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Every nation and all in it are dependent on what they can produce. Once government gets too involved what is produce goes down and what you produce doesn't pay for what you want. Socialist policies in the end produces less and less and that means to keep up you borrow on the future of other generations. The real scare now in Europe is a loss generation that will never catch up even if reform happens. Japan has always produced well for its size even thru those twenty years which is why they do not have debt crisis; they owe themselves.
The rise of China (and the US, really) disagrees with you. The most robust systems of governance in the world have all blended some measure of capitalism with some measure of State commerce. The difference between the US, China, and the EU are differences of degree, not of kind. The US has been in deficit for 62 of the last 74 years (admittedly just a stand-in for the concept of "borrowing on the future").
I do not think the EU has peaked in the way that Japan did in the 90s/00s. The EU has more growth potential in Eastern and southeastern Europe than Japan had in that era. And that is without even considering the possibility of formal expansion. Countries like Lithuania, Latvia, Hungary, Romania, Poland, and Slovakia have a lot of room to develop. Europe also has a nascent immigration culture that could really take root and change the region's demographic trends. And expansion, especially the big two, Ukraine and Turkey, could really shift Europe's fortunes.
Japan's crisis is its failure to continue growing its economy and its aging population. 1/3 of its population is over 60, whereas just under 17% of Europe is over 65 (not quite apples to apples, but close).
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