On change - The Economist:

‘Having long relied on China’s market for growth, Russian gas to fuel its industry and American military heft for security, the eu has been rocked by three years of war in Ukraine and three months of Donald Trump’s agressive transactionalism in America. Amid the tumult that reigns in the world, Europe must embrace change.’

(…)

‘Europe is a shrinking force in the global economy. It is a luxury to pretend otherwise.’

(…)

‘One particularly decadent trait of Europe’s has been to put off problems until they become so acute that fixing them costs a fortune. Take the continent’s perilous demography. Europe in 1980 had around five working-age citizens in effect paying for every pensioner. Now it has three—and by 2050 there will be just two workers per pensioner. Some solutions to rectify the balance seem appealing but are impractical. Pushing Europeans to have more babies has proved unsuccessful; importing migrants is politically contentious. Eschewing the obvious solution of getting people to work longer, for example by linking retirement ages to life expectancies, is one of those luxuries now beyond Europe’s means.’ (…)

‘ Aiding Ukraine is no indulgence, on the contrary. Nor is financing the welfare state, to which many Europeans are attached. But to focus on what really matters requires understanding that a changing world requires changing priorities, too.’

Read the article here.

Europe has been called decadent for almost as long as I live.

But yes, the world is changing indeed, so priorities must change.

Will Europe become one big Switzerland?

It is already one big Switzerland?

Who is going to die for Ukraine? Only Ukrainians?

To call Trump’s policies ‘aggressive transactionalism’ is rather beautiful.

Perhaps we should hope for modest transactionalism, benign you-scratch-my-back etcetera.