Günter Hick
Jul 23, 2017 · 2 min read

Sorry, but that is just your perception, based not on experience, but on a political point of view. Europe’s countries, UK included, all have indeed a welfare-state system to a differing degree and are certainly not all ruled by a social-democratic party, quite to the contrary. In the latest elections, the conservative parties or entirely new political movements, like President Macron’s party in France (his economic program is conservative), have won.

Despite a liberal (in the economic sense) outlook, all our countries keep parts of the welfare-state. Our opinion is that a citizen who has a guaranteed basic health coverage and old-age protection can use his energy entirely to be more productive. And individual productivity in Europe is superior to the US (https://data.oecd.org/lprdty/gdp-per-hour-worked.htm). The US put in more hours, but are less productive. To that I can testify from personal experience. Having to stay on just because it is the done thing, without creating anything …

The happiest countries in the world are European. That is no coincidence either. It is true that European citizens pay high taxes to their “slavery state”, but as a counter-part you get a good, functioning educational system, access to a genuine health-care for all and an old age pension, which takes away a lot of unnecessary hardship.

Where we are still lacking is the development of new technologies, most of which still are developed in the US, Japan and China. But we are working on it…

Nationalism in a globalised economy just does not work. The more obstacles you create, the less your economy will perform. The US are a huge market, but cannot function in a vacuum and are not self-reliant. You have to be open in an open market economy. If a country underperforms in that system, closing the frontiers will not help, quite to the contrary. The country in question will have to identify its weak spots and alter them. That is the only way forward.

    Günter Hick

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