In Berlin 20 years ago, I rented a room from an Indonesian woman who had come to Germany to work and had discovered big German men. She had never gone home again. There was always a big German man or two hanging around her kitchen, and because life was slower in those days, we’d often sit around and chat.

I remember one big German, one of my landlady’s regular boyfriends, already in his mid-30s, telling me that his aim in life was not to finish his studies. “Why not?” I asked naively. Life as a law student was good, he explained. He got a tidy grant from the government, and supplemented it with a spot of taxi driving. The moment he finished university, he’d become a judge. Judges worked hard. So instead he nursed at the bosom of the welfare state.

In the welfare state’s heyday, between around 1965 and 1990 in continental Europe, it didn’t just give poor people dignity. It also helped people like my landlady’s boyfriend live lives that weren’t dictated by money. Now the demolition of Europe’s welfare states is stamping out the last remaining slow lives. In future almost every European will have to view life as a career.