Paul Krugman Wrong Again

In my earlier post on whether we'll talk our way into recession, I linked to Megan McCardle's post that details the 9 times Paul Krugman has incorrectly predicted a US recession.

I was about to challenge another Paul Krugman article lauding the European welfare state economic model, when I noticed this post linked by Instapundit. To summarize a few key points, Krugman is selective in his statistics, ignores macro demographic trends, and fails to comment on the rightward political trend in France and Germany.

I haven't done all the math, but if I would suggest any comparison also needs to consider a series of additional factors:
1) what is the median per capita purchasing power parity after tax in major countries?
2) how often to individuals move up the economic ladder, and what is the opportunity to make it to the very top based on personal initiative?
3) what are the various efficiency measures such as productivity growth, pollution per unit of economic value creation, job growth?

Of course Europe is prosperous and growing. It has a well educated populace, democratically elected governments, property rights, rule of law, independent central banks, and all that good stuff. However, studies have repeatedly shown that greater labor flexibility and lower taxes would provide even further benefit. Indeed the tigers of Europe, such as Ireland and much of the new Eastern European democracies, are pursuing exactly that.