First Impressions (economic)

So I’ve got back into Europe a couple of days ago and I’ve had a look around. I’ve formed an opinion, of course (me without an opinion is like a dog without legs, pretty damned rare and pretty damned odd when it does happen!) but I’ll immediately admit that so far I’m forming my opinion based on a place of little dotted villages, which is probably about ten years behind the rest of Germany (which, in turn, is about ten years behind the rest of Europe, which in turn is about ten years behind the rest of the world. So, basically, I’ve gone back in time thirty years. That feels about right.)

First, I’m going to talk about the economic situation, my next post will be about other things. So here goes: How the hell does Europe ever expect to survive the 21st century? They’re stuck in a mindset that is (quite accurately) 30 years out dated. The shops close at six, (12 on a Saturday, don’t open on a Sunday) they won’t let you recycle glass at certain times (as if they’re doing you service by letting you recycle glass) everybody goes for a three hour lunch and everywhere is understaffed because the businesses can’t afford the wages that the unions demand.

Prices are skyrocketing (my mother went for dinner at a normal restaurant with two other people and ended up paying over 200 US for a meal, two cocktails and a glass of wine) even as the Euro continues to rise. How do they ever expect the tourists to continue coming if those tourists can go on five holidays elsewhere for one holiday here?

The Europeans are complacent, decadent and arrogant. They believe they’ve got all the answers and they feel that the rest of the world should really change to suit their agenda. Socialism, they believe, is the answer. Socialism, I believe, is the way to make certain that any economic growth doesn’t ever trickle through to the common man. How’s that? Well, I’m much less likely to hire somebody during an economic upturn when I can’t fire them during an economic downturn, due to the unions. So, even when the economy is doing well, businesses still don’t hire.

What is more, socialism also guarantees minimum wage, which guarantees that poor people have to pay more for the stuff they really need (minimum wage pushes up the prices of goods at the bottom of the economy much more than at the top of economy, as basic necessities, like food, gas, power and water, employ way more minimum wage people).

But then, the common man doesn’t really get economics, do they? They believe that tariffs on foreign goods protects their businesses, while in truth all it does is push up prices for consumers in the tariff protected area (since the tariffs push up the prices of foreign bought products, the consumer ends up having to pay more for those products). The problem is that businesses work together to protect their interests, while consumers are rarely motivated en masse to protect theirs, so businesses get away with it.

All the shit I had already suspected from a distance has proven to be true up close. I seriously hope that Holland turns out to be a bit better, because so far I’m not terribly impressed. Sure, they’ve got culture, sure they’ve got style; but that won’t matter when their economy crashes and burns because they’ve lost all their ability to compete with the rest of the world. But then, they won’t crash and burn, will they? They’ll just use some underhand tactic make other places crash and burn. That’s usually what the first world does.