Bye-bye Ameribubble, Hello Eurobubble!

There are many things to admire about the achievements of the European social movements: the right to unionize, free education, and universal health insurance.

But all of these achievements are under threat.

The ideology of euroliberalism wants to sacrifice hundreds of millions of Europeans for the portfolios of a few plutocrats. (Euroliberalism is enshrined in the basic architecture of the eurozone, in the form of treaties which prohibit member states from running deficits, and hand over the powers of the European Central Bank to an unelected coterie of neolib banksters.)

The eurolibs, eurobanksters and plutocrats claim the problem is excessive wages, which is pure Hayekian nuttery. The problem is that Europe has been pursuing the classic market fundamentalist agenda of public austerity combined with private profligacy.

It works like this: we 99% work harder and get less, while the wealthiest 1% get more and more of the surplus. When we 99% get in trouble, we're expected to die like dogs in a ditch. Market discipline demands no less! But when the 1% get in trouble, they get trillion-euro bailouts -- which we 99% subsequently pay for. After all, market discipline would mean the plutocrats having to hock one of their fourteen mansions, or sell off one of their hundreds of luxury cars -- oh, the humanity!

The greatest irony of all is that while the euroliberals constantly whine about the need for economic competitiveness, their own model is a miserable economic failure. Growth during the twenty years of euroliberalism has been paltry, and wages have gone nowhere even in the most industrially productive EU members (e.g. German wages have stagnated for a decade). In normal times, when demand drops, the economy craters. But what staved off economic collapse was a series of housing, financial and property bubbles -- first in the semi-peripheral nations, and now increasingly in the European core economies, too.

Instead of sharing the wealth, the plutocrats want to turn Europeans into permanent debt slaves, who devote all of their income to repaying debts which can't be repaid. Which then necessitates more bailouts, which requires more austerity from the 99%, which causes the debt to increase, etc.

It's a spiral to nowhere, and it's time for change.