Rick Steves Travel as a Political Act

by Rick Steves

  Consequently, Europe is willing to make laws that are (at least in the narrow view) bad for business. While in Europe, the notion of paying for a car’s disposal when you first buy the car makes sense, it would be dismissed in the US as bad for the economy. Because carbon taxes are considered good for the environment but bad for business, I doubt you’ll see them anytime soon in the US—but several European countries already have them.

  European Solutions

  Throughout the world, people solve similar problems with different approaches. Here are some European answers.

  All my life, I’ve paid the city for a sanitation worker to pick up my garbage. In Switzerland, the garbage bag costs more…and includes pick-up. When it’s full, put it out on any curb. The next morning, it’s gone.

  An Italian law requires drivers to wear a seatbelt. Your car makes annoying noises if you don’t buckle up. So the Italians, in their own creative way, have designed a handy little plug to quiet their car. Problema finito.

  Junk mail exasperates us. Others don’t like junk mail, either. Many Europeans have a simple solution. They put a decal on the mailbox that says simply “no” or “yes” to different types of junk mail.

  While we have stop signs in the middle of nowhere, the British have roundabouts. You don’t stop. You wing into that roundabout and take off at the exit of your choice.

  In the Netherlands, they have four-story parking garages for bicycles. The Dutch take the train in, hop on their bike, and pedal to work. It’s not necessarily out of dedication to the environment. Biking simply works well.

  Even as Europeans accept this system, they love to complain about the heavy-handedness of big government. Cumbersome bureaucracy creeps into virtually all aspects of life. Strict health codes for restaurants dictate that cooked food must be frozen if it’s not served within three hours. My Czech friend complained, “This makes many of our best dishes illegal.” (Czech specialties, often simmered, taste better the next day.) A Polish farmer I know gripes that, when Poland joined the EU, he had to get “passports” for his cows. Italians chafed at having to wear helmets while riding their otherwise stylish motorinos. Throughout the EU, people are compromising as one-size-fits-all governance takes a toll on some of their particular passions.

  While Europeans seem to find clever ways to get government on their backs, the American chorus has long been, “Get the government off our backs.” We don’t want regulations—especially the extreme examples cited above. While the financial crisis that erupted in 2008 brought attention to the problematic lack of regulations on both sides of the Atlantic, America has long had a less regulated business environment than Europe.

  On the other hand, in Europe, workers’ protection, environmental protection, and what seems like an obsession for regulations in general make even surviving as a small employer tough. Europe is a challenging, even demoralizing environment for running a small business. While I appreciate the way Europe organizes much of its society, I’m thankful I run my business here rather than there. In Europe, I could never have the creative fun I enjoy as an entrepreneur in the USA.

  Is the American approach “wrong” and Europe’s approach “right?” As a taxpayer and a job creator, I see pros and cons to both systems. We can all benefit by comparing notes.

  Europeans Work Less

  One priority of the European approach is striking a comfortable work-life balance. The EU has about 500 million people, with an annual economy of around $16 trillion. To put that into relative terms, the United States, with around 300 million people, has an economy of approximately the same size. Proponents of the American system point out that Europeans don’t make as much money as we do. It’s true—with more people generating only the same gross economy, they earn less per person. But Western European workers make essentially the same per hour as ours do. They just choose to work fewer hours.

  I was raised believing there was one good work ethic: You work hard. While we call this the work ethic, it’s actually only a work ethic. Europeans have a different one. They choose to work fewer hours than American do, and willingly make correspondingly less income. While this may not be good for business, it is good for life. Choosing to work less is part of “family values” in Europe; meanwhile, here in business-friendly America, working less is frowned upon…almost subversive.

  European adults get lots of time to play.

  A Greek friend of mine spent twenty years working in New York. Only after he retired and returned to Greece did he realize that not once in all those years in America did he take a nap. Back in Greece, if he’s sleepy in the afternoon, he takes a snooze. Europeans marvel at how Americans seem willing, almost eager, to work themselves into an early grave. In many countries, European friends have told me proudly, “We don’t live to work…we work to live.”

  Europeans understand the trade-off. Because they choose to work less, most Europeans don’t strive for the material affluence that their American counterparts do. European housing, cars, gadgets, and other “stuff” are modest compared to what an American with a similar job might own. It’s a matter of priorities. Just as Europeans willingly pay higher taxes for a higher standard of service, they choose less pay (and less stuff) in exchange for more time off. Imagine this in your own life: Would you make do with a smaller car if you knew you didn’t have to pay health insurance premiums and co-pays? Would you be willing to give up the luxury of a giant TV and live in a smaller house if you could cut back to 35 hours per workweek and get a few extra weeks of paid vacation? For most Americans, I imagine that the European idea of spending more time on vacation and with their family, instead of putting in hours of overtime, is appealing.

  I have an American friend who runs a very small movement called Take Back Your Time (www.timeday.org). Its mission: to teach Americans that we have the shortest vacations in the rich world, and it’s getting worse. His movement’s national holiday is October 24th. That’s because, by its estimates, if we accepted only the typical European workload, yet worked as long and hard as people do in the US, October 24th would be the last day of the year we’d have to go to work.

