Europe is sinking

By Boss Gu, rewritten in English by Mr. Y

The decline of Europe is perhaps no longer alarmist talk. In the protracted Russo-Ukrainian War, the world saw a Europe that had lost the halo of a developed country, it had gathered the strength of many countries but seemed to be struggling.

The fundamental reason is that Europe has already fallen into the trap of welfarism.

The European welfare state system is a charming illusion; It looks like a paradise from a distance, but it is a sweet trap when you look closely. People living in such an environment are like those who are drinking a cup of sweet poison, being chronically poisoned without even realizing it. Many people proudly proclaim this is “the highest stage of civilization”, but this is perhaps nothing more than self-intoxication, and we must not take such claims seriously.

1. The Fundamental Difference Between Civilization and Welfare

To understand this, first we must be clear about the difference between civilization and welfare.

• The logic of civilization is to “teach a man to fish”. 

When you're hungry, civilization teaches you how to use a fishing rod, enabling you to master the skills for independent survival. You can choose to study, or you can temporarily rely on one or two fish for relief; but ultimately you must learn to fish on your own. Civilization believes that the human brain is designed to learn, not to rely on.

The logic of civilization is to “teach a man to fish”

• The logic of welfare, however, is to “reward laziness and punish diligence”.

Under this system, knowing how to fish becomes a disadvantage, because only people who cannot fish are entitled to receive fish for free. Being able to support yourself becomes a disadvantage, because only the unemployed qualify for subsidies. Having savings becomes an obstacle, because public housing is only allocated to the destitute. If working hard actually disqualifies you from welfare, the system itself is encouraging you to give up struggling and simply “lie flat”.

A friend of mine argued that the European welfare system guarantees everyone's basic right to survival and is the highest embodiment of humanity. However, in the real world, dignity does not come from alms but originates from the watering of sweat. The cruel reality is that nothing kills the spirit of striving more than the seemingly well-intentioned government aid. The higher a society waves the banner of “high welfare, heavy taxation”, the stronger this toxicity becomes.

2. Who is Your Enemy? How welfare systems tear society apart

Suppose you are an ordinary worker in an EU country, up to 40% of your income is eaten away by taxes. Where does this money go? A considerable portion is supplied to people who choose not to work. They don't pay anything, but they can share in the fruits of your labor and feel grateful for this distribution system. From this perspective, they are feeding on your sweat and blood.

EU welfare system is a sweet poison

The taxes you pay are one time higher than those of ordinary Americans, and two times higher than Asians. Because you live in a "welfare paradise", the fruits of your labor are used to nourish the people of whole society.

But paradoxically, you're not a complete outsider. You will also get sick and grow older, and you need public services too. As more and more people lie down and choose to enjoy welfare, your inner balance is shaken: why can they do it, and I can't? Why is their laziness protected, while my diligence is punished? As a result, more and more people turn from contributors to takers, sinking together into this perfect trap.

Welfarism, throughout history, has been the poison of a nation’s chronic suicide, without exception.

Athens declined due to excessive city-state relief, and Rome collapsed due to its "bread and circuses". Economic laws are like gravity, not subject to change due to ideology. The essence of the welfare system is to live today on tomorrow’s grain, sacrificing the future in exchange for present comfort.

3. The Subversion of Economics Laws: When Work Becomes a "Punishment"

The root of Europe's problems lies in this: it took centuries to build its market system, yet it took only a few decades to dismantle it. The core of the market mechanism - the "peer relationship between effort and reward" - has been almost destroyed.

There are many ways to destroy the market system, but the most fatal one is that they have used the welfare system to subvert the "natural connection between effort and reward".

In a healthy economic environment, one’s income should match the value he has created. The more you work, the more you get; the less you work, the less you get; you don’t work, you get nothing. This is a basic economic principle. But welfare states have twisted this principle: the more you work, the less you get; the less you work, the more you get; and doing nothing at all becomes the most rewarding choice.

Let's do a calculation: a German middle-class worker earns €60,000 a year, and his after-tax annual income is €35,000. This is the result of 2,000 hours of hard work, which means the value of each hour of labor is €17.5. Meanwhile, an unemployed person can receive €1,500 a month in welfare - €18,000 a year. If this money is treated as the income from a "job of lying down", his hourly rate amounts to €7.5.

High taxes and high redistribution in the EU

On the surface, the worker earns more; but what is often ignored is the most precious cost: time. The worker spends 2,000 hours of his life, while the unemployed person has the freedom of these 2,000 hours, which can be used to develop skills, pursue side hustles, or spend time with family - all of which offer immense intangible value.

If we consider other hidden costs such as commuting and clothing expenses, the difference between working and not working is minimal. In some cases, working may even result in a decrease in net income, because the income earned could disqualify workers from receiving certain benefits or entitlements.

