alt Hacker NewsUnfortunately Europe and the EU have allowed themselves to be squeezed on all sides by USA, China, and Russia through several decades of short sighted policy and extreme over-reliance on globalism.
The financial crisis in France and Italy, and the general societal unrest everywhere has not just come out of nowhere. Europe is just simply not competitive in the industries of the next 50 years and that is very unsettling to people.
Problem - I don't know what they should have done instead. In software they do fund a lot of open source stuff but that doesn't build economic power, if anything it gives it away. They make their places relatively nice to live but this doesn't result in a generation of people desperate to acquire other people's money. It's like they just coast along while everyone else hones their successful economic predators - if you think predators are bad then what can you do?