[melenaboija]

I agree with you but, what about the USA not being aware of building a strong western economy?

Economic politics from USA the last years has been quite protectionist and it seems in the coming future it will have to fight against countries with literally billions of people, so my feeling is western countries better stay together.

Is not about fear but working class being tired, among other things, of big corporations avoiding taxes and they having to maintain the social structure.

[sbacic]

> Is not about fear but working class being tired, among other things, of big corporations avoiding taxes and they having to maintain the social structure.

I should point out that this isn't a universal problem in Europe. For many countries in Europe, a bloated, inefficient and sometimes corrupt government is the reason why tax rates have to be so high and not multinationals avoiding taxes.

Sure, taxing those multinationals _might_ make it easier on the working class, but it's just as likely that the government would find other ways to spend that money.

[melenaboija]

Agree, that is the why I said among other reasons, and corruption is another one. Is more a general feeling of working class paying the bills.

I am not positioning myself about how European social system works but it seems something has to change, specially after the crisis. Also this is obviously happening in the weakest economies in Europe.

[qaq]

Long term I don't think western countries have much of a chance :(. Due to how political systems work in China vs the West China can easily invest in large scale long term projects and it costs them a tiny fraction to develop new or upgrade old infrastructure. Given a large enough time span this will give China a huge advantage.

[Mirioron]

But historically, authoritarian systems aren't very stable. China might very well collapse if they make some bad decisions. I think an authoritarian system is more likely to make bad decisions, because people that decide things are further from the ground, they have less information.

[qaq]

Given the rise of populism across the West ...