Socialism and the Future of Europe

As the American economic recovery kind of chugs along, I haven't been paying a lot of attention to the Greece debt crisis. However, today's riots got my attention. Greece has had its own form of "big government" for several decades that America has been recently toying with. As other members of the European Union are requiring major austerity measures in exchange for multi-billion-euro bailout loans, we see ominous comments like this from German Chancellor Angela Merkel:

"Nothing less than the future of Europe, and with that the future of Germany in Europe, is at stake," Merkel told [German] lawmakers. "We are at a fork in the road."

Rampant Socialism in Greece, where one commentator said that nobody was even sure how many people actually worked for the government there, obviously has demonstrated a severe lack of capacity to meet 21st century demands.

Also ominously, states in America like California actually have worse budget and debt issues, and all of those are on a much larger scale (if California was a separate country outside of the U.S., its GDP alone would rank in the top 10 of all nations).

As our fragile global economy inches forward, methinks Greece bears careful watching.