Скачать или смотреть Why Everyone In Europe Is Lower Middle Class

The European middle class is shrinking quickly, but originally it underwent gradual compression into an educated service class that maintains society's functions while accumulating nothing for the future.

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TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 Introduction
00:54 Chapter 1: The Lifestyle Reality
04:47 Chapter 2: The Aristocratic Permanence
08:36 Chapter 3: The Political Ladder
12:36 Chapter 4: The Demographic Reckoning

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When you think of Europe, you probably imagine Parisian cafés with perfect croissants, Swiss Alpine chalets, Italian villas overlooking the Mediterranean, or sleek German automobiles gliding down the Autobahn.

But if you actually live on the Continent, you're more likely to hang your wet laundry from your apartment window because you don't own a dryer, squeezing into a decades-old mini-car with manual transmission, and shopping at Lidl three times weekly because your under-counter refrigerator can't hold more groceries.

A German engineer earning seventy thousand euros annually hangs his laundry on a drying rack while his Dutch colleague shares a washing machine with three neighbors, and a French marketing manager bikes through rain because parking costs three hundred euros monthly.

A household earning fifty thousand euros faces a 47% total tax burden, leaving twenty-six thousand five hundred euros after taxes, with housing consuming over 40% of disposable income and costs rising 48% between 2015 and 2023.

Today's European middle class rents apartments averaging sixty-five square meters, considers one small car a luxury, and struggles to save even modest amounts monthly while previous generations expected home ownership and multiple vehicles.

Credit Suisse research found Chinese median wealth actually exceeds European median wealth, despite Chinese workers earning roughly one quarter of European incomes, achieved through savings rates between 31-37% while European household savings rates range from just 7-18%.

Central London property remains concentrated in families like the Grosvenors, controlling approximately ten billion pounds worth of Mayfair and Belgravia real estate from a 1677 marriage dowry when Mary Davies brought 500 acres of rural farmland.

Britain introduced income tax only in 1798, capital gains taxation in 1965, and inheritance tax in 1894—by which time aristocratic fortunes had already grown for centuries untaxed.

Modern European tax systems focus intensively on income rather than wealth, so a software engineer earning two hundred thousand euros pays nearly half in taxes while aristocratic families pay tax only on income their vast assets generate.

Political power remains Europe's hidden mobility mechanism, with a Brussels bureaucrat earning one hundred fifty thousand euros wielding influence over billions in fund allocation while EU structural funds alone distribute seventy-five billion euros annually.

Europe faces an unprecedented demographic crisis with median age reaching 44.7 years and Italy hitting 48.7 years, while fertility rates sit at just 1.38—far below the 2.1 needed for replacement.

The 47% tax burden that funds current retirees leaves young families with insufficient resources for child-rearing, while housing costs that rose 48% in eight years make family-appropriate homes unaffordable.

Current workers fund current retirees through tax contributions, but as the workforce shrinks while the retired population expands, this burden must increase inexorably with Europeans now living into their eighties while retirement ages remain in the mid-sixties.