I have a lot of family in Europe. It wasn't the social programs that led to their current problem. They were vacationing and dining out on credit cards, accumul

I have a lot of family in Europe. It wasn't the social programs that led to their current problem. They were vacationing and dining out on credit cards, accumulating lots of revolving debt, and acquiring rental properties that were supposed to pay for all of this. Of course, since everybody else in the middle class was attempting the same strategy, it became a bubble. Essentially, Europe is in much the same mess as the U.S. is for a lot of the same reasons. However, because the U.S. is a single country and Europe isn't, getting out of the mess is a very different problem.