  However, with the pressures of globalization, Europe is having to rethink some of its “live more, work less” ideals. For example, the Spanish government is funding incentives to keep workers from going home for a midday siesta, which most agree hurts productivity. And I have a theory that in Ireland (where sales of Guinness are down), the number of pubs has shrunk at the same rate that the number of cafés increased, as that society has ramped up its productivity. Drinkers of heavy stout have shifted to lighter lagers, and drinkers of lager have shifted to coffee. Replacing beer with caffeine is a symptom of our faster-paced, more competitive world.

  An Integrated Economy: Pros and Cons

  Perhaps the most remarkable feat of a united Europe has been the unification of its economy. Trade barriers between nations are a thing of the past, and the euro currency has replaced 18 (and counting) separate national currencies. Imagine: The same coins are used in Lisbon, Tallinn, Dublin, and Thessaloniki, creating the vast free-trade Eurozone. While originally tied more or less one-to-one with the US dollar, the euro skyrocketed soon after its debut in 2002, and has hovered well above the dollar ever since. But economic integration has come with its challenges, and in the early 2010s, Europeans realized that what goes up together, must come down together. They’ve learned the hard way that different countries can have vastly different philosophies about fiscal prudence.

  When a nation joins the European Union, it’s either a “net contributor” or a “net receiver.” (It’s not unlike the US, where the traditionally “blue” states—the centers of commerce and industry—pay taxes to subsidize farmers, military bases, and the poor people in typically “red” states.) While there’s lots of wrangling in Brussels about just who gives and gets what, Europeans know their economic union is only as strong as its weakest link. Therefore, wealthy countries give more than they get—willingly, if not always
enthusiastically. That money bolsters the poorer countries. And eventually, in theory, they develop to the point where, rather than weak links, they become net contributors as well.

  But it hasn’t quite worked out that way. Think about the vast diversity the Eurozone attempts to corral. Germans are as famous for their work ethic as Italians are for la dolce far niente (“the sweetness of doing nothing”) and Spaniards are for their aimless after-dark paseo wanderings. A nation of workaholics or a nation of less aggressive workers can function just fine, provided everyone’s on the same page. But when hardworking folk begin to feel that they’re propping up their “lazy” compatriots in other countries, things get testy.

  Things reached a head during the economic crisis of the early 2010s, when Europe paid the price—in the form of expensive bailouts and painful cutbacks—for what had been taken-for-granted services. It’s no coincidence that the European countries that have received the most development aid (the so-called “PIIGS” countries—Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain) are the ones who are the most debt-ridden and at risk of failing. Even with that aid, their productivity has lagged far behind the stronger economies. And, even though their workforce doesn’t produce as much per capita as German workers, they still have a mighty currency that’s tied to Germany. By earning wages and getting aid in euros, these nations enjoyed a false prosperity that they may not have merited—and the bursting real-estate bubble made it worse. Before unity, if a nation didn’t produce much and slid into crippling debt, it could simply devalue its currency (and by doing so, decrease society-wide what laborers were paid in real terms). But the euro makes that impossible.

  In 2012, a feisty political debate erupted between two nations with diametrically opposed fiscal philosophies. Greece grabbed headlines for the severity of its troubles and its apparent inability to resolve them. For a while, it seemed the Greek crisis may undo the euro currency, and possibly the entire EU; leaders discovered that it’s much easier to get into the Eurozone than it is to get out. Germany—which generates more than a quarter of the EU’s total GDP, and is its biggest net contributor—felt it should have some say in the union it had been bankrolling for all these years. Chancellor Angela Merkel was willing to help bail out Greece, but her offer had strings attached: The Greeks must learn to live within their means, to be enforced by strict fiscal benchmarks.

  Greeks on the street chafed at the suggestion that they should give up promised vacations and retirements, and be forced to adopt a Germanic nose-to-the-grindstone attitude. But eventually the Greeks accepted the bailout, with those strings; as of this writing, the country’s economy has stabilized and the euro is safe. When I asked my German friends what they thought of the billions of German-earned euros going south to bail out Greece, the consensus seemed to be, “We’ve made plenty of money off of them in the past, and after propping them up through this crisis, we’ll continue to make money off of them in the future.”

  This bridge may be in Greece, but it was paid for with mostly German money—so German trucks full of Gummy Bears could efficiently get to their market across the Gulf of Corinth in the Peloponneisan Peninsula.

  Europe’s Internal Marshall Plan

  Periodic controversies aside, Europe strives to put the revenue it collects to good use. The EU is dedicated to bringing its infrastructure up to snuff. After World War II, the United States invested in rebuilding Europe with the Marshall Plan. It was a smart policy designed to assure us strong and stable trading partners and allies. Over the last couple of decades, for essentially the same reasons, Europe has employed a kind of internal Marshall Plan—investing hundreds of billions of euros in roads, rail lines, communication, education, and other improvements to strengthen their union. Travelers not only see this, they benefit from it.

  Among the original members of the European Union, Portugal, Spain, Greece, and Ireland were the net receivers. Back then, I remember no freeways in any of those countries. Now they’re rolling out freeways in all of them. And every time you drive on a slick new thoroughfare, you see a European flag reminding locals where the funding came from.

