Thanks for engaging in a civil manner. :) Doesn't seem to be a given in this thread, reading some of the other comments. You're actually speaking to a German l

Thanks for engaging in a civil manner. :) Doesn't seem to be a given in this thread, reading some of the other comments. You're actually speaking to a German living in France right here. And yes, I'd largely share your analysis. People are angry, and for good reason. To add insult to injury, many of these changes were made by the social democrats, which really cemented the idea in people's head that none of the mainstream parties see an alternative. "Alternativlos" (Merkel's german equivalent of Thatcher's "There is no alternative") is the mantra that has prevented any real changes from being made. The Market is seen as the beginning and end of all discussion, and if it has inherent flaws, well, you can curse them, but you cannot argue against it. It's like the weather. There are similar examples in other countries of course. Personally I'm seeing this here in Grenoble. France has a reputation for an overpaid and "too comfortable" public sector, but that has only really become a problem since the government has decided to drastically reduce spending. I live in Grenoble (a ~400K metropolitan area, so a small town for french standards) and the federal government has unilaterally decided to reduce the city's budget by ~30% over the last 3-4 years. The effects are things like public baths closing or reducing service (disproportionally affecting poorer people) and even blatant violations of unalienable rights of the poorest of poor. This is not a metaphor or something: there is no more money to provide emergency shelter to asylum seekers, which is, by law, guaranteed to everyone in any situation of need, no questions asked. Now they live in tents next to the train station. It's shameful. On a less personal note: the NHS in the UK seems to be a good natural experiment. It is described in some detail in the book I mentioned in the GP. Since Scotland and other regions had some leeway in how to run their NHS, they didn't follow along with all the neoliberal policies of the 90s. The result is that the English NHS has longer waiting times, worse health outcomes, and a drastically increased administrational overhead (went from ~5% to ~14%!) while the Scottish NHS fares better in all of these aspects. This all happens within a European framework of course. I like the idea of open borders and shared prosperity, I have personally been very lucky to profit from these (via Erasmus and the possibility to "just move to another country" twice) but the entire idea of the European Union, as I have come to realize over the last years, is not to unify people and build bridges across borders. The idea of the EU is to open markets, and let The Market figure out the "shared prosperity". It is a fundamentally neoliberal institution. And that is not even talking about many of its practical (transparency/electoral/etc) flaws. For any practical changes that affect the individual (roaming/open borders/shared currency) the liberalization for companies vastly outsizes that given to the individual. And then there are tons of examples where EU border-opening does nothing for the individual, and only liberalizes the markets to allow corporations more freedoms. An example is the liberalization of the railroad systems. After harmonizing the technical level, the EU liberalized access of e.g. companies to operate on other nations' railroad networks. But despite knowing that there is not enough market incentive for The Market to offer decent cross border offers, the EU governments declined to force their (largely politically controlled) railroad companies to do so. For the individual, crossing borders for vacation/work has become easier (because of the shared currency) but e.g. commuting across borders by train remains a financial and practical nightmare. Direct social/economic interaction would really have the potential to fuse European citizens into a real union, but that was never the idea. So yeah, you're right, the EU and its nations had (and to a degree still have) some interesting middle ground ideas. And you're also right that they are being eroded away by a neoliberal project. We can see the effects in near realtime, and it's not heading in a good direction... edited to add example.