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Also I just want to make the point that, because we choose not to do sufficient wealth transfers, what we're seeing instead is massive people transfers. Countries like Portugal and Greece just straight up losing a million inhabitants within a few years isn't a sign of free movement working very well, it's a sign of massive policy failures. I've lived in another EU country for almost 8 years. I've got friends from all over the EU. I work in a very international sector where looking up from my desk right now the majority of the colleagues I see are Romanian and Polish, and this is one of the things I genuinely like about working in this sector. A few years ago the office I was in (same company) had 9 nationalities (all EU) spread over like 30 people. And yet I do not believe that southern and eastern Europeans coming here en masse is a good thing. It's absolutely good for them individually given the existing political and material realities, and I do not begrudge them their choices and would do the same were I in their shoes. But the fact that their primary motivator is economic necessity rather than something less vulgar, like love or feeling more at home in another culture or even just wanting to spend a few years with a sense of adventure leaves a real bad taste in my mouth. The fact is that the "choice" to leave home and hearth for a lot of people is a lot less free than liberals like to pretend it is, and this leads to a lot of dislocation. Furthermore it's terrible for the origin countries on the macro scale. Take a country like Portugal, which spent 20 years investing a lot of resources to produce the most well-educated generation in its history, only to see virtually that entire generation leave. That's not going to have a positive net effect on Portugal's economy nor its wider society.
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Jul 22, 2019 12:20
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Truga posted:Nobody cares about the long term, we'll have a billion climate refugees knocking in 2-3 decades and EU will dissolve into a bunch of fash states anyway lol Don't be so negative. EU could become an unified fascist superstate too.
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Jul 22, 2019 12:25
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Orange Devil posted:Also I just want to make the point that, because we choose not to do sufficient wealth transfers, what we're seeing instead is massive people transfers. Countries like Portugal and Greece just straight up losing a million inhabitants within a few years isn't a sign of free movement working very well, it's a sign of massive policy failures. Yeah, I completely agree with you there - the Greek people I know here, half of them really want to go home for any number of reasons, but they apply for jobs in Greece and the salaries are really terrible - also for local prices - and the labour rights are just non-existent now. No wonder they all stay here or go to other countries again. It's poo poo for them, but also for the home countries as the skill flight and brain drain is a huge thing, not just in who's gonna be there to man the hospitals, but it also completely erodes the future high-earner tax base, meaning that conditions will get even worse, forcing even more to leave and so on until you really have nothing but old people and babies left. Some of the Greek islands I visited last summer already have this. Add on top of that the general wage destruction and chaos caused by the Posted Worker Directive and other such fun things, I really don't wonder too much why some local populations have very bad reactions to immigrants.
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Jul 22, 2019 12:36
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Orange Devil posted:Also I just want to make the point that, because we choose not to do sufficient wealth transfers, what we're seeing instead is massive people transfers. Countries like Portugal and Greece just straight up losing a million inhabitants within a few years isn't a sign of free movement working very well, it's a sign of massive policy failures. Not just Portugal and Greece, even a nominally rich country like Italy is losing some 200k people a year. There are places in Southern Italy where there is literally nobody left living, ghost towns.
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Jul 22, 2019 12:45
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Dawncloack posted:I want to say that MiddleOne, Junior G Man and Orange devil debating in this thread is p. awesome. It's like the 1971 Foucault-Chomsky debate, if you added Zizek to it. The tl;dr for me is that the Euro is fundamentally a doomsday machine that ties together different economies in a way that is impossible to keep going in the long run due to the divergent demands of those economies (i.e. consumption-driven in the South+France vs. export-driven in Holland, Germany+(increasingly) Eastern Europe). Plus the ECB isn't a central bank that doesn't do lender of last resort functions, except when you have a literal wizard like Draghi in charge. It's made even worse by having a common currency but national bond issuance and national economic policies. It is genuinely a miracle that the Eurozone survived 2010-2015, and when the next crash inevitably comes (because lol capitalism), I'm not convinced the Eurozone makes it out. But I'll let someone far better than me talk about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S31VLG8Qi78
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Jul 22, 2019 12:46
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mortons stork posted:Not just Portugal and Greece, even a nominally rich country like Italy is losing some 200k people a year. There are places in Southern Italy where there is literally nobody left living, ghost towns. Also increasingly large parts of rural Eastern Europe.
