Since 2008 GDP in real terms of the European economy , EU 15, has fallen by 2.5%. For three “miserable” points we are sunk in a serious economic crisis that is accompanied by a great social and political crisis.
It is clear that economists do not measure well, since we have had to lose a lot more with the one that is falling on us.
I am afraid that this assessment does not take into account the illusion lost and the distrust gained by the actions of our European leaders who only lurch or obsess over expired recipes that sink us more and more into unrest. Nor are they incorporated, the false expectations created by the real estate and financial bubble in which we have been floating for years, fueling spending well above our real possibilities.
Of course, we have not added the lack of solidarity and empathy either, because if these variables were in the GDP equation, having lost 3 points would only mean a little less for everyone and so happy, and not the catastrophe of the unemployed, of young people who find or expect a job, bloody evictions of families, hidden cuts in education and health, limitations in public services,… At the first change, we have forgotten the role we had given to the public sector as guarantor of rights and clear exponent of our European welfare society of which we were so proud, to go on to demand accounts for its debt and its deficit, forgetting that these are, for the most part, the result of its balancing and stabilizing work.
It’s been more than four years since the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and in Europe we still haven’t reacted. We can only think of indiscriminate cuts in investment and public spending together, yes, with a whole collection of bold measures and instruments of all kinds intended to save the embarrassment of the European financial system that is exercising, in collusion with the public powers, its great share of power, to demand with great bravado multimillion-dollar ransoms that guarantee their benefits and perks, to the detriment of families and companies that are drowning in a dramatic lack of credit.
It is evident that the crisis that we are facing cannot be explained only by the drop in production levels. It is a global crisis of values in which we are losing our way as a society. Surely there are no miraculous recipes, but it is time for us to realize that the path does not go through putting all our efforts into controlling the public deficit. We need to invent new paths and try new instruments. Those of us who have already see where they take us…