{"id":2255,"date":"2009-03-26T20:59:52","date_gmt":"2009-03-26T20:59:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2255"},"modified":"2009-03-26T20:59:52","modified_gmt":"2009-03-26T20:59:52","slug":"the_continental","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2255","title":{"rendered":"The Continental Way"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Conservatives live in constant fear that the United States is becoming more like that haven for socialists and layabouts known as Europe. But a quick glance at the news reveals that Europeans have a more sanguine reaction to the recession compared to the fear and panic keeping many Americans awake at night. As Ezra Klein points out, the social safety nets found in most developed European nations are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.prospect.org\/csnc\/blogs\/ezraklein_archive?month=03&amp;year=2009&amp;base_name=how_safety_nets_protect_agains\">softening the recession&#8217;s blow for their citizens<\/a>. A job loss doesn&#8217;t deprive them of basic health care, education, and food. Americans, lacking such guarantees, tend to keep a wary eye on neighbors and colleagues during tight economic times and sharply pull back their spending when they see that the family down the street lost their home or several close friends lost their jobs. And this kind of massive spending curb only makes recessions worse. <\/p>\n<p>We Americans may have arrived at one of those critical decision points that comes along once in a generation. Do we sacrifice a little economic growth for quite a bit of peace of mind? Or do we countenance the <a href=\"http:\/\/yglesias.thinkprogress.org\/archives\/2009\/03\/bushvilles_rising_in_california.php\">shantytowns springing up in American cities<\/a> as the price to pay for the next boom?<\/p>\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.zemanta.com\/pixy.gif?w=695\" \/><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Conservatives live in constant fear that the United States is becoming more like that haven for socialists and layabouts known as Europe. But a quick glance at the news reveals that Europeans have a more sanguine reaction to the recession compared to the fear and panic keeping many Americans awake at night. As Ezra Klein <a href='https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2255' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-An","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2255\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}