It’s common to think about social policies like islands, where the US does this and gets this result, and other countries such as in Europe do that and get that result.
But we in the US should remember that we’re actually dragging down the others.
We all know the term ‘race to the bottom’. If you remove requirements for businesses, then those that cut costs in worker safety, benefits, salary, gain competitive advantage.
That pressures even the businesses who want to pay more, not to or go out of business.
The US is competing with Europe in the world market. And when we don’t allow unions, pay our workers less, don’t pay for healthcare — our costs go down, and it puts pressure on other countries.
Europe doesn’t get to decide in a vacuum how much vacation and healthcare and childcare leave to offer, if they can’t compete with US, their businesses go out of business.
We’re used to this idea with third world countries or China — how they spend less and drag us down. We do it to Europe.
We’re the biggest economy in the world, so they can’t just brush it off much.
I suspect one of the few things balancing it is how much we waste on the military (more than all of them combined by far), and other waste for profit, making us less competitive.
But if not for those things, I can imagine it would be devastating for Europe trying to compete and force them to race to the bottom more and slash their spending on workers.
That’s where, for all our battles on domestic policy, having global standards is important, and how our winning more for workers here can protect those standards for workers elsewhere.
Solidarity indeed.