Today's Wall Street Journal editorial warns that American politicians who fail to reform entitlements on autopilot will drive America's vibrant economy into European misery.

The Europeans have created a vast constellation of domestic policy interventions that are cloaked in the seductive rhetoric of compassion, fairness and cultural sophistication. These policies include highly generous welfare benefits for the unemployed; state ownership and subsidy of key industries (such as Airbus); rules that make it difficult to hire and fire workers; prohibitions against closing down plants; heavy protections of labor unions against competitive forces; mandatory worker benefit packages that include health insurance, child care allowances, paid parental leave, four to six weeks of vacation; shortened work weeks; and, alas, high taxes on business and labor to pay for these lavish benefits.

And what has all this gotten them?

The economic growth rate of the European Union nations since 2003 has limped along at about half that of the U.S. In the 1980s and '90s the U.S. created about 40 million new jobs; Western Europe created some 10 million, well over half of which were in the public sector.

Hence the lesson for America.

The frustrating irony is that, at the very moment in history when Europe's model is in disrepute, many U.S. politicians still want to emulate it. In Congress today there is some bill to provide virtually every social welfare benefit that Europe now offers. And the Congressional Budget Office predicts that if America's federal entitlement programs are not reined in, by 2030 government's share of the U.S. economy will close in on 50% of GDP, or even more than Europe's share today. The good news is that at least Washington has begun to debate how to reform these programs.

But any politician without the courage to trim the growth of (not even cut, but just trim the growth of) entitlement spending will be condemning America to future economic mediocrity.

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