A country in decay..
But You can't just deny the political problems. Propably some Americans do it - to cope with Trump who is worser than any PiS president. Poland has the EU as democratic layer but US with Trump doesnt have it.
> Poland has the EU as democratic layer but US with Trump doesnt have it.
I mean, let's see. The US thought checks and balances would hold, but they didn't, and the EU didn't prevent Hungary and Poland to slip into authoritarian dynamics to begin with. It's not exactly the legal body drawing the latter two back to change, but economic benefits. And Germany also suffers the same untested myth of "checks and balances", which really assumes some political decency. And no legal construct considered bazillionaire tech bros playing god with our dopamine receptors.
We all shouldn't take democracy for granted. I hope we all start to see the real enemy of the people and find agreement on what's actually important right now. Luckily, causal relations are becoming evident for everyone to see in this critical time. Now people need to start seeing.
I really hope Europe's citizens find unity, a shared identity and a renewed lust for democracy. Quite frankly, here in this libertarian club the EU regulations are not particularly popular, but for me the EU laws are mostly positive and I am a huge fan of the whole thing.
Barely, and it was in a recession 2023-2024.
Maybe the other western countries are equally infertile, but just allowed many immigrants in (which counts are population expansion) that also have more children on average.
How are Japan and Korea holing out? They are further down the infertility down-spiral.
https://japandaily.jp/why-japanese-elders-choose-prison-over...
https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/1-in-3-south-kor...
- Warsaw: Nikodem
- Oslo: Mohammad
- Berlin and Brandenburg: Mohammed
- England as a whole: Muhammad
Mind you that the names top these lists in spite of usually being present in there in multiple spelling versions. E.g. if all different spelling versions of Muhammad were combined it would top the Dutch statistics as well.
We should be asking why Muslims avoid Warsaw. That's odd.
So, maybe rapid growth combined with consumerist impulses is a deadly combination for a society. If only rapid growth were combined with healthy and wise priorities...
The Swiss?
Norway?
And I was in Serbia lately, and while it was not as developed as NW-EU, nobody there described it as decaying (and many said they experiences decay when living in western nations over the past 2 decades).
Denmark is not just decayed, it is completely rotten.
The only country in Europe that is the exception is Norway which is not part of the EU.
I don't know about the truthness of this claim, but you are definitely getting the upvote for the humour.
Yeah, a lot of the western countries that aren't wealthy enough to afford the luxury of indulging in absurd farcical politics and policies over the past 40yr are doing pretty decent.
With OP postulating that it is to enable corruption, and a sub-reply affirming that it is therefore the trait of a country in decay, bringing in Serbia as a counter-example is hilarious.
Serbia ranks 116th in the corruption perception index, Germany 10th. (Lower is better)
There's very little value in a statement like yours. It's a truism that has never been correct.
Just because successive generations make the same observations about <X> doesn't mean that <X> hasn't actually been steadily declining, you know.
There's little correlation between people complaining about something being better in the good old days, and it actualli being better. Not for no reason is "rose-tinted glasses" an expression.
The US is unusual as a federation. Some parts decline, others rise. I think it’s resilient. And every time something goes wrong, America pulls out a magic new technology. We will see if R&D will carry the day again.
Polands fertility rate in 2025 was 1.1. It is some sort of dystopia allready for people.