The European Welfare state was unsustainable and their grandparents knew that. However, the Marshall Plan put money into European countries after WWII for twenty years until the end of the sixties. At the very moment the Marshall Plan monies began drying up, the Value Added Tax was implemented as "quote" a temporary measure. The VATs eventually replaced the Marshall Plan money which, unlike today the governments would have printed more fiat currency; yet, the memories of Germany and Italy's experience with fiat currency kept them on a single generational sustainable Tax and currency system. However, successive generations of politicians learned to tax and spend thru crony capitalism thus squeezing another thirty years up to today. Today, as the EU countries disengage from a VAT and began the fiat currency known as Quantitate Easing, the world does not have a strong American Banking system to bellwort the financial system. The US is competing for a competitive economy and is thus forced to utilize the socialist European financial ploys to bolster the government spending that the people do not produce.
If the US does not disengage from the fiat currency soon, it will most likely dump the US Dollar and issue a new currency for the Americas, called the American Dollar spanning from Canada to Mexico initially and eventually gobbling up the whole of North and South American creating another Trade Zone. I believe that the US is going to do thru immigration what NAFTA could not accomplish due to strong Democratic Unions politically; once the immigration issue opens boarders in the US from Mexico, the floodgates for the new Trade Zone will have been established and the American Dollar will reign supreme.
Eventually, there will be 5-7 Trade Zones based on zones of interest for Russia, China, possibly India or the old British Anglo Empire.
"...the floodgates for the new Trade Zone will have been established and the American Dollar will reign supreme." Be careful how you word your ideas, and what you wish for. The New World Order also talks of establishing zones of peace and zones of trade. The difference is that their IMF/Fed pals want these zones to be something else entirely, all based on one world currency controlled by an international cartel.
Read "The Creature from Jekyll Island", by G. Edward Griffin; and while your at it, a copy of Agenda 21 from the U.N.
Zones indeed.