For over 20 years I have argued that Western Europe’s high unemployment rates are unsustainable. At the end of the 1970’s, monetarists bet that only a transitory and modest increase in unemployment could rein in the creeping – and trotting – inflation of the industrial west, and that in retrospect the cost of returning to effective price stability would be judged worthwhile. In Britain and the United States, this monetarist bet turned out well. In Western Europe, it did not.
For over 20 years I have argued that Western Europe’s high unemployment rates are unsustainable. At the end of the 1970’s, monetarists bet that only a transitory and modest increase in unemployment could rein in the creeping – and trotting – inflation of the industrial west, and that in retrospect the cost of returning to effective price stability would be judged worthwhile. In Britain and the United States, this monetarist bet turned out well. In Western Europe, it did not.