Without the euro, many European nations would already have lots of troubles during the crisis. It is a simplification to say Greece is the sole problem here.

Hiking retirement ages up
well this just makes sense as life expectancy goes up.

Charging for schooling (college and uni)
Universities have always charged, there has never been a free uni.
Colleges in my country are still free.

Reducing unemployment packages such as guaranteed pay after unemployed
Unemployment payment was never gaurunteed, you need to prove you are seeking employment to recieve a package and after so many months government can give you a "do this job or we stop paying" choice.

Reducing or eliminating pay per child policies
Certainly not true in my country, cant comment on others

Reducing pensions
State Pensions are being reduced world wide as life expectency goes up, how is the state pension in America?

Reducing public employee pay (14 months pay a year in Greece, wow!)
One Country, wages aint decreasing but are either freezing or having a smaller increase then expected

Also lots of European countries aint part of the Euro.

Read the news story then comment Khaz

Here's how it works guys

index your current budget at 100

you want 103

you demand 110, be argued down to 103

next budget cycle you demand 110, be argued to hold 103.  You're just arguing to argue but make it good

next budget cycle you demand 110, argue for 105 as bare minimum to hold inflation

next budget cycle is election year, holler like hell for 110 and take whatever

next budget cycle likely has change of leadership, go to them and say " we told you 5 years ago we needed 110, never got it, DAMMIT when is our department gonna be fully funded???!!!"

US had or has a huge deficit budget aswell and you dont have our kind of welfare state.
As this article says its about stimulus package. Banks were bailed out aswell.

All those corrections to the welfare state were being discussed and put in place well before the crisis. The crisis merely sped things up a bit.

One must point out though, that Greece it's politics are considered to be outlandish by our standards. It's no wonder that they're chin deep in debt.

1>
EUROPEAN, EUROPEAN, EURO[beep]INGPEAN!
EU RO PE AN
Like "You're a peon", yeah?

2>
Wait, socialist Europe? Er, newsflash:
http://www.sanfranciscosentinel.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/fall-berlin-wall.jpg

3>
Going by the only two actual sources available, and what I know of the subject; you think Europe is about to collapse horribly because:
Britain is promising that it really, really, really, will fix their black-hole of a benefit system that it has been promising to fix in every election since 1997,
the Germans have announced that their economy is going to be into the red by exactly 1% for the next financial year,
and Greece is fucked if it doesn't attract lots of tourist-dollars this summer.

That's business as usual for us, sorry to pee on your strawberries.
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