The false promises of EU’s liberal democracy

There is a widespread self-image in Europe, in particular in the northern and western parts, of liberal democracy equalling ‘human progress’: we are on a continuous trajectory from worse to better, we constantly raise our standard of living, we reduce poverty, improve public health, and solve increasingly complex engineering problems. In other words, the European nations continuously rise toward higher levels of social, cultural, and economic sophistication.

In reality, the part about endless progress is false. Europe and its social model are no longer delivering on the promise to all citizens that, no matter their present or future economic circumstances, the state will always provide a comprehensive safety net and bring everyone into a middle-class lifestyle through entitlements funded by taxes. From the turn of the millennium and forward, Western and Northern Europe’s economies have slowly sunken into economic stagnation. First, they reached the point where they could no longer sustain an annual 3% real GDP growth rate per year, thus losing the ability to improve their standard of living on an ongoing basis. Then they fell below 2% per year, a level below which a nation’s living standards slowly decline.

Europe in general is now stuck in a state of structural economic stagnation, and the consequences are increasingly pervasive. Immigrants, whose workforce competence is generally far below the requirements of the European labor market, constitute an unceasingly expanding burden on the welfare state. Meanwhile, the indigenous youth is faced with low-paying, dead-end jobs instead of careers. While they notice that they are not making the same financial progress through life as their parents did, they are also faced with a legal and political system that brands them as racist for being white.

In response, they reject the political mainstream and refrain from reproduction, sending a chilling signal that they refuse to inherit their own nation. Without productive heirs, the welfare state’s decline accelerates. Under the pressure of structurally inadequate tax revenue and unending demands for social benefits, governments increasingly default on the promises of economic equality—a central tenet of liberal democracy. With the loss of that promise comes the loss of financial predictability: more and more people fall victim to the welfare state’s evaporating entitlement promises.