Krugman on Europe (the article is a good summary and analysis, leading to a typical socialist course of treatment for the patient):
My comment:
Those nations that do not sustain the fiscal standards of the EU's economic leaders ought to be encouraged to leave. It's a well-established psychological reality (for which I wish I had a ready link and clearly recall reading a striking study on) that low standards are more contagious than high standards. Greece et al. set low standards for integrity, for discipline, for self-reliance, for productivity. They will not Germanize if bailed out endlessly by the Germans--but, the Germans may be sufficiently demoralized by such a parasitic dynamic to turn Greek. The cultural/psychological contagion is what must be contained. Krugmanite socialism would only spread the disease (and encouraging this contemptible proto-"Idiocracy", in the long run, does less to alleviate the human suffering he harps upon). At the very least, high standards are difficult and time-consuming to develop, low standards can spread readily and rapidly. It's a perilous asymmetry, especially in an obsessively egalitarian intellectual milieu, like the Western world. As Nietzsche insisted, in practice equality is possible only by pulling down the higher men and the higher societies.
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