As I said, Americans and Europeans clearly care about different things :) Your sole focus on "growth" and "prosperity" makes this crystal clear and will make a good example of this in future discussions.
You may value other things like peace or a societal safety net or good healthcare or plenty of free time for your hobbies, etc. but it will be hard to maintain all these without growth and prosperity; like it or not, these things were paid for by VW selling cars abroad and the US Army protecting you. Europe is facing a rude awakening.