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Since this legendary (and legendarily corrupt) Bavarian Ministerpr?sident joined the Blaskapelle invisible in 1988, his mortal remains have awaited the last trump next to those of his wife in a tomb in Rott am Inn. Unless the last trump blows quickly, though, he might need to shift his resting place.

The tomb is not in the churchyard but on a privately-owned plot just behind it. And there’s the problem, as the S?ddeutsche reports. The plot now belongs to Strauss’s son Max. And Max is not only insolvent but facing trial for tax evasion. The inland revenue has slapped liens on everything he owns, including the tomb. And, unless Max comes up with a wodge of money that he apparently does not have, the state will auction off his real property, tomb included.

Now, Strauss is revered to this day as something of a god by a substantial slice of Bavaria’s political establishment. Beery jowls grew an angry red at the news. ‘Impiety! Sacrilege!’, came the cries. Nobody at the inland revenue wanted to admit to having filed the lien. Current Ministerpr?sident and one-time prime ministerial candidate Edmund Stoiber is feeling the heat: how could he have failed to know about this, and if he did know about it, how could he have failed to stop it? Can’t have the pharaoh’s mummy on the auction block.

Ah, as I reach the end of the article, I read that Strauss’s daughter has been told the lien will be lifted. Pity, that; I might have put in a bid myself. Just think what Gunther von Hagens could have done with the corpse!

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All our well-known demonstrations of the large deadweight losses from social programs overuse imagination and assumption. There are good reasons why statistical tests keep coming up with near-zero estimates of the net damage from social programs on economic growth. It’s not just that the tales of deadweight losses describe bad policies that real-world welfare states do not practice. It’s also that the real-world welfare states reap offsetting benefits from a style of taxing and spending that is pro-growth.

The keys to the free lunch puzzle are:

(1) For a given share of social budgets in Gross Domestic Product, the high-budget welfare states choose a mix of taxes that is more pro-growth than the mix chosen in the United States and other relatively private-market OECD countries.

(2) On the recipient side, as opposed to the tax side, welfare states have adopted several devices for minimizing young adults’ incentives to avoid work and training.

(3) Government subsidies to early retirement bring only a tiny reduction in GDP, partly because the more expensive early retirement systems are designed to take the least productive employees out of work, thereby raising labor productivity.

(4) Similarly, the larger unemployment compensation programs have little effect on GDP. They lower employment, but they raise the average productivity of those remaining at work.

(5) Social spending often has a positive effect on GDP, even after weighing the effects of the taxes that financed the spending. Not only public education spending, but even many social transfer programs raise GDP per person.

(6) The design of these five keys suggests an underlying logic to the pro-growth side of the welfare state. The higher the social budget as a share of GDP, the higher and more visible is the cost of a bad choice. In democracies where any incumbent can be voted out of office, the welfare states seem to pay closer attention to the productivity consequences of program design. In the process, those countries whose political tastes have led to high social budgets have drifted toward a system that delivers its tax bills to the less elastic factors of production, in the Ramsey tradition.

Or, to summarise, social spending is good for personal productivity, and democracy is effective in ensuring that real-world governments avoid the costly mistakes that anti-welfare theorists assume. Apart from illustrating the dangers of hand-waving economic arguments, this tells us that the choice between a European-style high-welfare state, and a US-style low-welfare state, has nothing to do with promoting economic growth and is simply a matter of which kind of society we find more pleasant to live in.

[Via this Electrolite comments thread]

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Some of these objections are rational indeed. Cyprus is an obvious and painful sore thumb. And, though Turkey seems to have improved somewhat in recent years, its human rights record needs a bit of burnishing to bring it up to EU standard. (And I’d have thought the prospect of eventual EU membership a great big fat carrot in that regard.)

Given such rational objections, I think it clear that an invitation to Turkey to join tomorrow would be premature. But Turkey can work with the EU to remove those objections.

It is the irrational objections that annoy me. And these, I suspect, are not objections to Turkey joining now but joining ever.

The objection that only a small smidgen of Turkey is actually in Europe may be waved aside with a laugh. That is the argument of those who triumphantly point out that Ireland sticks up farther north than Northern Ireland (or Virginia farther west than West Virginia).

