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Honj Steak posted:The EU is the longest cliffhanger in the history of dramatic writing. Perhaps we should imagine the EU as 4 balls on the edge of a cliff, as it were.
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Aug 29, 2019 10:44
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Honj Steak posted:The EU is the longest cliffhanger in the history of dramatic writing. Something something white cliffs of Dover
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Aug 29, 2019 10:44
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Fair Bear Maiden posted:Probably for it not to last very long. M5S and PD are two very different parties with different problems, although I guess, if you boiled both of them down to the essentials, I guess my problem with both would be "not nearly left-wing enough to actually solve our real problems". I'd love to know how those problems would be solved. Because as far as my understanding goes, Italy's problems cannot be solved, because of the euro and the view of the EU re deficit spending.
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Aug 29, 2019 10:48
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His Divine Shadow posted:I'd love to know how those problems would be solved. Because as far as my understanding goes, Italy's problems cannot be solved, because of the euro and the view of the EU re deficit spending. Well, the Euro hasn't done the Italians any favours to be sure, but it's not the be-all, end-all of their problems.
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Aug 29, 2019 10:50
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Cat Mattress posted:In other news, BoJo is suspending the Westminster parliament from September 10 to October 14, which is pretty hilarious in a schadenfreude way. I wonder if any British MP who voted against the deal thrice is starting to have remorse or regrets. Probably not. I mean tbf that bill was the best we could get with May's red lines but it was utter boiled dogshit so anyone who didn't want hard brexit was right to vote against it. If we crash out without a deal now it's because the Tories dragged us into it kicking and screaming. Still hoping he gets Mussolinied though.
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Aug 29, 2019 10:51
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Honj Steak posted:The EU is the longest cliffhanger in the history of melodramatic writing.
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Aug 29, 2019 11:24
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Junior G-man posted:Well, the Euro hasn't done the Italians any favours to be sure, but it's not the be-all, end-all of their problems. Actually all of Italy's problems can be attributed to other people Source: literal fascists
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Aug 29, 2019 11:26
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Fair Bear Maiden posted:Probably for it not to last very long. M5S and PD are two very different parties with different problems, although I guess, if you boiled both of them down to the essentials, I guess my problem with both would be "not nearly left-wing enough to actually solve our real problems". What's their position on immigrants? The Open Arms crisis a week ago was what, in my mind, pushed Salvini from "a right wing rear end in a top hat who I'm aware exists" to "this guy has actually killed people with his actions to gain votes".
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Aug 29, 2019 11:46
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Fat Samurai posted:What's their position on immigrants? The Open Arms crisis a week ago was what, in my mind, pushed Salvini from "a right wing rear end in a top hat who I'm aware exists" to "this guy has actually killed people with his actions to gain votes". One of the sticking points in earlier negotiations was the PD wanted a more pro-immigrant PM than Conte, who was pretty timid until his resignation (lol) speech.
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Aug 29, 2019 11:53
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Fat Samurai posted:What's their position on immigrants? The Open Arms crisis a week ago was what, in my mind, pushed Salvini from "a right wing rear end in a top hat who I'm aware exists" to "this guy has actually killed people with his actions to gain votes". PD Is requiring an immediate repeal of Salvini's bullshit. And by immediate they actually mean immediate; it was done by "decreto legge"* and they're demanding a counter-decree. *How an Italian "decreto legge" works: government can declare something a law and it stays law for two months. Parliament can make it permanent and/or amend it within those two months.