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Jul 22, 2019 12:47
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mortons stork posted:Not just Portugal and Greece, even a nominally rich country like Italy is losing some 200k people a year. There are places in Southern Italy where there is literally nobody left living, ghost towns. Yeah note that this is happening both internationally as intranationally (ie. see France's deserted countryside). People move to where the jobs are (big cities) and companies locate where there are workers (big cities). It's a cycle that can only be broken by direct government intervention, which liberals don't believe in.
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Jul 22, 2019 12:50
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mortons stork posted:Not just Portugal and Greece, even a nominally rich country like Italy is losing some 200k people a year. There are places in Southern Italy where there is literally nobody left living, ghost towns. Sounds like a good chance to buy cheap real estate and sit on it as empty land for years until it becomes more valuable. Capitalism is very good and efficient.
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Jul 22, 2019 12:53
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forkboy84 posted:Sounds like a good chance to buy cheap real estate and sit on it as empty land for years until it becomes more valuable. That's a big loving gamble if you're betting on Greek hillsides with marginal farmland, or Southern Italian ones for that matter, to appreciate in value, especially if it becomes even hotter than it already is there. Most likely you'll lose your investment because a shrub/forest fire has burnt the whole thing down.
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Jul 22, 2019 12:55
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Correct, there's also several ticking time bombs wrt real estate bubbles in cities and housing costs. Right now rent in Milan, Italy's richest city both in terms of raw number of companies and job opportunities, is around 50% avg salary. It's even worse in Rome. There's a lot of suburban growth in dormitory towns with long commutes. Living in the country has never been so cheap, but there is very little stable income to be found. E: I was replying to orange devil above.
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Jul 22, 2019 12:55
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"The time to buy is when there's blood in the streets."
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Jul 22, 2019 12:55
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mortons stork posted:Living in the country has never been so cheap, but there is very little stable income to be found. And yet farmland has never been more expensive. But that's got nothing to do with vast excess capital accumulation looking for returns. No sirree. Some parcels of high-quality Dutch farmland went for over 150.000 euro per hectare last year. Not even close enough to a city to buy as a gamble on urban expansion. Even if you had nothing but A* good years for 40 years in a row would you turn a real profit, even in low-interest years. It's all speculation.
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Jul 22, 2019 12:58
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Don't worry Junior G-man. Number is up!
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Jul 22, 2019 13:00
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Yes number bigger. Good. Good big number.
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Jul 22, 2019 13:01
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hahahahaha https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/1153032596194021376?s=19 https://twitter.com/Gert_van_Dijk/status/1153037561767575554
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Jul 22, 2019 13:01
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Junior G-man posted:Yes number bigger. Good. Good big number. Another excellent year, for number!
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Jul 22, 2019 13:03
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Orange Devil, you mention insufficient wealth transfers within the EU. I imagine tthat's what I call "automatic transfers", for instance the federal government in the US taking money from some states and giving it to others. I keep hearing, as a retort, that EU structural funds wwere just that. I thing that's bull, the scale is much different. Texas for instance got 5% of its gdp after the savings & loans bank collapse. Any hard figures on this? Can someone point me out to hard figures on the amount of the structural funds and what the automatic transfers would have been? Obvs there's also the question of how they were used, just transport infrastructure vs. welfare, but let's start with figures. TIA. Ps. I wont assign Foucault, Chomsky & Zizek to the three posters lest someone is offended.
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Jul 22, 2019 13:11
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Also, number rise & low prices to all of you. (We in this thread obsessively read the same 3-4 threads don't we?)
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Jul 22, 2019 13:12
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Re: Brexitchat from a bit ago, the latest BBC Panorama episode is a really good overview of the last two years and has interview with a whole bunch of the main players: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LG-CeYzxvw Timmermans and Coveney in particular are worth listening to. Takes about an hour of your time but it's well worth it. Despite Nick Robinson always looking like an aging egg.
