The Romans tried it. Charlemagne saw himself as their successor. Napoleon had a go at it. Finally, with his distorted view of the world, Hitler thought he would be able to accomplish what none of the others could achieve. To any great extent, at least. I'm referring to the unification of Europe.
Post-war Germany was far cleverer. It realised that poor people cannot be conquered by the sword. They have to be bribed with the power of money. So, together with France, it worked out a system whereby, in exchange for generous financial advantages, it could export freely to the poorer countries of Europe without any barriers. It worked. The European Union came into being – a political and monetary entity without any form of fiscal harmonisation.
Unfortunately, those poor countries of peripheral Europe were never able to see beyond the immediate financial benefit. Still deeply rooted in post-medieval rural societies, and largely unaccustomed to the principles of democracy, they followed utopian 19th century ideals and set about reshaping their social fabric. Through legislation.
One great flaw of excessive legislation is that it creates excessive bureaucracy. In turn, excessive bureaucracy has two pernicious effects: it secures safe public jobs for all the party faithful, so that you have half of the country's population working for the State, and it promotes large scale corruption.
Now, it is general knowledge that the State is no creator of wealth. With fewer people in the productive sector, and excessive taxation to support huge government, peripheral Europe was a disaster waiting to happen. All it took was the sub-prime crisis in the US for those idiots to shake in their foundations. Germany continued to export its way out of the crisis.
When almost all your tax gathered is absorbed by public sector salaries and social benefits, for the remainder you have to rely on public debt. As economic conditions worsen, borrowing costs escalate and so do economic conditions. It's a vicious circle.
Fortunately, the Chinese have begun buying European public debt. Soon, they will be dictating the rules.
Can you spare a yuan for poor old Europe?
