MICHAEL J. BOSKIN: Hoover Institution Senior Fellow and Professor of Economics, Stanford University, and former Chair, President's Council of Economic Advisors.

I am not even remotely convinced that the European Union's coronavirus relief plan based on the issuance of common debt is a major move toward more permanent fiscal and political integration. The comparison to America's first Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, consolidating and assuming the Revolutionary War debt of the thirteen separate colonies misreads the circumstances at the time and ignores huge differences to the EU plan.

First, the common debt issuance is a tiny fraction of the member states' debt. Second, and perhaps most important, Hamilton famously argued that the federal government assuming the colonies' debt was the "price of liberty." Covid-19 is certainly a tragic disruption, but virtually nobody believes the fight to overcome it will be permanent and as costly as, for example, World War I or World War II. Avoiding another conflagration on the European continent was the main motivation of the founding generation of the European Union's predecessor.

Third, while the thirteen colonies thought of themselves as independent colonies, accurate history suggests a sizable fraction of their populations wanted reforms, but not independence from Great Britain. Unlike most EU member states, America's states had no long history as independent nations, with often brutally antagonistic histories and religious and language differences, not to mention conflicting territorial ambitions. So while substantial obstacles had to be overcome in forming a common political union--Washington and Jefferson had...