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Jul 22, 2019 13:33
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punk rebel ecks posted:So the Brexit debacle has pretty much killed any talk about leaving the EU in every other European Nation. That article is poo poo and filled with half-truths. For one thing it only talks about right-wing eurosceptics, for another, it fails to mention that the main driver of euroscepticism in these spaces (racism, primarily), has been proven by Poland and Hungary to be something you can fulfill within the EU. As much as Brexit is a mess and has discredited anti-EU sentiments across the board, it is a greater failure that it turned out that the EU is not actually an obstacle to the goals of those former Eurosceptics. I really don't know if I should be surprised or merely disappointed that the notion that you can make left-wing critiques of the EU is not even entertained (even if ultimately those also faced political/electoral defeat, as with SYRIZA and Podemos).
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Jul 22, 2019 14:06
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Reminder that the Rajoy government created an entire police unit to write bullshit reports about them (with things like Podemos being finamced by Venezuela and Hamas) and send them to the press.
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Jul 22, 2019 14:35
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Dawncloack posted:Orange Devil, you mention insufficient wealth transfers within the EU. I imagine tthat's what I call "automatic transfers", for instance the federal government in the US taking money from some states and giving it to others. For wealth transfer to work and be accepted, it has to go hand-in-hand with a harmonization of taxes and social security payments. Otherwise, how do you explain to a minimum-wage earning Dutch tulip-picker, why they have to pay a bigger share of their income to the state/European social security fund than a British investment banker? What would keep e.g. Finland from dropping their income tax and social security payments to zero, if the rest of Europe is picking up the bill? (I'm not sure how this works in the US, I know there are some states with very low taxes (e.g. Delaware, I think), but I'm also pretty sure they have some federal taxes which pay for this kind of wealth transfers). Of course that has to be adjusted to cost of living, etc., but the "From each according to his ability" is a prerequisite to "to each according to his needs". This is only possible with a much more integrated EU, which will at least become a bit more likely after October 31st. Regarding the structural funds, they may only make up a small percentage of GDP, but at least here on the eastern border of the EU, they have a very visible positive impact. Also, the "brain-drain" is going back, almost all of my colleagues have worked a few years in the US/UK/Switzerland/Germany and have returned to a (job-wise) much improved country, in no small part thanks to the EU.
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Jul 22, 2019 15:21
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You'd need a federal EU tax and wealth transfers directly to citizens through healthcare and social security benefits. If you transfer funds directly to countries then whatever idiot happens to be in charge in that country can use it to eliminate taxes for the rich or for graft or whatever.
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Jul 22, 2019 15:35
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It's not like the current EU political class can be much different, they are after all, each country's politicians (wrt the Council), or put forward by said politicians (the Commission), and they are by and large, the kind of shithead who wants to use the money to cut taxes on the rich and/or graft. I mean, the last commission president was previously in charge of Luxembourg, where a poo poo ton of capital flows in for some reason despite there not being much to the country itself. The EU has been molded in a neoliberal direction primarily because the political class that by and large these past 20 years has been expressed throughout Europe are the builders of the neoliberal nightmare. It would take a Europe-wide turn to the left in politics in order to move the EU back in a sane direction.
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Jul 22, 2019 16:31
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Owling Howl posted:You'd need a federal EU tax and wealth transfers directly to citizens through healthcare and social security benefits. If you transfer funds directly to countries then whatever idiot happens to be in charge in that country can use it to eliminate taxes for the rich or for graft or whatever. Just need to have a bit of a revolution first.
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Jul 22, 2019 16:47
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goethe42 posted:(I'm not sure how this works in the US, I know there are some states with very low taxes (e.g. Delaware, I think) Delaware has the lowest corporate tax rate of the US, hence why a lot of corporations are incorporated in that state. The EU is having a similar race to the bottom for this type of taxes. Dawncloack posted:Orange Devil, you mention insufficient wealth transfers within the EU. I imagine tthat's what I call "automatic transfers", for instance the federal government in the US taking money from some states and giving it to others. I think what you're looking for is info on the European Fund for Regional Development. I don't have any numbers ready, but their site probably does (https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/en/funding/erdf/) quote:Ps. I wont assign Foucault, Chomsky & Zizek to the three posters lest someone is offended. Awww, you're ruining so much fun 
Orange Devil fucked around with this message at 17:48 on Jul 22, 2019 |
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Jul 22, 2019 17:40
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Fine, you get Zizek. XD
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Jul 22, 2019 17:53
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MiddleOne is Foucault.
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Jul 22, 2019 17:54
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YESH!