But the more serious ‘emotional’ objections boil down merely to bigotry. In Germany, the right-wing Union parties think Turkey too, em, different to belong to the EU. One suspects they’d be more amenable to the idea, if only the Turks were Christian, and less swarthy.

But it’s called the ‘European Union’, not the ‘European Christian Union’. Europe is not Christendom. It is a post-Christian place in which a good number of people remain, to a greater or lesser degree, Christians. In the same way, Turkey is not Islamic, though most Turks are (to a greater or lesser degree) Muslims.

Squint your eyes a bit so the confessional differences blur. In this light, Turkey and Europe start to look much the same: secular polities that leave a lot of room for individual religious belief. (Indeed, one could argue that European nations are more solicitous of the religious freedom of Muslims than is Turkey; or at least one could have done, before a number of European governments began recently to shriek in horror at the sight of a hijab.)

Yes, there are devout Muslims in Turkey, and some of them have views that don’t quite square with modernity. But then one may easily enough find Bavarian backwoodsmen who still have the Syllabus of Errors written in their hearts; that is no reason to expel Germany into the utter void. Squint your eyes, as I say, and those who dislike secularism and pluralism start to look very much alike, whether they be Germans or Turks. And secular, pluralist democracies can tolerate them, even leave them free to live and believe as they wish.

Those Europeans who cannot put the Battle of Lepanto behind them ought to reflect that the current member states have done pretty well at leaving behind the Battle of Verdun. And that, in a way, is the point of the exercise.

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Think about it: On May 1, virtually nothing will change for the positive in the accession countries. Granted, as Doug Arellanes points out, prices of imported wine will drop substantially; and easterners will be able to work legally in the frigid zones of UK and Scandinavia. Whoop-dee-doo.

Meanwhile, a number of other countries (importantly, Spain, Austria and Germany) have insisted on “transition periods” periods of their own for the free movement of labor. This transition period could well last beyond the end of the decade. Sort of takes the shine of EU accession, no?

Finally, the one thing ordinary people will probably notice the most is that every dish at their favorite restaurant just went up in price by a good 17%. Apparently, the Poles and Hungarians successfully negotiated a transition period for their VAT laws, and VAT on restaurants will remain low there. The Czechs, thinking the French proposal would pass, didn’t even try. As a restaurant owner myself, surely I’m more sensitive than ordinary people to the VAT change. But from a purely diplomatic point of view, I really don’t think this is a wise move. I for one plan to put a big sticker on our menu reading, “Welcome to the EU! All items now 17% more dear!”

The fact that the Czechs didn’t even try to negotiate a transition period puts a new spin on things: Perhaps they want the extra revenue from a higher VAT, but don’t want to shoulder the blame. They can call it an “EU tax” and remind the populace that they voted for joining. Seems terribly unsportsmanlike.

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On Wednesday our darling Iraqi Puppet Council decided that secular Iraqi family law would no longer be secular- it is now going to be according to Islamic Shari’a. Shari’a is Islamic law, whether from the Quran or quotes of the Prophet or interpretations of modern Islamic law by clerics and people who have dedicated their lives to studying Islam.

The news has barely been covered by Western or even Arab media and Iraqi media certainly aren’t covering it. It is too much to ask of Al-Iraqiya to debate or cover a topic like this one- it would obviously conflict with the Egyptian soap operas and songs. This latest decision is going to be catastrophic for females- we’re going backwards.

Don’t get me wrong- pure Islamic law according to the Quran and the Prophet gives women certain unalterable, nonnegotiable rights. The problem arises when certain clerics decide to do their own interpretations of these laws (and just about *anyone* can make themselves a cleric these days). The bigger problem is that Shari’a may be drastically different from one cleric to another. There are actually fundamental differences in Shari’a between the different Islamic factions or ‘methahib’. Even in the same methahib, there are dozens of different clerics who may have opposing opinions. This is going to mean more chaos than we already have to deal with. We’ve come to expect chaos in the streets? but chaos in the courts and judicial system too?!

This is completely unfair to women specifically. Under the Iraqi constitution, men and women are equal. Under our past secular family law (which has been in practice since the ’50s) women had unalterable divorce, marriage, inheritance, custody, and alimony rights. All of this is going to change.

