Here's my professional take on my continent of birth (#1307594, #1333460): We're fucked; it's time to leave
There's no urgency, though, as it'll decay slowly and gradually, and there are still some pretty nice places to hang around... if you look for them closely.
Anyway, the WSJ editorial board is ENTIRELY ON POINT:
Messrs. Trump and Vance have a point. The European Union does too many things (foreign policy, environmental regulation and the like) badly that it shouldn’t do at all. What it’s supposed to do, such as creating a Continent-wide free-trade bloc, it does poorly.
European voters are angry about their leaders’ failures to get a grip on a migration crisis now entering its second decade. They’re frustrated with the increasing prosperity gap between Europe and the U.S., and with Europe’s frailty in the face of foreign challenges such as Russia’s war on Ukraine. Worst of all, they see that their leaders’ first instincts are to suppress contrary opinions, which is why free speech is again a hot debate in Europe.
"the Trump diagnosis ignores the biggest threat to Europe’s well-being. That is Europe’s generous social-welfare states and the cascading fiscal, economic and social ills they create."
Large welfare states require large tax bills to fund them, which is why government revenue reaches 47% of GDP in France, 41% in Germany, and 43% in Italy but 27% in the U.S. That level of taxation saps incentives for innovation and entrepreneurship. Generous welfare states also discourage work, which partly explains why Europe’s labor markets are so sclerotic.
Some of this bespeaks the lack of confidence in European civilization the Trump Administration observes. Much of this traces to a loss of belief in the superiority of Western values, including guilt over imperialism and destructive 20th-century wars.
It's not like the U.S. is doing much better, ultimately heading to the same death-of-big-government destination:
Reforming welfare is politically difficult. It’s far easier to denounce migrants and European cultural decadence. Especially when the U.S. is on a similar, if slower, path to welfare-state sclerosis.
The upside here is that these ills have easy fixes:
- ditch the green delusion (#1307594) -- and imprison (or at least institutionalize) Greta Thunberg, for good symbolic measure
- start drilling and extracting all the energy you can, including massive nuclear reactors everywhere. (Plus, sue for peace with Russia and buy all that cheap, juicy gas)
- gut the welfare state pronto, entirely and all at once (yes, yes, some 6-9 months delay is fine)
- abolish all at once the government-financed pension systems, as those are the source of the worst sort of ill-gotten redistributional gains and the main impossibility to tackle. Old people have families -- or churches -- that can support them... and those families have it WAY easier now that the onerous taxation to fund all that crap is gone.
Yeah, yeah. A kid can dream.
Europe needs to get to Argentina-level desperation before any country here can get a Milei-like character.
archive here: https://archive.md/IngZ5