I will try to give a definition of the term “poverty in the EU”, before explaining how the Euro promoted said poverty. To be sure, at first sight this might sound heretical – but do not judge before you have read!
In this country, you are poor if
- your increase in “prosperity” is less than average,
- your possibility to participate in social life is reduced,
- you can only start a family if you are prepared to forego a considerable amount of consumption and
- if your chances of a good education are poor (permeability of educational classes).
There is a huge increase of this kind of poverty in all EU countries. If you see it under this aspect, Greece is probably not the poorest country in Europe. Real poverty, as defined by homelessness, hunger and misery, is (still) more the exception than the rule in the EU countries.
One of the problems of increasing poverty in Germany (Europe) is probably the fact that our CO2 footprint is too big. For reasons of comfort, however, we are not prepared to reduce our CO2 footprint. Instead, we continue to live blissfully happy on borrowed property. We are even willing to sacrifice the quality of our prosperity to this life-style. We promote an unreasonable amount of waste, but it does not really make us happy.
Due to wrong structures, labour also gets more and more expensive all around the world. Doing simple work basically is not profitable anywhere in the EU (that is also true for Greece, where the “lowly” work is done by immigrant workers who partly work illegally). That, too, leads to a lack of political freedom, illegal work, or slumping into the social security systems, which consequently get more and more expensive (everywhere).
If you see it like this, the Germans and other Europeans are not an iota “better” than the Greeks. There is probably a correlation between our too big “CO2 footprints” and our per-capito debt.
We block out reality by generating specious prosperities, always on borrowed money. During the last few years, the Euro caused an economic dynamics that seemed to justify our wasteful life-style. It seemed to help increase prosperity, yet in reality it only polarised.
Thus, the Euro prosperity after 2001 was just as much a specious prosperity as was the growth caused by the re-unification around 1990. The same is true for the so-called disproof of the growth limits by the “new technology” until the year 2000. All and everything happened on borrowed money. That is how these many hundreds of billions of Euros debt the inconceivable volume of which now confuses us were generated.
The Euro served to camouflage the problems of our system during several years after it was introduced. It was beneficial for the “strong” nations with lots of industry and banks, while it was detrimental for the “weak” ones. And it made the “privileged” classes richer while making the “underprivileged” ones poorer.
Unfortunately, the growth on borrowed money also increased the exploitation of resources. And it promoted the belief that “there is nothing that is impossible”. The necessary change towards a sustainable policy was hampered, although we have been well aware of the necessity since at least the 1960ies (Club of Rome).
Now all that remains is the hope that we will not continue to generate specious prosperity and destroy our environment at the expense of future generations. It would be doubly detrimental, but it is exactly what politics cause with the current debts and the prayer-like incantation of growth that is allegedly necessary for paying back our debts.
This is absurd. The crisis started a long time ago; it only gets more and more tiresome to camouflage it. The growth formula no longer sounds credible. We have to finally accept the crisis and draw the social consequences.
RMD
(Translated by EG)
P.S.
In former times, situations like these sometimes caused wars.
P.S.1
I was inspired to write this article by Enno’s comment on MATE:
Which country do you mean when you say the Euro caused poverty for a huge part of the population? At least among the EU countries, I see none except Greece that suffered disadvantages through the Euro.
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