Comment by WarmWash

I'm not sure you understand what that krugman post is saying, but it's not saying that Europe has actually been keeping up with the US. It also doesn't refute anything I said, and infact actually supports it.

It's saying that prices of goods in Europe have remained in line with income that people get, people are happy, so who cares about anything else? And then there is short sentence at the end about tech is bad because it makes billionaires, so Europe need not worry.

Which all basically goes back to my point about Europe being happy with the status quo (the 30 yr post cold war vacation), and unwilling to change. However, like Krugman doesn't mention at all in his post, the status quo includes immense American tech and Chinese hardware imports.

So if Europe wants to stand on it's own, it's going to need to do very antithetical things relative to the current culture, that will in the short term be very painful for Europeans, but in the long term will provide the stability and independence they need.