I’ll give an example of what this will mean. One infamous practice brought to Iraq by Iranian clerics was the ‘zawaj muta’a', which when translated by the clerics means ‘temporary marriage’. The actual translation is ‘pleasure marriage’- which is exactly what it is. It works like this: a consenting man and woman go to a cleric who approves of temporary marriage and they agree upon a period of time during which the marriage will last. The man pays the woman a ‘mahar’ or dowry and during the duration of the marriage (which can be anything from an hour, to a week, a month, etc.) the man has full marital rights. Basically, it’s a form of prostitution that often results in illegitimate children and a spread of STDs.

Sunni clerics consider it a sin and many Shi’a clerics also frown upon it? but there are the ones who will tell you it’s ‘halal’ and Shari’a, etc. The same people who approve it or practice it would, of course, rather see their daughters or sisters dead before they allow *them* to practice it- but that’s beyond the point.

Anyway, secular Iraqi family law considers it a form of prostitution and doesn’t consider a ‘pleasure marriage’ a legitimate marriage. In other words, the woman wouldn’t have any legal rights and if she finds herself pregnant- the child, legally, wouldn’t have a father.

So what happens if a married man decides to arrange a pleasure marriage on the side? In the past, his legitimate wife could haul him off to court, and ask for a divorce because the man would be committing adultery under Iraqi family law. That won’t be the case now. Under certain clerics, a pleasure marriage will be considered legal and the woman won’t have a case for divorce. Under other clerics, he’ll be committing adultery- so who gets to judge? The cleric she chooses, or the cleric he chooses?

Another example is in marriage itself. By tribal law and Shari’a, a woman, no matter how old, would have to have her family’s consent to marry a man. By Iraqi law, as long as the woman is over 18, she doesn’t need her family’s consent. She can marry in a court, legally, without her parents. It rarely happened in Iraq, but it *was* possible.

According to Iraqi secular law, a woman has grounds to divorce her husband if he beats her. According to Shari’a, it would be much more difficult to prove abuse.

Other questions pose themselves- Shari’a doesn?t outlaw the marriage of minors (on condition they’ve hit puberty). Iraqi secular law won’t allow minors to marry until the age of at least 16 (I think) for women and the age of 18 for men.

By Iraqi civil law, parents are required to send their children to complete at least primary school. According to Shari’a, a father can make his son or daughter quit school and either work or remain at home. So what happens when and if he decides to do that? Does Shari’a apply or does civil law apply?

There are hundreds of other examples that I can think of and that make me feel outrage. I practice Islam, but do I want an Islamic government? No. I feel that because we have so many different methahib and religions, any religious government is bound to oppress some faction of society. It’s already happening in the south where fundamentalist Shi’a are attacking Christian families and shops.

Juan Cole had something to say about the subject and he referred to an article written in Financial Times appropriately titled, “Iraqi plan for Sharia law ‘a sop to clerics’, say women”. Unfortunately, the writers of the article apparently have no background on secular Iraqi law beyond what the GC members have told them. The fundamentalist GC members claim that civil Iraqi law forced people to go against their doctrine, which isn’t true because a large part of civil law was based on Shari’a or the parts of Shari’a that were agreed upon by all the differing Islamic factions (like the right to divorce) and taking into consideration the different religious groups in Iraq.

Women are outraged? this is going to open new doors for repression in the most advanced country on women’s rights in the Arab world! Men are also against this (although they certainly have the upper-hand in the situation) because it’s going to mean more confusion and conflict all around.

What happens when all the clerics agree that a hijab isn’t ‘preferred’ but necessary? According to this new change in the ‘ahwal shakhsiya’ laws or ‘personal circumstances’ laws, all women will have to cover their heads and according to Shari’a, if a woman’s husband decides that she can’t continue her education or work, she’ll have to remain a house-wife.

Please don’t misunderstand- any oppression to women isn’t a reflection on Islam. It’s a reflection on certain narrow minds, ignorance and the politicization of religion. Islam is a progressive religion and no religion is clearer on the rights of women- it came during a time when women had no rights at all.

During the sanctions and all the instability, we used to hear fantastic stories about certain Arab countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, and Qatar, to name a few. We heard about their luxurious lifestyles- the high monthly wages, the elegant cars, sprawling homes and malls? and while I always wanted to visit, I never once remember yearning to live there or even feeling envy. When I analyzed my feelings, it always led back to the fact that I cherished the rights I had as an Iraqi Muslim woman. During the hard times, it was always a comfort that I could drive, learn, work for equal pay, dress the way I wanted and practice Islam according to my values and beliefs, without worrying whether I was too devout or not devout enough.

