That is the western European way though. It's supposed to be a nice place to live, not a nice place to do business. If that leads to Chaebolification of the economy then so be it. There are other parts of the world that specialise in deregulation at the expense of living standards.
True! And I generally empathize with this. The core point of the EU and its member states' governments should be to enable high quality of life.
But that model you describe is cracking: Cost of living is going through the roof in Europe, taxes/social contributions going up every year, etc.
The problem is that Europe is like an old, rich person who now lives off of the principal of their wealth. For a person that's fine because they'll eventually die. For a government, you should strive for an environment that lets you keep growing wealth.
> But that model you describe is cracking: Cost of living is going through the roof in Europe, taxes/social contributions going up every year, etc.
Cost of living is increasing in the US too (in large part due to geopolitical reasons), and social contributions are rising because of demographic factors. I'm not sure how market liberalism is magically going to fix that latter issue.
Fair point re: US! Though that doesn't mean it's not a problem.
Re: demographics. It's relatively straightforward: To keep contributions constant while supporting more people, you need either:
-more people via immigration (which is extremely tricky to get right) who are net contributors, not beneficiaries of social systems
-massively increased productivity through innovation/technology
-cut benefits from social programs
If you do none of those things, the systems will either collapse or you need to raise taxes/mandatory contributions which are de-facto taxes.
