The challenge for Europe is that too many of the nations are committing suicide. Deliberately taxing, regulating and spending (other people's money) as costs increase, work decreases and there is limited interest or money left available for the few (very few) legitimate functions of a government: defense and punishing crime (real crime, not texts and tweets) Europe lacks federalism. (And guns, but that is for another day) In the United States, yes California, New York and Rhode island are behaving like Europe on a bad day. But they have to compete with grown up states that have eliminated their state income taxes, limited the power of unions to abuse workers, given parents the right to control their kids educaton. We have no Berlin Wall and people leave "socialist" states and move to more limited government states. Heck, East Germany picked up on this after a while. California will also. Maybe not Massachusetts.