Angela Merkel’s Failure May Be Just What Europe Needs
by Ross Douthat, Nov. 22, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/22/opinion/angela-merkel-germany-liberalism.html?comments#permid=24930133
Germany will emerge just fine from this political crisis , but I'm not so sure the US will survive Trump.
I do agree that the major political parties, both here, in Germany and in many other democracies, have failed to grasp and grapple with the negative effects of globalization. But the response of Britain and the US of blaming all problems on immigration is self-defeating. Already the UK is suffering from a lack of employees in a number of fields, healthcare for example, and Trump has to get special dispensation from his own anti-immigration rules in order to keep his various golf resorts functioning.
There is a battle going on between the US/UK (Anglo-Saxon) rapacious, unfettered free enterprise system and the system of "social market economy" (favored by Europe - capitalism with a social conscious and social restraints). Ray Dalio, also of Business Insider, makes a very interesting case for making policy not on the basis of global statistics (which hide vital internal differences) but to look at statistics separately for the lower 60% and upper 40% and focus social and economic policies on the statistics of the lower 60%.
Trump won by recognizing this split between the 60/40 and speaking to their frustrations (as have most right-wing nationalist), but in Trump's case, all his promises were self serving lies and his policies have nothing to do with helping the lower 60%, but rather, everything he says and does is simply aimed to bolster his low self-esteem and frighteningly sick personality.
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