> As an American I watch Europe pretty closely, and I've seen some things that are worrisome such as increasing amounts of fascism (anti-freedom / anti-privacy)...
As a European who watches the US, I hope the irony of your statement has not escaped you.
The NSA, the Can-Spam act, the TSA, Guantanamo Bay, how Obama gave a kill order on a US citizen without due process, how the hardline christian right and hardline libertarians across the pond would make most of our local extreme right wing clowns look like socialists, how some major libertarian voices in financial news are regularly cheerleading whacky anti-Europeans, the list could go on ad nauseam.
> Even Finland's per capita GDP hasn't increased since 1990 inflation adjusted. How long can such stagnation continue before there are severe consequences.
Doesn't sound so dire... The main reason that inflation-adjusted income has increased in the average US family unit since the 1970s is that it went from one bread earner to two. (See e.g. Elizabeth Warren's research on debt or her books, for instance The Two Income Trap, for the gory details.) I'm not seeing pitchforks.
In more seriousness, this is not meant to be a contest. The point is that things aren't as bad on the continent as you might read in Anglo-Saxon news outlets.
There's some uneasiness and some distress, sure. Here, like on the other side of the pond, the main cause of it at the end of the day is economic woes, most of which stem from bailing out the well connected instead of having let the financial system collapse -- for better or worse.
The most important take away, imho, is that we're at peace. Consider... Since the fall of Rome, we had been almost constantly at war with each other. Whereas besides the Balkans in the 1990s, and the ongoing skirmishes in Crimea, there has been no war here since WW2. That's the longest period of peace between Europe's major powers in history. And thankfully, no ending of this streak is on anyone's radar.
"As a European who watches the US, I hope the irony of your statement has not escaped you."
There's no irony in fact. I didn't claim the US condition was X Y or Z.
There's nothing ironic about a heart disease patient pointing out the condition of another heart disease patient. Nor does pointing such out, imply that the observer is lacking of heart disease.
Your reach is a failure of the application of logic. Just because I note that Europe has X problem, that does not mean I automatically think the US is lacking in X problem. Your response was emotional, the classic need to point out another's flaws because your flaws were pointed out. I get that.
I don't get my European news from Fox or CNN. And I pay close attention to the economic data coming from just about every country in Europe. I'd argue I'm likely better versed on the economics of most every country in Europe than most Europeans.
Well... it was emotional indeed, but to my credit your own post could just as well have been understood (no offense meant) as an "everything is perfect over here at home, but hey look at how things are over there!" kind of statement. Which, admittedly, rubbed me the wrong way, knowing all too well how frequent that type of statement is in Anglo-Saxon news outlets -- particularly in the economic sphere.
> As a European who watches the US, I hope the irony of your statement has not escaped you.
To be fair, he did say freedom seems to be on the retreat globally. The US and the EU are both guilty of this, though I'd argue that torture and illegal detention are a bit worse in that respect than banning newspapers from the internet (or maybe not, now that I've formulated it like that).
The EU does have the edge that these movements away from freedom are somewhat balanced by other movements towards guaranteeing freedom (like the user data protection directive).
As a European who watches the US, I hope the irony of your statement has not escaped you.
The NSA, the Can-Spam act, the TSA, Guantanamo Bay, how Obama gave a kill order on a US citizen without due process, how the hardline christian right and hardline libertarians across the pond would make most of our local extreme right wing clowns look like socialists, how some major libertarian voices in financial news are regularly cheerleading whacky anti-Europeans, the list could go on ad nauseam.
> Even Finland's per capita GDP hasn't increased since 1990 inflation adjusted. How long can such stagnation continue before there are severe consequences.
Doesn't sound so dire... The main reason that inflation-adjusted income has increased in the average US family unit since the 1970s is that it went from one bread earner to two. (See e.g. Elizabeth Warren's research on debt or her books, for instance The Two Income Trap, for the gory details.) I'm not seeing pitchforks.
In more seriousness, this is not meant to be a contest. The point is that things aren't as bad on the continent as you might read in Anglo-Saxon news outlets.
There's some uneasiness and some distress, sure. Here, like on the other side of the pond, the main cause of it at the end of the day is economic woes, most of which stem from bailing out the well connected instead of having let the financial system collapse -- for better or worse.
The most important take away, imho, is that we're at peace. Consider... Since the fall of Rome, we had been almost constantly at war with each other. Whereas besides the Balkans in the 1990s, and the ongoing skirmishes in Crimea, there has been no war here since WW2. That's the longest period of peace between Europe's major powers in history. And thankfully, no ending of this streak is on anyone's radar.