Friday 4 June 2021

The decline of Europe is impossible to ignore now

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From what, partly because of its enthusiasm for the European Union, has become my least favourite magazine, The Economist.

Just two decades ago, America was reeling from the dotcom crash, China was struggling with its Maoist past and Europe, with its new currency and a burgeoning single market, seemed on the threshold of something spectacular. Today America and, increasingly, China are ascendant, accounting for 76 of the world’s 100 most valuable firms. Europe’s tally has fallen from 41 in 2000 to 15. Of the 19 firms created in the past 25 years that are now worth over $100bn, nine are in America and eight in China. Europe has none.

The Common Market, the Single Market and the Euro have not made Europe more powerful or richer in comparison to the other rich parts of the world. The Euro has had the opposite effect in spades, though it has made Germany richer.  I read yesterday an article by an economic analyst comparing the EU with deflationary Japan which said 

'The shocking truth is Europe may actually be in much worse shape than Japan ever was.'

I have no idea if this is true in economic terms but we should start to think of European decline as comparable with the decline of Japan. 

For certain, Japan is doing much better in general than Europe. 

She governs herself, has her own currency, a thriving manufacturing sector, far fewer graduates than Europe, because of her pacifist constitution she avoids liberal wars for values (much more even than in Europe her defence is outsourced to America), has enormous social cohesion, very low crime rates, is nativist and therefore does not deal with the political consequences of mass migrations. 

She avoided the 1960s social revolution and is free from political correctness and Woke, which are the continuation of the 1960s revolution. These social movements are ultimately distortions of Christianity.

5 comments:

  1. I have the strong feeling that a lot of bets are off. I don’t know about you, but I can feel the old tenets falling like ninepins. Certainly as the naked narratives struggle for balance, I don’t know who or what to believe anymore. And in the age of obligatory vaccine passports, facts that turn into conspiracy theories and then back again depending on who’s writing the story, and up-is-down notions that nobody had heard of yesterday suddenly hardening into Official Reality, it’s hard to know why I should believe in anything that I can’t touch, smell, measure or make.

    Intermission: The Scriptorium
    On building a library for the times
    Paul Kingsnorth

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  2. By your posts about Venice and St. Athansius I presume you're still in Venice. It's interesting to note the association Venice-decline of Europe. I had the same thoughts as you as I strolled along some bland warehouses in the quiet parts of Venice, while the last carneval (2020) unfolded in the livelier parts.

    I suppose this association is a commonplace. Th. Mann wrote "Death in Venice" and not "Death in Rome" or in Naples.

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    Replies
    1. I left. I want to write much more on the subject but my life is busy. I was there in July and wrote this. Did you see it? http://pvewood.blogspot.com/2020/07/empty-verona-and-venice.html

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  3. America is doing well?
    The international corporations that rely on the US military as its Praetorian guard are doing well. Wall Street is happy. But not the rest of the country.

    China is doing well. China built over 20,000 miles of high speed rail. The current US president is promising "clean water" for everyone --- a 19th century goal. Americans live with a crumbling infrastructure as trillions of dollars are blown maintaining a crumbling empire.

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