European's weakness in my opinion is the size of the state. The state can only grow with private sector growth, but when 50% of all spending in your economy is

European's weakness in my opinion is the size of the state. The state can only grow with private sector growth, but when 50% of all spending in your economy is done by the government and most people are employed either directly or indirectly via the government organic growth (without debt) becomes challenging. Additionally for government to be as large as it is Europe implements significantly higher tax rates than most of the world which results in consumers having less disposable income to spend on products that drive innovation like tech and private companies have less money to invest in new opportunities. Further, Europe is probably the single most unattractive place to start a business from a regulatory perspective in addition to being very unattractive from a tax perspective. Unlike in the US or Dubai where entrepreneurs will travel to start businesses, in the UK you would typically look to do the opposite if possible and start your company somewhere else. Nothing Im saying here is particularly controversial from an economics perspective, yet politically what I'm saying is highly controversial if you like in Western Europe. I find people here tend to view it as the government's job to fix economic issues through investment, interest rate manipulation and debt rather than allowing room for private sector to innovate and grow. At this point the evidence of Europe's failed economics policy is clear, and given this you would think politicians would be looking to try something different. But we're not. The answer if anything is that the government just isn't big enough, there just isn't enough regulation, there just isn't enough debt and investment, there are too many damn companies making profit while we grow poorer! My guess is that Europe's underperformance will continue for a while yet.