What you see as "sacred cow entitlements" are the cornerstones of the European middle class and therefore represent a major challenge to the widening global gap between the richest 1% of humanity and everyone else.What does this have to do with Europeans protesting the loss of sacred cow entitlements..
However, since you opened the door...Iran is a rogue terrorist nation. Iran's president is a holocaust denier. He has threatened to "blow Israel off the map".
"In sum, the Neoliberal Revolution seeks to achieve in Europe what the United States has achieved since real wages stopped rising in 1979: doubling the share of wealth enjoyed by the richest 1 per cent.
"This involves reducing the middle class to poverty, breaking union power, and destroying the internal market as a precondition."
This requires a dictatorship with the the European Central Bank taking economic authority from elected governments across the continent.
Most dictators find nuclear weapons useful.
BTW, Iran hasn't invaded or occupied another sovereign nation in the last hundred years. Maybe you should worry more about star-spangled rogues and terrorists?
A Financial Coup..
The logic of government provided goodies such as the entitlements Europeans enjoy defies logic.
There is a total absence of efficiency. Workers don't actually have to perform to keep their jobs. In France , for example, a worker has to commit a capital crime to be fired.
Government mandates have businesses retianing employees that have no function.
Merit, productivity and performance mean nothing. Everyone is paid the same amount. It is human nature to notice that if other workers are not pulling their weight then the remainder cop the same attitude. It's groupism to the point of destruction.
Without competition, evryrthing goes stale.
Ever wonder why EU nations have 15% unemployement and younger workers even higher?
Taxes are confiscatory in Western Europe.
Not here. No way no how.
To those who think capitalism and freedom to choose a standard of living is soemhow "unfair", they are free to give up all their trappings, their cars, their property and everything else they've earned and give it over to buracrats. Leave me out of it..
I bust my ass for what little I have.
This is not a debate. So, a response is uneccsary and will go unread.
I have stated my position and that's that. Done.
Ditto and well said.