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In an article from MSNBC on the public debt crisis facing some of the EU’s states, the reporter writes: “Analysts are also growing more worried about the U.S. budget deficit, which remains higher than that of most eurozone nations. But Greece, Spain and other troubled countries in Europe do not command the kind of economic clout the United States does and, in many cases, have yet to escape the Great Recession.”

I contend that this statement is misleading because it is premised on a category mistake.  Firstly, the EU is not simply “eurozone nations.”  In having a Parliament, Supreme Court (the ECJ) and a Senate or Council representing the states, the EU has a government. Accordingly, some of the governmental sovereignty that used to be held by the state governments has been transferred to the EU, so the governments of the union and its states are both semi-sovereign.

Secondly, of course the respective state governments of the EU do not “command the kind of economic clout the United States does.”  That they should evinces a category mistake. Both the US and EU operate common markets.  That a part of one common market is not equivalent to a common market made of such parts should go without saying (see: fallacy of treating a part as a whole).

Thirdly, in treating the US public deficits and debt as equivalent to those of the EU’s state governments, one ignores the fact that many of the US’s state governments also face daunting public deficits and debt.  In other words, comparing the US debt to those of the EU’s state governments is misleading.  Because the EU government does not have a significant debt (that I know of) and some of the US states do have such debt, the comparison understates the debt on the US side.

In general terms, the presumed comparison assumes that there are no significant differences between a union of states and a state of such a union with respect to political or economic functions.  It might be, for instance, that because an empire-scale union is further from the people, accountability with respect to running up debt might be different than in a state.  I suppose it could be argued that the political entity composed of the states could be expected both to buffer public demands for more spending and to be more profligate than what the people want.  In any case, my point is that different dynamics come into play at the empire-level. Ignoring the qualitative differences in going from a kingdom-level polity to an empire-level policy made up of kingdom-level polities results in the kind of statements I have critiqued here (i.e., as if the US merely has more economic clout than a state of the EU, rather than that the US is not comparable with a state in another union). 

I think we moderns tend to skip over category mistakes when they have become the default in our societies.  This makes us susceptable to relying on erroneous results from comparisons based on such mistakes.  In other words, we take too much for granted in what we read (and hear) in the public square.  Although we don’t realize it, we desparately need Socrates-like writers (and speakers) to point out to us that we don’t know as much as we think we do.  This goes for such writers ourselves.  My thesis on the EU and US is of course merely a theory or argument…far from perfect, perhaps wrong, and doubtlessly improveable by others.  One way out of our epistemological presumptuousness is to subject taken-for-granted assumptions in the public square , including my own, to critique.  We simply do not go far enough, which permits vested interests to get away with too much.

Socrates, where art thou?  You should have slipped out when you had the chance. You were aiding Athens…not corrupting the youth.  Your detractors were just jealous (they owe you a written Apology).  Please come back. Spit out that hemlock.  We need you!

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35268117/ns/business-washington_post/