The US is at the opposite pole, meaning too little social protection. I was thinking about some kind of middle ground, like in Canada or the UK.
That sounds wrong. Example: Czech rep. had much more expansive monetary stimulus policy (we printed quite a bit of money), is booming on Germany-level and yet is super eurosceptic.
Euroscepticism is just newest brand of populism in Europe. Especially after ECB stimulus Europe is getting better, "on life support" sounds like ridiculous hyperbole.
Devaluing the CZK wouldn't have been possible if your country had switched to the Euro like Slovakia did.
The problem is the ECB does not want to devalue the Euro mainly because German fears of hyperinlfation. So they're trying to stimulate sluggish growth with negative interest rates. Which doesn't work. It only destroys pensions because it's esentially a tax on money.
Define "slow". Growth rates are comparable everywhere with France and Germany fractionally ahead of the US:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/may/31/uk-comes-bo...
(of course all of those are pretty low at the moment, which may be a more general post-2008 problem)
"Too much social protection" and "high taxes" seem to me to be memes aimed at benefiting the top 1-10%, with little grounding in truth. If you look at marginal tax rates faced by median families, and compensate for the ways in which this includes things like healthcare which aren't included in the US, it's much less of a difference.