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We have missed the one obvious and current elephant in the room/factor leading to increased inequality:
On 8 January, the European Commission published 2012 report on employment and social analysis, indicating that EU’s social inequality gap among Member States deepened.European Commissioner for Employment and Social Affairs László Andor said to reporters that, “peripheral states appear to be caught in a downward spiral of falling economic output, rapidly rising unemployment and eroding individual incomes…[b]2012 was another bad year for Europe, as it worsened the social divisions even further.”[/b]
According to the 2012 edition of the Employment and Social Developments in Europe Review, after five years of economic crisis and the return of a recession in 2012, unemployment is hitting new peaks not seen for almost twenty years, household incomes have declined and the risk of poverty or exclusion is on the rise, especially in Member States in Southern and Eastern Europe.
Fix exchange rates (in non-optimal currency areas) and the only way to adjust is through increased UN and/or falling wages. We have a desperate example of this going on before our very eyes....
Its an argument with some merit but they would clearly have taken a large hit however their currency was delivered.
We could debate which was worse but not whether they would have been hit
I am not sure the EU can take the blame for boom bust and countries borrowing to much and the financial markets closing in on them when they cannot pay. Whether they made it better [ bailing them out] or exacerbated it [ fixed exchange rate as you term it] it is difficult to be certain