I usually ignore the emails I receive telling me to ‘embrace’ my new-found freedom and be happy that the circumstances of all Iraqi women are going to ‘improve drastically’ from what we had before. They quote Bush (which in itself speaks volumes) saying things about how repressed the Iraqi women were and how, now, they are going to be able to live free lives.

The people who write those emails often lob Iraq together with Saudi Arabia, Iran and Afghanistan and I shake my head at their ignorance but think to myself, “Well, they really need to believe their country has the best of intentions- I won’t burst their bubble.” But I’m telling everyone now- if I get any more emails about how free and liberated the Iraqi women are *now* thanks to America, they can expect a very nasty answer.

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There is also another Spainsh expression which comes to mind here: don’t open your mouth if you are only going to draw attention to your own weaknesses. In my book the pledge should never have been made. To keep it on the table as an objective now (one has visions of the various EU leaders being called into Prodi’s office for their annual ‘reviews’, to see whether their resepctive countries have fulfilled their ‘objectives’) is only to compound the error.

I’m sorry: the future has a name, it is called ‘Asia’ . Demographics guarantee that for us. What the US and the EU both have to do is find the way to accept this global rebalancing without provoking a ‘hard landing’. Rather than vying to see who will be first, perhaps a better philosophy for the Commission to adopt would be the motif to Tobias’s blog: Balding With Grace.

BTW: don’t miss the little detail at the end of the article posted below:”Long-term sustainability of public finances, particularly in view of the aging population, is not yet secured in about half the member states,” . This is in fact a recycling of a Solbes statement of a couple of years ago that I often quote. In fact Solbes was saying that they were unsustainable, not that sustainablity had not yet been secured. Since he made the initial statement matters have only deteriorated (the Stability Pact problem) so there hardly seems to be any reason for the change of emphasis. It is what you call Eurospeak I suppose, but isn’t that just the problem?

The EU’s executive agency said Europe is falling further behind the United States after a standstill year in which European job growth evaporated, public finances deteriorated and the average unemployment rate rose to 8.1 percent.

In an annual survey of how the 15 EU nations fare in trying to become economically more dynamic, European Commission President Romano Prodi said governments lack political will to overhaul the continent’s economies.

His report lamented a “substantial gap” between Europe and the United States in the ability to rally risk capital and money for research and development, quickly process patent applications and spend generously on information technologies.

EU employers reacted to the report with a new plea for governments to cut red tape and “deliver economic reform.”

At a 2000 summit in Lisbon, Portugal, the EU leaders pledged to overtake the United States as the world’s leading economy by 2010.

The plan was to boost investments in information technology, accelerating integration of European energy, transportation, telecommunications and other markets, aiming for an employment rate of 67 percent and making labor markets more flexible.

Four years on, “the overall picture … is mixed,” Prodi told the European Parliament where he formally unveiled the survey’s findings.

The EU “member states do not seem to realize that 2010 is around the corner. Four years after Lisbon it is clear that we are going to miss our midterm targets,” he said.

According to the EU head office, employment was stagnating at 64 percent and that for the 55-64 age group the rate was only 40.1 percent.

Among other things it blamed inadequate use of information and communication technologies, insufficient investments in research, innovation, education and training and a still fragmented EU home market that grows to 25 nations in May.

France, Germany and Italy top the list of nations failing to make the required economic and labor law reforms, said Prodi, while Austria, Luxembourg, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Sweden have done best,

The Commission criticized resistance to a single EU patent ? crucial to quickly bringing new products and services on the market ? or EU-wide criteria for professional standards.

“The worst of all is the lack of leadership the report highlights in EU member states,” said Paul Hofheinz, president of the Lisbon Council, a Brussels-based research institute.

“Everyone knows what needs to be done. But unless Europe acts now, there won’t be much of an economy left to reform.”

Ireland, which now holds the EU’s rotating presidency, wants to breathe new life into the so-called Lisbon Agenda.

UNICE, the umbrella organization of European employers federations, urged Ireland to ensure the EU leaders “commit themselves unambiguously to deliver economic reform” and cut red tape that stands “in the way of making Europe the most competitive economy in the world.”

