> Here's a better comparison. The moment I saw the article headline, I knew the comments would be full of people running defence with fuzzy claims of qualitati

> Here's a better comparison. The moment I saw the article headline, I knew the comments would be full of people running defence with fuzzy claims of qualitative wellbeing. "Yes, our economy may objectively be underperforming, but look at the Life Quality Index, invented at the University of Copenhagen, which divides the number of UNESCO sites in a country by the number of different pension schemes... The hard truth is - less prosperity means less money for nurses, less money for teachers, less money for infrastructure. Worse health outcomes, worse educational outcomes, worse transport and logistics. A decreasing quality of life. Less prospects for children. Increasing emigration. Europe devotes a disproportionate amount to social spending compared to the US, so it remains competitive despite its shrinking economy, but this won't continue forever. Eventually, Europe's economy will become so relatively small, that even its outsized social spending will begin to be dwarfed by the spending of US states. It's been the case for some time that Portuguese professionals are leaving to go drive trucks in the US, and now doctors in the UK are getting poached en masse by Australian states. How long until German engineers can have a better life working as taxi drivers in China? I like Europe and I wish it would right course, but there is an aggressive myopia on this continent when it comes to how quickly the rest of the world is moving past them, and how very bad that will be for Europe in the mid-to-long term. Europe's slide into irrelevance will be a net loss for us all, but most of all for the quality of life of Europeans themselves.