I've said it before and I'll say it again: the problem with Europe is that the smart ones came here. Think of it as a sort of rapture. The enterprising and adventurous, along with those unwilling to put up with whatever awful hand Europe dealt them, packed up their wives and kids and caught the first available ship for America. Left behind were the morally corrupt elitist and aristocratic governments that pretended to be democracies and the poor suckers that trusted them.
We may be seeing the Ayn Rand scenerio being played out in Europe. The capitalists abandoned the continent and look what happened: mass slaughters that would make Robespierre and Cromwell puke.
I agree with this statement as part of the reason for the economic stagnation of Europe. The reason for depopulation is more complicated, and it is related to selfishness, (kids cost money that can be spent on self), casual sex and birth control (including abortion)
Selfish humans ,who can still have sex but not make babies, often choose not to. When they realize later that they have given something important up, it is too late to catch up.
You have got this right! My take on Europe has always been that 'anyone who was any good...left!'
In fact, most came here to the U.S. We received the biggest risk-takers (those who left there homelands not speaking a word of Engish) and thus the entrepreneurs, and the most ambitious (those willing to work hard) from across Europe by the millions. Europe was then left with a population that was demographically disproportionate; more than the usual number of those 'playing it safe' and staying put - and thus the bureaucrats, and the apathetic, thus the large number who take a permanent place on the sloth-enabling European unemployment rolls.
Reagan80
I am not sure. Most of European immigrants at the end of XIX century and beginning of XX century were poor peasants from Italy, Poland etc who came to work in factories and mines.
And many of the first settlers in colonial times were the friends of Cromwell. Ayn Rand sucks.