They're not wasting money. They simply don't have the massive wealth of the North to jump off from or to cushion blows. On top of that a large quantity of what they do earn is spent on interest payments to the North.
They don't have this wealth because when they were given access to interest rates much lower than what they would have under independent central banks / currencies they went and spent it on consumer goods instead of investing into capital.
They don’t have this wealth because their ability to export is severely hampered by their money in order to shield the German from the consequences of their stupid working laws and boost Germany unsustainable trade balance.
I really wish the south acted like the north is acting now when Germany was considered the sick part of Europe in the 90s. We would have avoided so much trouble.
I am from the south. We are wasting money and producing too little. We don't have the massive wealth of the north because we are culturally incapable of behaving some other way.
i'm sorry but this is plain ignorance. chalking up the performance of a collection of european economies to just "it's cultural" is being, at best, ignorant.
is the cultural problem an important factor? as someone who's also from the south, yes, i think it is. is it the only one (that matters)? no.
the eu (and the euro) works mainly to provide a cheap-access market for the stronger economies to a series of other countries. it's extremely difficult for poorer economies to compete with the stronger ones (due to regulations, size and how those two interplay). it's even more difficult for those economies to provide the same quality of life (i.e. higher salaries, same level of social care, etc.) when they themselves don't have full control of their economy/market.
It's like the US: young people move from poor states to rich ones. Nobody in America ever talks about the basket case that is Alabama. People have been moving into New York and California for a hundred years.
Anecdotal: My dentist was from Rumenia. I'm sure they need dentists too but he can make more money in the Netherlands.
I'm from the south too. Our engineers are all over the north, proving to everyone that we have the brainpower to build some of the best systems in the world.
There are pending issues related to management, but also north-enforced market control (milk cuotas come to mind) that definitely have affected the economy.
Significant part of it is also deepened de-industrialization.
The entire western world but Germany experienced it. Doesn't have much with a culture or just south culture.
Even in Germany, parts that lost industries decades ago are still borer that the rest of country. France and Belgium have similar problems and Italy north-south split is even older.
Nobody know how to reverse it or at least succeeded. This is not easy.