The Class Struggle. The Future?

George Magnus, Senior Economic Adviser for the UBS bank asks:

“The wave of social unrest that rumbled across Europe between 2008 and 2011 has become less intense...Some people argue that protest, nationalist and separatist movements are just  ‘noise’...So is the current lull in social unrest a signal that the social fabric of Europe is more robust than we thought, or is the calm deceptive?”

He goes on to answer:

 “If a rising number of people give up on the willingness and ability of their institutions to address grievances, then the lull is most likely deceptive...Let’s assume nothing changes...the economic  lot of European citizens, an unhappy one for five years now, shows no improvement. This seems a decent assumption...So what does austerity teach us about the quiescence of people?...So why are the streets relatively quiet? The short answer is we don’t know...In a benign outcome, the potential for social disorder will be defused by a new approach to economic burden-sharing...but European leaders are unable to reach an agreed and acceptable framework for durable economic recovery and full integration. This outcome describes the status quo, and is the base case for most  people. But it is also about stagnant, low growth, persistent high unemployment,  retreating targets for debt sustainability, more bail-outs and bail-ins, latent financial instability, and likely sovereign default. The current Eurozone news could not be more apt, and doesn’t seem like the ideal scenario in which to expect European social unrest and political turbulence to fade away.”