This reminds me that the EU follows neoclassical economics much closer than the US. https://unherd.com/2021/11/the-cruelty-of-eu-austerity/ https://unherd.com/

This reminds me that the EU follows neoclassical economics much closer than the US. https://unherd.com/2021/11/the-cruelty-of-eu-austerity/ https://unherd.com/2021/11/the-cruelty-of-eu-austerity/ Meanwhile when you read e.g. some of the extremist opinions like mises.org blog posts, apparently Europe is infested with socialism and anti-capitalism and isn't doing enough. I mean geez. Greece did the hardest austerity program in history, with possibly the fastest collapse of a growing economy. It used to grow 5% a year during the corruption years, during which people accused Greece of excessive borrowing to pay pension funds and other non productive spending. Now that they did the responsible thing GDP dropped by 50% and GDP growth has stagnated and the debt level is even higher than before as a percentage of GDP. This obviously makes "proper capitalism" look bad to citizens and now you can simply accuse them of being "socialists" who ruined their own country. Great track record. It kind of reminds me of horseshoe theory. Extreme communists and capitalists are more alike to each other than to the center. Communists that fail to achieve their dreams go and hunt the capitalists. Capitalists that fail to achieve their dreams hunt socialists. I don't know if you can call it pragmatism. It would be economic pragmatism if you try to take the best ideas and combine them into something that actually works.