Note that the socialist nordic countries have stellar economies.
I've noticed a lot of Americans blame the euro crisis on socialism which,is interesting since it doesn't seem to hold up to scrutiny. I'd be interested in hearing why this is. Is it the media, an American distrust of socialism or something else?
As you point out, the nordic countries show that perverse incentives don't necessarily follow from Socialism. And indeed, America has its own non-Socialist perverse incentives such as encouraging pollution by not enforcing payment of the environmental externalities.
But all things considered globally, more socialism does tend to imply more perverse incentives.
However you end your comment by an unfounded claim that more socialism tends to imply perverse incentives. The same could be claimed of capitalism (or probably any other ..ism), see the banking sector and American healthcare for good examples.
In the rather socialist Denmark (where I happen to be from) when you break a leg you go to the doctor to get it fixed for free, and then you call your employer and tell him you won't be working for the next week, but you'll receive your paycheck nonetheless. When you get a child you take 9 months off work with full pay so that your offspring can get a good introduction to life. When you're out of a job the state will take care of you indefinitely.
Despite of this denmark has a consistently strong economy, is one of the richest countries in the world, and has for many years been in the top three of both the happiest country and the least corrupt country in the world.
Is that the Flexicurity system? How does that work?
It's the modern "communism", without invoking the spirit of McCarthy.
* University of California, Berkeley
* University of Washington, Seattle
* University of Massachusetts, Amherst
* Texas A&M
* University of Wisconsin, Madison
Shall I go on?
But I agree with you on the source of the problem - socialism or uneconomic regulation. That is visible in the doing business rankings of the world bank (http://www.doingbusiness.org/rankings). Ireland(rank 10), France(29),Portugal(30) will hopefully be fine. Spain at 44 is troubling; I'm only really worried about Italy (87) and Greece (100).
However Portugal+Spain+Greece have voted in conservative governments, Italy has an interim economist technocrat government. There is the European Fiscal Compact (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Fiscal_Compact). And Germany is pushing very hard for economic reforms in the bailout countries.
Overall it is just a problem with a few countries with bad governments/regulation, not a "Euro" problem and certainly not a European Union problem... And we seem to be taking more steps dealing with it then the US or UK with their problems!
I compared to the US$ because the import/export in USD or GBP is incredibly more significant than the few currencies the Euro has done badly against, like the Swiss Francs or Japanese Yen or Norwegian/Swedisch Krones etc...