>As a European, I can only hope that our culture doesn't degrade itself to that degree.
The question is whether Europe will be able to maintain its wealth - which is the main thing that makes possible the luxury of having a more relaxed lifestyle - in the long term while falling behind economically. Most of Europe's wealth is based around old world economy.
We already see a wealth gap between the North and South and the West and East. Also between the old and young. Not sure what that means for the future.
Europes wealth is based, to a large extent, on hardware and a huge number of wealthy citizens. As long as hardware is a thing (not talking electronics but stuff like cars and so on), and we manage to not cut of the poorer 20-30% of society, Europe should do fine.
> We already see a wealth gap between the North and South and the West and East.
This has always existed; or at least has in modern history. It's hardly a new development, although the EU and Euro has brought this more to the forefront.
These kind of things ebb and flow anyway; if you look at the last few hundred years then concentrations of wealth have shifted all over the place. Some locations have gone from very wealthy to very poor and back to very wealthy again.
I think in general the European model works well for midsize, highly specialized hardware companies, mostly doing B2B. From what I can see, European companies are competitive in that space still, and it's not such a bad niche to be in. It's this middle ground between commodities and one-off custom products.
European economies are very diverse and I‘m not concerned with wealth as the most successful countries with high living standards also have relatively low debt in comparison to gdp.
The question is whether Europe will be able to maintain its wealth - which is the main thing that makes possible the luxury of having a more relaxed lifestyle - in the long term while falling behind economically. Most of Europe's wealth is based around old world economy.