The Commission report said the EU’s productivity growth rate_ now between 0.5 and 1 percent ? was far below the U.S. rate of 2 percent. “Lower labor productivity per hour worked now represents 40 percent of the difference in GDP (news - web sites) per capita between the EU and the USA,” the report said.

It put Europe’s per capita economic output at 72 percent of that of the United States, a gap “illustrates the need to stimulate market integration, business dynamism, and investment, particularly in knowledge.”

The report did not mention the fall of the dollar against the euro in recent months. The rising value of the euro is hurting European exports and slowing the continent’s economic recovery.

The Commission criticized France and Germany for running budget deficits over 3 percent of gross domestic product in violation of the ground rules for the shared currency.

Across the 12-nation euro-zone, “the average nominal budget deficit worsened further in 2003 to 2.7 percent of GDP,” said the Commission report.

It pointed to growing pension responsibilities. “Long-term sustainability of public finances, particularly in view of the aging population, is not yet secured in about half the member states,” the report said.

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The report, a first estimate by Eurostat (and thus may be heavily revised), shows some large differences between countries. Overall, the largest increases were in Ireland (1.5%), Spain (0.7%) and Portugal (0.6%), with the smallest in Germany (+0.01%), Denmark and Greece (0.3%).

Live births increased over the post-war low recorded in 2002, reaching 4.03 million. The highest rate was in Ireland (15.5 per 1000 inhabitants, or 1.5%) and France (12.7 per 1000), while Germany (8.6), Greece (9.3) and Italy (9.4) saw the lowest. Deaths rose to 3.74 million as an aging population outweighed longer life-expectancy per person. The highest rate was in Germany (10.4 per 1000 inhabitants) while the lowest was in Ireland (7.4). Ireland thus had the highest rate of natural increase (8.1 per 1000 inhabitants), while Germany saw a natural decrease (1.8).

However thanks to migration, which accounted for 3/4 of the total population increase, no EU country saw a fall in population. Contrary to British tabloid myth the UK did not account for a disproportionate number of migrants, the leader Spain took 23% of all the net migration, Italy 21%, Germany 16% and the United Kingdom 10%. In terms of per inhabitant Ireland, Portugal and Spain led the way.

Overall then Europe’s population is growing, but unevenly and certainly not rapidly. Things however could be worse — half of the Acceding countries saw their population fall, in particular Latvia (-0.6%) and Lithuania (-0.5%).

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Probably not, you might say, but in two areas it will have an effect, both because diesel cars are around 25% to 35% more fuel efficient than their petrol counterparts.

First, in terms of meeting Europe’s international environmental commitments, diesel reduces emissions of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons compared with petrol-engined cars roughly in proportion to the lower amounts of fuel burned. Conversely they increase emissions of soot, though new regulations and cleaner fuels should help here and these are a local, not international concern.

Second, in burning far less fuel they reduce huge Europe’s reliance on imported oil (diesel cars are much more fuel-efficient), much of which comes from those political unstable middle-eastern countries we hear so much about.

Both factors should become increasingly important as the upward trend in diesel demand shows little sign of slowing, with traditionally apathetic diesel markets such as the UK seeing some of the fastest growth. Growth has been fuelled by Europe’s expensive fuel costs, which make more economic diesel engines substantially cheaper to run, and technological advances which have reduced the gap in performance between diesel and petrol-engined cars. For example, you can now get a Golf GTI diesel .

It’s also interesting in that it seems to me a rare example of technologies diverging across the globe. Diesel accounts for less than 1% of US car and light-truck sales, and only a little more of those in Japan and China. International environmental considerations matter less in the US (and soot emissions standards are tighter), but concerns over dependence on Middle Eastern oil might play better. A study by the Department of Energy noted that a 30% diesel share of new car sales would cut US oil imports by 350,000 barrels a day. Nevertheless I wouldn’t hold your breath.

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I’m not an expert on the media and business sectors in other countries, but given what’s happened in Italy with Berlusconi’s consolidation of the media, does the Czech Republic simply have a bad reputation? What about France, which is hardly a model of transparency with its history of outrages at the intersection of politics and business?

Truth be told, I think the Czech Republic is still worse off in this regard than other countries. For one things, high-level corruption is more or less tolerated here — even expected, on some level. At least Berlusconi’s shenanigans have captured the attention of the outside world.

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