> As an American I watch Europe pretty closely, and I've seen some things that are worrisome such as increasing amounts of fascism (anti-freedom / anti-privacy)...
As a European who watches the US, I hope the irony of your statement has not escaped you.
The NSA, the Can-Spam act, the TSA, Guantanamo Bay, how Obama gave a kill order on a US citizen without due process, how the hardline christian right and hardline libertarians across the pond would make most of our local extreme right wing clowns look like socialists, how some major libertarian voices in financial news are regularly cheerleading whacky anti-Europeans, the list could go on ad nauseam.
> Even Finland's per capita GDP hasn't increased since 1990 inflation adjusted. How long can such stagnation continue before there are severe consequences.
Doesn't sound so dire... The main reason that inflation-adjusted income has increased in the average US family unit since the 1970s is that it went from one bread earner to two. (See e.g. Elizabeth Warren's research on debt or her books, for instance The Two Income Trap, for the gory details.) I'm not seeing pitchforks.
In more seriousness, this is not meant to be a contest. The point is that things aren't as bad on the continent as you might read in Anglo-Saxon news outlets.
There's some uneasiness and some distress, sure. Here, like on the other side of the pond, the main cause of it at the end of the day is economic woes, most of which stem from bailing out the well connected instead of having let the financial system collapse -- for better or worse.
The most important take away, imho, is that we're at peace. Consider... Since the fall of Rome, we had been almost constantly at war with each other. Whereas besides the Balkans in the 1990s, and the ongoing skirmishes in Crimea, there has been no war here since WW2. That's the longest period of peace between Europe's major powers in history. And thankfully, no ending of this streak is on anyone's radar.