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Jul 22, 2019 17:54
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Does that leave me with Nomsk the Chomsk?
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Jul 22, 2019 18:39
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So what exactly is the end goal of the European Union? To be one nation like the United States? Why is the left so gunho about it while the right is not? You'd think it would be the opposite since the EU, at least from a distance, seems so pro-free markets and the like.
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Jul 22, 2019 18:40
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punk rebel ecks posted:So what exactly is the end goal of the European Union? Different politicians have different goals. Some want easy access to trade and/or EU institutions, some want to take it towards a unified state, some want other stuff. It's overly simplistic to imply that the EU has an "end goal".
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Jul 22, 2019 18:47
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Dawncloack posted:MiddleOne is Foucault. Time to finally buy a leather jacket.
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Jul 22, 2019 18:49
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Dawncloack posted:Orange Devil, you mention insufficient wealth transfers within the EU. I imagine tthat's what I call "automatic transfers", for instance the federal government in the US taking money from some states and giving it to others.[ Depends on how you figure. The structural funds are actually 5 distinct funds focusing on regional development, social funding, cohesion, rural development and fish fund. All of them serve different goals but they would basically fall under the header of 'wealth transfer' as their main goal is to prop up economically weak areas or get them up to speed. The cohesion fund, for example, only gives money to countries that are under 90% of EU average wages. Overall it's about 40% of EU funding spent on these funds, or about 14 billion link. But you need to add in a chunk of the rural development spending into that, as well - at least I think - a chunk of the farmers direct payments as we're also paying a lot of farmers who are functionally without real production but who we like to keep in the countryside However, you have to remember that the overall EU budget is hard confined to ~1.1% of total EU GDP, so you're still not talking about anything on the size and scale of what the USA is able to pull off. But that's because they're a federated republic where the federal level gets to do budget transfers on a big scale, which we don't really. Where the real money is, is oddly enough in the EIB, the European Investment Bank, which has got hundreds of billions it's loaning out at cheap-ish rates to fund long-term, structural projects that we find important, like solar energy etc. This is what Juncker meant when he launched the 'Juncker plan' a few years ago with something like 20bn in capital leveraged up to 500bn because of the promise of ECB banking. It was scoffed at the time, but if you really want to develop the EU it must absolutely launch EU-bonds that would allow us to create much more sustainable energy and transport systems across the EU. The Germans, of course, are dead against it.
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Jul 22, 2019 18:52
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MiddleOne posted:Time to finally buy a leather jacket. I'm gonna get a slightly moth eaten woolen jumper. See you in the faculty club.
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Jul 22, 2019 18:53
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punk rebel ecks posted:So what exactly is the end goal of the European Union? To be one nation like the United States? Why is the left so gunho about it while the right is not? You'd think it would be the opposite since the EU, at least from a distance, seems so pro-free markets and the like. That really, really depends on who you ask. This thread probably wants a European Federation of Socialist/Communist States or something along those lines. The left has always believed internationalism is the answer and that the EU could theoretically do this, and the right believes in the nation. (He said, ludicrously oversimplifying).
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Jul 22, 2019 18:55
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I see. What confuses me though is why does the Left believe in internationalism? Traditionally it's been the exact opposite. Hell, that, in many ways, was one of the core beliefs of Communism.
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Jul 22, 2019 19:06
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the end goal of the EU is definitely not to be one nation like the US, that's impossible since national identities are pretty much rock solid in Europe some kind of federated state, a union of "independent" republics or whatever, might be the goal
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Jul 22, 2019 19:12
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It'll probably end somewhat in the middle, with a unified European Federation, but an utterly divided population with two major parties/coalitions exchanging power then and when. Just instead of Democrats and Republicans, we'll calling them something European-sounding, like De'Vile-party for the right and Green Power for the left.
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Jul 22, 2019 19:14
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punk rebel ecks posted:So what exactly is the end goal of the European Union? To be one nation like the United States? Why is the left so gunho about it while the right is not? You'd think it would be the opposite since the EU, at least from a distance, seems so pro-free markets and the like. punk rebel ecks posted:What confuses me though is why does the Left believe in internationalism? Traditionally it's been the exact opposite. Hell, that, in many ways, was one of the core beliefs of Communism.
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Jul 22, 2019 19:15
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