Next week I’ll be on a panel for Reason magazine about a big question: why is Europe poorer than the United States? Sam Bowman’s cover story is really good and you should read it. The basic argument is that Europe is choosing to be poor.
As you probably know, this is one of my favorite subjects. At the panel, I will provide humorous takedowns of Europe because they don’t know how to make iced coffee and have never been to the Moon. You should come! But I actually want to focus today on a somewhat more serious illustration of the sort of devil’s bargain Bowman describes.
A story happening right now, not in Berlin or Paris, but thousands of miles away in the sweaty corner of northern South America: two countries with the same coastline and the same oil under their waters. One is booming. The other is stuck in poverty because Europe told it to be.
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