> Standard of living has been steadily declining in most of Western Europe post 2009: stagnating wages, exploding costs of living, declining public healthcare, pension and welfare funds, with longer waiting queues and scarcity in public services, etc.
Actually this is because of how government financing works. Globalization, if anything, gave Europe another 50 years of growth (since this really should have become a critical problem in the 1980s) by providing very cheap products and services.
The economic theory ("capitalism") that the west supposedly lives by is that in times of excess (like the last 80 years, or since 2008 at the very least) the government saves up enormous amounts, because they can easily do that, so that when international trade causes problems again that built up wealth can buffer against shocks by having the government directly finance a significant portion of GDP.
The EU itself is a massive force of globalization of course, if countries join the EU they can go a lot deeper in debt. So really ... they shouldn't have done this (because if they join they can't avoid taking on extra debt).
Oh wait. European governments haven't saved - at all. In fact they are deep in debt. Well, then shocks are as unavoidable as they would otherwise be, BUT now there's nothing the government can do about it.
And while, yes, there is inherited wealth, frankly, it's a rounding error. Especially compared to the situation in "Asia". Not that I support inequality, I just don't understand why this is called out when it is such a small part of the problem. The problem is extreme government overspending through financialization. That is not an accident, it was (and is) deliberate policy.
The real problem is that labor "needs to become more efficient". A lot more of Europe's people need to work more and/or longer. Because underneath it all, it's not really a money problem. It's a problem that things aren't getting done because governments have built all of this on income tax - which has made many jobs impossible.
The situation is that we've come from a situation of growth, where everybody gets a little bit extra, and we're mostly just discussing who gets how much extra. Now, there's no growth. That means the only way pensioners get more is if unemployed people get less. The only way kids get more education is if we let more cancer patients die. The only way unemployment can go up is if we let the roads deteriorate ... And, because the governments are overfinancialized ...
I wouldn't worry about wealth. Wealth has to be tied up in ownership of resources. Houses, companies, ... And when everybody is forced to use less, the prices of houses, companies, ... where that wealth is tied up, will fall a lot more than wages will fall.
One thing I really hate is that people don't see what is coming. Now the argument is "we'll tax the rich". That will, of course, fail. If you steal all the wealth you've solved ... nothing. And ... you know what is a really easy, stupid job that can avoid all those tax problems? The army. And how will you finance that? "We'll just make those rich $neighboring_country assholes pay for it after we conquer them!"
In other words: what's coming in Europe is war. It'll take 2 decades, but it's coming.