The Play's the Thing.

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      This article discusses how a new theatrical presentation in London provides insight into European economic troubles. After spending a fortnight trying to understand Europe's dismal economic performance, I finally got it: the play's the thing to catch the torpor of the thing. Britain's brilliant playwright Michael Frayn has a lot to tell us about the roots of today's anemic economies of the Eurozone. The author of the 1998 award-wining "Copenhagen" shows in his latest work, "Democracy," now playing at Britain's National Theatre, how leftist chancellor Willy Brandt enhanced German social programs between 1969 and 1974 that bedevil reformers today. Since France and Italy quickly followed the German social economic model, German political history is crucial for understanding today's Eurozone. British GDP growth is faster than the rates in France, Germany and Italy, and its unemployment rate--a mere five per cent--is roughly half the German rate, which is only slightly worse than the high joblessness plaguing France and Italy. Brandt and his allies were probably right for their time. But their infrastructures and superstructures positioned Europe poorly for global competition now driven by freer trade, rapid technological change, deteriorating demography, and the rise of China, Taiwan and South Korea to economic eminence. So many Europeans have become used to their handouts and protection that the attempts at reform by Schröder, Chirac and Italy's Silvio Berlusconi will either be rejected, or will be too modest to do real good.