This is the root cause of Europe’s persistently low employment rate - for many people, working has become an economic punishment.

In the end, the entire society falls into a strange stagnation: the young and energetic are unwilling to strive to start and develop businesses. After all, welfare will catch them if they fall, so why bother trying so hard? Enterprises are not willing to expand because they are afraid of bearing heavy responsibilities. Society loses its drive to compete and innovate, rotting quietly.

4. The Magnificent Maze: Inefficient Healthcare and The Injured Weak

What is the reality of the universal healthcare system that Europeans are so proud of? Need a CT scan? Please wait in line for 3 months. Want to see a specialist? Please wait for 6 months. It's common to have to wait 4 to 5 hours in the emergency room. The so-called "equal medical care for all" ultimately means equal waiting, equal suffering, equally missing the best treatment window.

Long waiting in the inefficient healthcare system

The rich have long bypassed this overburdened public system through private healthcare, leaving only the middle class and the poor trapped in this magnificent maze. The greatest irony of the welfare system is that while it claims to protect the weak, it is the weak who are the first to be harmed.

The strong can always find loopholes in the system, even using the rules to profit themselves. Those who are truly brought down by the welfare system are precisely those who could have changed their life through hard work - they are lured to give up striving, choose to be dependent, and ultimately lose the ability for self-improvement.

5. An Unending Vicious Cycle: The Dilemma of Population and Immigration

The functioning of the welfare system is based on two premises: continuous population growth and sustained economic development. In essence, it is a disguised Ponzi scheme: the money spent today is repaid by tomorrow's taxpayers, but if the number of tomorrow's taxpayers is insufficient, or the wealth they created is not enough, the entire system will collapse.

Europe's demographic data reflects the seriousness of this problem. Germany, Italy, and Spain - three of the Europe's largest countries - have a fertility rate of only 1.3 - 1.5, far below the needed 2.1 to maintain a stable population. Half a century from now, the native-born population of Europe will shrink by one-third, while the number of people receiving pensions will increase.

In the past, 5 young people supported an old person; in the future, it may be only one-to-one. How can such a system be sustainable?

The European solution is to introduce large-scale immigration, but this has brought new problems: cultural conflict, social friction, and integration difficulties. These are problems that cannot be solved by simply providing more welfare benefits; instead, the generous welfare has hindered the integration of immigrant groups into society, because they can survive without working and learning the local language.

The unintegrated immigrant has become a thorny problem for the EU

This has formed a deadly knot: the welfare system drives down fertility, low fertility exacerbate population aging, aging population makes the welfare system unsustainable, then a large number of immigrants are introduced, which brings new social problems, which in turn requires more welfare benefits to deal with, further increasing the fiscal burden...a vicious cycle that will only lead to a complete collapse.

6. Conclusion: The Eternal Law of Nature

Among today’s developed regions, Europe's prospects are the bleakest.

Meanwhile, the youth of emerging economies - in India, Vietnam, and Indonesia - still burn with ambition. History tells us that the ultimate outcome of welfarism never changed.

In the late Roman Empire, rulers offered bread and tournaments to pacify the restless masses. The result? Fiscal collapsed, currency devalued, society decayed, and eventually the empire collapsed.

The Soviet Union’s welfare was even more extravagant: free healthcare, free education, guaranteed jobs, free housing. What was the result? Low productivity, shortages of supplies, and the eventual collapse of the whole country.

Today, Europe is making the same mistake again, but the packaging is more sophisticated. They no longer hand out "bread," but "food vouchers," and instead of forcing people to work, they provide unemployment subsidies.

In essence, they are all the same: sacrificing efficiency for short-term stability. But such stability comes at the expense of the future.

The biggest evilness of the welfare system is that it fundamentally subverts a person's values, leading people to believe that survival is a right without effort, and that taking from others is more natural and justifiable than giving.

A healthy society should encourage people to create, not to grab. It should reward diligence and innovation, not laziness and conservatism. It should protect property and contracts, not impose high taxes and redistribution.

The European welfare system has gone against these principles. It is not about building a fairer society, but about creating a more mediocre, fragile, and unsustainable one.

On the dead-end road of welfarism, Europe has gone the farthest, Japan is close behind, the United States lingers on the sidelines, and some emerging economies are charging are rushing in.

I hope humans can learn from historical lessons and find a sustainable development path.

In the universe, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Reward comes only through effort; sustainability comes only through creation. This is not the cold capitalist logic, but the eternal law of nature. True prosperity is not about surviving without working but means that people can live better and better through work.

History has repeatedly shown that welfare-state policies ultimately lead to the collapse of the system: Athens, Rome, and the Soviet Union are all examples of this.

Source & Copyright Notice

This article is adapted and translated from the Chinese original with the author’s permission. Translation © 2025 Mr. Y. All translation rights reserved.

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