, The (August 10, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 159558403X
• ISBN-13: 978-1595584038
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #294,242 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

61 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Manic style, sound substance, September 9, 2010

By 

A. J. Sutter (Tokyo, Japan) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?: How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life (Hardcover)

This is a very clever and worthwhile book. It's hard to imagine an easier, more entertaining or more vivid way to learn about the differences in social policies between Europe and the States. It has something in common with Michael Moore's "Sicko," except it's broader in scope, more first-person, more self-deprecating, a touch more wonkish and from a someone with a lot more gravitas. (Warning: it makes no pretense of being "fair and balanced": the author (TG) touts his liberal credentials proudly -- though he ridicules Larry Summers as much as any Republicans.)

The style put me off at first: TG is a double-Harvard graduate (college & law school) and a partner in a law firm, but tries to make us believe he's a clueless, farcical shlemil as he embarks on his first trip to Europe as an adult. But by the second half of the book he often peeks from behind this mask, and his humor is much more ironic and pointed. I read most of the book in a couple of cafés, and got stared at for chuckling out loud.

Stared at, because I live in Japan where people reading books in public don't usually laugh. But otherwise Japan has a lot in common with the Europe described in this book: most people are much better taken-care of here, with far lower unemployment than the US (or even Germany), health care that's almost as cheap as Germany's, and far less impact from the recent recession. And yet people in America imagine we're spiraling down the toilet, mainly because US media outlets spin their reportage (and op-eds, Prof. Krugman) to align with that theme. Just as they demonize Europe as socialist. I totally understand why TG uses such an unsubtle, though good-humored, tone: because Americans so often refuse to see what's really, really true.

Actually, even Japan could learn some things from Germany, such as the low cost of the educational system, and the strength of labor unions and work councils. TG's remarks about how Americans use their disposable income to turn their homes into gadget-filled cocoons while even blue-collar Europeans go out drinking, dancing and to the (live) theater also make one ponder the strength of our social fabric. If you have any interest in reading about social reality rather than vampire tales, "escapist" murder mysteries, or political rants by folks who are proud to be ignorant, you'll find this book a great mix of fun with seriousness.

40 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must read, even for conservatives, September 6, 2010

By 

John Wasik "John F. Wasik, author "The Au... (Grayslake, Illinois) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?: How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life (Hardcover)

As a Harvard-educated labor lawyer, Geoghegan is acutely aware of how frayed and tattered the social contract has become. Companies close down factories and wreck communities. The workers are left with little to nothing. Globalization forces the business to find cheaper labor in Mexico, China or Viet Nam. It's a constant race to the bottom if you are in a high-wage country. Well, maybe not, and that's the strange interplay of sacrifice and hope when we look at the future of American labor.

Geoghegan sees the European Model of Social Democracy as a beacon in the Western World. Germany offers a prime example. Once ridiculed for its rigid model of union-management partnerships, huge social safety net and six-week vacations, Germany seems to have evaded the ugliest aftershock of globalism.

In the European "worker-first" system, both mothers and fathers get paid leave after the birth of a child; work weeks are shorter, there's lots of vacation time (three times as much as the US), nursing home benefits, national health care and workers who are not only allowed to work with management -- but sit as active members in boardroom decisions.

Is this the horrible socialist peril that ravaged the Soviet Union? Hardly. Social democracy thrives. The Germans have an export surplus, high productivity, a vibrant manufacturing base and low debt. They didn't suffer from a housing meltdown and their banks didn't need bailing out. Of course, German unemployment is still a problem (although it's a few points lower than the US) and taxes are high, yet look what they get for their public-sector dollars.

In the US, even after health and financial reform, we are still hostage to the private insurance industry (with a lot more consumer safeguards) while the biggest banks have grown bigger still to corner even more investment capital.

What about those big, evil European Unions? In Germany, the unions have protected benefits instead of bargaining them away just to survive. Germans have high savings rates and pension plans not tied to the stock market. "Most Germans have big supplements from collective bargaining," writes Geoghegan. In the US, unionized workers are clinging to mostly government sector jobs. The white collar workforce has to deal with endless work without pay, shrinking benefits and uncertain pensions, which are underfunded to the tune of $260 billion.

If Americans can somehow get around the dogma that we must be the world's supercop, suppress unions at all cost and assume that corporate interests have primacy, we might be able to see the light that social capitalism -- profits generated in the public welfare -- could work. Obama has certainly tried, only to run into the relentless buzzsaw of corporate-funded propaganda and misplaced Tea Party rants. So I doubt if Geoghegan will change any minds, but his way of illuminating the disparities between corporate capitalism and social capitalism is nothing less than brilliant.

-- John F. Wasik, author "The Cul-de-Sac Syndrome: Turning Around the Unsustainable American Dream (Bloomberg): Turning Around the Unsustainable American Dream" (Bloomberg Press, 2009)

63 of 70 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book, July 30, 2010

By 

John Foster "Proud Liberal" (USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?: How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life (Hardcover)

Explains our problems in the US and why Europe is doing better. We don't get that in our news here. The rich own the media here and tells us what they want to believe. Anyone in the lower or middle classes should read this book.