  The Cost of Policing the World

  While it’s easy for pacifists (at home and abroad) to grumble about the US military, the reality is that we are the world’s traffic cop. Americans pay with blood and money to protect victims of tyranny and to defend democracy and free enterprise around the world. Defeating the USSR, saving people from genocide in Kosovo, and fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan are expensive. Typically, the US foots most of the bill while Europe moves in with peacekeeping forces afterwards. Or, as some people put it, “The US does the cooking, and Europe does the dishes.”

  Given America’s unique world-leadership position, our limited economic means, and the world’s reliance on our military might, we need to choose our battles thoughtfully. There are cases where the world supports our involvement (Darfur, Kosovo, Afghanistan), and places where they don’t (Central America and Iraq). We can do whatever we want…but it sure makes things easier on everybody when we wield our might with the support of our friends and allies.

  Perhaps the EU wouldn’t have so much money for its infrastructure if it had to do its own fighting. But consider the flipside: By their judgment, sinking money into their infrastructure rather than into their military is better for their long-term security. In the European view, America is trapped in an inescapable cycle to feed its military-industrial complex: As we bulk up our military, we look for opportunities to make use of it. (When your only tool is a hammer, you treat every problem like a nail.) And then, when we employ our military unwisely, we create more enemies…which makes us feel the need to grow our military even more. If an American diplomat complained to his European counterpart, “America is doing all the heavy lifting when it comes to military,” the European might respond, “Well, you seem to be enjoying it. We’re building roads and bridges instead.”

  Traveling affords a good opportunity to consider how American military might has helped make our world a better place—and how it hasn’t—and what kind of fiscal and military policies make a society stronger and safer.

  Trains are faster than ever. Recently, on a bullet train in France, I enjoyed a smooth and silent 200-mile-per-hour ride through pastoral countryside. As if the rail company was ashamed of the “slower” stretches, the speedometer was only illuminated when the train exceeded 300 kilometers per hour. On a visit to Munich, I was photographing trains pulling in to the station—with birds squished onto the windshields. Looking at those poor birds, I thought, “You’d wait all your life to see a bird squished onto a windshield of a train back in my hometown.”

  Europe’s new high-speed train network is good for commerce…but bad for birds.

  A bullet train zips under the English Channel, taking people from Paris to London in two and a half hours. Denmark and Sweden built a mammoth bridge connecting Copenhagen and Malmö, creating Scandinavia’s largest metropolitan area. And cities throughout Europe seem to be forever dug up because they are constantly improving and expanding their underground transit systems.

  Non-EU nations are investing, too. Norway, with fewer than five million people, has drilled some of the longest tunnels in the world to lace together isolated communities in the fjords. Istanbul scraped together the money to build a massive train tunnel under the Bosphorus to connect Asia and Europe and grease its economic engine. And there’s an effort underway to dig a tunnel connecting Spain and Morocco under the Strait of Gibraltar.

  Savvy nations understand that infrastructure is the foundation for prosperity (and power). Hitler knew he couldn’t take on Europe without a good highway system, so he built the autobahn. The United States undertook a massive investment in our interstate highway system in the 1950s, which helped our country—with rich and poor states enjoying equal-quality, federally funded roads—truck itself into greater economic power. And in our generation, Europe is investing money it could be spending on its military on its infrastructu
re instead.

  Berlin’s train station is the biggest in Europe, with 1,800 trains a day arriving on 14 major train lines, coming in at right angles on two different levels.

  Exploring a continent with a level of affluence similar to the US’s gives us a chance to see firsthand the result of allocating limited resources with different priorities. People everywhere hear the excuse “there’s not enough money.” But there’s plenty of money. It’s just that each society makes different choices according to its priorities: new stadium, healthcare for all, faster trains, extravagant cathedral, subsidized education, tax cuts, next-generation bomber, and so on.

  Europe Wants Peace

  So far I’ve focused on the economy of the European Union. But for the EU’s founders, money took a backseat to their primary motivation: peace. Even the biggest Euroskeptic recognizes that, in weaving together the economies of former enemies like France and Germany, everyone has become so interconnected that Europe will never again suffer devastation from a major war as they did twice in the last century. The French and the Germans still don’t agree on many things. But now they’ve become too financially interdependent to take up arms over their differences. Minimizing the possibility of an intra-European war is the triumph of the EU.

  When boots do hit the ground in a war, Europeans believe it’s because they have failed to prevent it. They prefer endless diplomacy to once-in-a-while war. Europe’s reluctance to go to war frustrates some Americans. I believe their relative pacifism is because Europeans know the reality of war, while most Americans do not. Of course, if you have a loved one who has fought or died in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Vietnam, you know what a war is. But as a society, the US can’t remember actually hosting a war. Europeans have told me that they believe the US is more willing to use its military muscle because in the age of modern warfare, no American city has ever been wiped from existence like Coventry, Dresden, Rotterdam, or Warsaw. It’s easier to feel detached when a war is something you watch on the nightly news, rather than something that killed your grandfather or destroyed your hometown.