we were, by standard of living, better off prior to EU.adhoc wrote: Well the fact is standard of living has dropped - and still is dropping - in my country since €. It's very easy to talk how nice having a new museum is when you're full of cash, but we have people here working for 480€ full month at expenses similar to Germany. I'm doing fine, not as well if I was in UK or DE, but I still have an ear for those not as fortunate or capable.
Sure, TVs are cheap due to EU wide open market, but you don't buy a TV every day. On the other hand, EU has forbid us to produce sugar, for example.
Like I said, it's easy to be pro-EU when you're living at the pool of money convergency. Come live to peripheral for a few years
USA is the strongest economically, regardless of your field, you will earn more in the USA.. And our cost of living is trivial relative to our middle-class income..
Do you mean it has changed ever since 2001 ?
IMO it can go two ways:
Nonononono....jacobolus wrote:IMO it can go two ways:
(1) The Euro is replaced by national currencies, and weaker economies are given the right to devalue their own currencies.
(2) Germany, etc. will have to suck it up and provide real fiscal support to weaker economies, as happens between U.S. states. Probably will also have to create more serious and democratic governing institutions.
No I mean this:
I can tell you that might not be financially doable in the long term.
Hahaha.. Well basically, what's happening in the EU is not due to democratic or undemocratic, they're weak because the Stronger nations in Europe are enslaving the weaker ones..
Woah woah woah.. I'm not right or left wing.. I've believe that different ideologies are appropriate at different times of a nation's development cycle.. That is all..
Well, no, some of these people legitimately need help and should be helped, nobody deserves to live in fear of having a bomb dropped on his head, you know? But the way EU has confronted this problem is plain stupid. You can't create a hot pocket in such a small country.Muirium wrote: We don't see migrants here much at all. Because of London's efforts to lumber everyone else on earth with them instead of us! Scotland's less offended by them, but when London is a car ride away, we aren't at all appealing to newcomers. Too cold, white, and not nearly as oozing money as the city where so much of the world's wealth is robbed. Fair's fair.
That cold, deadly North Sea makes these things much easier. You Slovenians should build a ditch and consider sharks…
Of course it would be financially doable. What you mean is that it might not be politically palatable. Folks in Germany are happy to walk all over Greece, Italy, Spain, etc., but as soon as they might have to sacrifice something, they’ll nope right out of the deal.
Very wrong. The german GOVERMENT makes those decisions, not the citizens! I was under the impression you can differentiate. HUGE difference. And I tell you it "might" not be financially possible. You sure you know the situation in detail jacobolus? I have my doubts.
The EU is not socialist, so the money will always be between a handful of bankers..
The European "idea" is not working the way it was envisioned jacobolus! This is not about bankers, they got their billions somewhere else anyway [Panama]. It's not a socialist programm. On the other hand Greece is getting fucked either way by "reforms" that will not work IMO. I'm pretty sure the USA could provide a decent standard of living to all of latin and south America on it's own. But there's no programm in place for that, I wonder what Mr.Trump would say to that. Just for fun.
Yet our homeless are the envy of the world..jacobolus wrote: The USA has a shit standard of living by developed country standards.
Wages for the bottom ~70% have stagnated for the past 40 years, debt is skyrocketing and almost nobody has any savings, labor rights are weak and work culture is toxic, a large proportion of the population is un- or under-employed, there’s a massive epidemic of drug overdose and suicide, all our infrastructure is falling apart, we refuse to fund basic services, our healthcare system is the most expensive and least effective in the developed world, etc.
I agree, there should be much more effort by the US to grow economies in Mexico and Central America, instead of mainly providing destabilization, weapons, and a drug market.I'm pretty sure the USA could provide a decent standard of living to all of latin and south America on it's own. But there's no programm in place for that
But you've only listed solutions that works for ANY problem.. and those solutions are always in progress, but again if we take scale into account, you may not see it in one lifetime..jacobolus wrote: As far as I can tell, the original vision for the “European idea” was to ultimately end up with some kind of integrated fiscal union with a real federal government. Instead, they stopped halfway: monetary union with no fiscal union and no political authority and not too much political legitimacy or accountability. As a result, any economic imbalances between states are basically impossible to rectify within the existing structure, and the whole thing gets placed under enormous stress whenever there is any kind of economic shock. In my opinion, the only two ways out are to admit that the current structure is broken and either (a) dissolve it, or (b) dramatically reform it. (b) is looking less and less likely all the time. My guess is that it all falls apart sometime in the next 20 years.