Nah, it is not that bad. Everything will go on as planned. Concerns will start after the German general elections in about 1 year. Merkel will try everything to delay the hard decisions until after the election. Popular support for Merkel in Germany is around 67% atm. Her party is polling around 40% (which is good). Just their coalition partner, the FDP, is on its way of self suicide because of hopeless bad party leaders.

Greece is as hopeless as it was all the time. 'Bad news' are 'good news', because it may be 'really bad news' instead. There were always talks how to kick Greece out of the Euro. This is like the US-quarrel about abortion. Many people want to abolish the right for abortions, but no government will ever do it.

France is pretty much like the US. Both believe their countries are a planet of its own, while the other nations form earth.

Catalonia may vote for secession, but as the spanish constitution does not allow it, the independence-party leaders will face a long time in prison than. While the EU-commission declared, that an independent Catalonia won't be part of the EU, the support for secession has dropped far below 50%.

The British would be idiots to leave the EU. Alone they will never survive. Within the EU they can play the "game of thrones". From outside they are just the wildlings from the north

At least the EU does need a new buget only every 7 years. Most nations have these debates every year. Btw. the budget is really smal for an area like the EU. Just around 1000 billion Euro for 7 years. The US spends this in a few months. So lets talk about small government

As far as i know the airplane tax has been canceled for 1 year.

The parts firewing did not reply to are telling...

In the grand scheme of things the airline tax is... Not something the average European gives a damn about. Let the USA, China etc sue away. See if we care. Spain's goverment and economy have been teethering on the brink of collapse for decades, nothing new.

There is a reason why the USA is doing zilch in foreign policy at the moment. It's because it is in an even bigger mess than the EU.

You'd be amazed at the billions of cuts in goverment spending, social welfare and all that jazz were seeing across the continent. Well in Nothern Europe anyway.

I believe it, BiefstukFriet. It's a shame that tens of millions of Amerikans will vote for whoever promises them the most handouts: Eventually, we'll have to face the music. The longer we wait, the worse it'll be. And we're not slowing down our debt growth; we're speeding it up.

I think most Europeans posting on this forum fail to recognize the demographic and cultural differences between their nations and the USA.

Many of their nations, not founded upon the limited government and personal freedoms that the USA was, grew to be socialistic (no judgement here) in many ways. Faced with fiscal insolvency, most have had to scale back their governments significantly.

The part I think many outside (and inside, too) of the USA ignore is that we know we're on a very insolvent path and we know that we're becoming more so every single year. The part I think many outside (and inside, too) of the USA ignore is that there are tens of millions of voting Amerikans who just don't care.

They've enjoyed  so many government handouts all of their lives that they literally don't care about insolvency. They don't care about debt and their children's futures. They literally don't care about collapse. They know that handouts are more than no handouts. And they vote to get all the handouts they can get, and they'll keep voting for maximized handouts until the day their bankrupt government collapses and has nothing to hand out.

As is very obvious from voting records, these people who vote solely for handouts without regard for anything else are concentrated in ghettos. And they are multitudinous. Videos frequently go viral showing these ignorant bums talking about showing up for government handouts as their sole source of income, with no idea where the money comes from. With no regard for education. With no regard for work. With no regard for sustainability or the future.

For all of my love of personal freedom, I'm not making an argument here against democratic socialism. I'm pointing out that America, culturally, suffers/will suffer (economically/gov't revenue wise) even more from democratic socialism than Europe (most of which is cutting back drastically). If you think Europe's cuts are bad, just wait for America's cuts. It's gonna be a hell of a show.

Firewing is incorrect on one point. The UK would not suffer from leaving the EU. Nonetheless the net economic cost to remaining is less than our overseas aid budget. Most Brits would shrink that too.

Spock is predicting some Randian-esque demise for the USA. Perhaps, but he already concedes that the Peoples Republics of Europe are scaling back socialism.

They're scaling back. We're pushing for more with no regard for costs/debt. Ghetto trash love the handouts and know nothing of consequences. Our political overlords want a significant collapse, because they'll blame it on freedom and use it as an excuse for more government control of our economy.