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Aug 29, 2019 11:59
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Fat Samurai posted:What's their position on immigrants? The Open Arms crisis a week ago was what, in my mind, pushed Salvini from "a right wing rear end in a top hat who I'm aware exists" to "this guy has actually killed people with his actions to gain votes". PD has timidly moved leftward on migrants and yes, they did require Salvini's decrees to be repealed during the negotiations (something that *seems* to have been accepted? we'll have to see). Their policy on this has always been pretty centrist though (see Renzi trying to gain vote by repeating the dogwhistle of "helping people where they live" in one of his books, and his website still includes lines like "Let's admit it, migrations are scary [...] it's not racist to say that" https://www.matteorenzi.it/immigrazione/) and the previous interior minister under PD, Marco Minniti, made a big deal out of sending back irregulars who arrived here and made a big deal out of bilateral deals with Lybia on the subject. Part of his plan also included unpaid labor from migrants, which was *not* obligatory but highly encouraged??? So, in summary, they're to the left of Salvini and seem to have moved to more moderate positions since they were last part of a government, but their track record is mixed to say the list. EDIT: His Divine Shadow posted:I'd love to know how those problems would be solved. Because as far as my understanding goes, Italy's problems cannot be solved, because of the euro and the view of the EU re deficit spending. This is honestly outside of my area of expertise given that fiscal policy basically makes no sense to me, but what *does* make sense to me is that there are huge problems in terms of excessive bureaucracy, corruption, justice (the crux of the matter is that the justice system in Italy is incredibly slow, something that has been discussed since I've been alive but never really tackled, or only tackled as part of a bigger packaging that attempted to undermine the independence of the judiciary), and the job market has problems that extend beyond recessions with multiple governments attempting to stimulate it by reducing labor protections, which has been proven to not work time and time again (but then again, the "helping the economy" thing is just a fig leaf to hide the ideology). In general, I also feel like it's important to have left-wing governments *inside* the EU to attempt to reform it. This is something that Italian voters alone can't fix, which is why there is an amount of understandable frustration, but I can't imagine attempting to leave the euro or the EU would help much. Fair Bear Maiden fucked around with this message at 12:32 on Aug 29, 2019 |
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Aug 29, 2019 12:26
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By the way 'decreto legge' is the main way governance is conducted by the executive in Italy and the main way laws are passed because the italian legislative process is deeply dysfunctional or completely broken, depending who you ask, with a parliamentary legislation approval time ranging from 2 to 4 years per law depending on the specific procedure used. Abusing emergency decrees is a neat way of avoiding that issue, so it has been done for a loong time in republican italy, so this next government is uniquely poised to undo quite a bit of damage before it can become permanent. The PD has also, unfortunately, required that also the good things of the M5S-Lega government be repealed or, more diplomatically, 'remodulated,' main targets are the 'quota 100' pension programme (allowing people to leave when years of contribution + years of age sum up to 100 instead of the canonical 67 loving years pension age) and the enhanced unemployment benefits that the m5s misnamed as a basic income. mortons stork fucked around with this message at 12:31 on Aug 29, 2019 |
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Aug 29, 2019 12:28
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Fat Samurai posted:What's their position on immigrants? The Open Arms crisis a week ago was what, in my mind, pushed Salvini from "a right wing rear end in a top hat who I'm aware exists" to "this guy has actually killed people with his actions to gain votes". Salvini is the guy who gave a campaign speech off of the balcony of a municipality building that Mussolini used to use to watch executions. And for which there was a law made that specifically prohibited use of that balcony because... you know. And then he used some lines straight from Mussolini's speeches in that speech. Dude deserves a meathook is what I'm saying.
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Aug 29, 2019 12:52
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V. Illych L. posted:it's funny how this argument is only ever used when it concerns rich people Nocturtle posted:Thanks for the replies. I find it increasingly weird that we tolerate the existence of billionaires in our society. 99.99% of people should be on-board with taxing them out of existence, it shouldn't be a fringe opinion. This actually is a real concern for tax collecting institutions. The IRS created a special team to audit billionaires back at the beginning of the Obama administration. But the targeted billionaires were able to stall things out in court long enough for a republican congress to come into power. A few weeks later, the special audit team found their funding kneecapped. So if you are a billionaire, you can fight the taxman and win. Only death is inevitable for the ultra-wealthy.
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Aug 29, 2019 15:13
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Man the Greeks have a cool new government. quote:ATHENS — As the sun went down over the Exarchia district of Athens one recent evening, hundreds of people gathered beneath a banner with the protest slogan, “No Pasarán,” a resistance slogan from the Spanish Civil War meaning “They shall not pass.” Police violence to drive out migrants who were being supported by a local community. Clean up the country!
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Aug 30, 2019 08:35
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Yeah, it's pretty hosed up. I'm personally involved in this so there is not much I can say, but the fascists have come out to play again, boosted by NDs two pronged attack on collective occupation of dilapidated structures in central Athens and changing the law concerning asylum in universities in the country. The refugees in these structures (I know some of them) are ordinary people that were trapped here in Greece and have been fleeing death and destruction for most of their lives. We have been helping them for quite some time now to bring their lives back in order and normalcy, but hey, what the gently caress do we know. When ND came to power the first thing they did was appoint the idiot that "caught" 17 November as minister of "Citizen Protection". This gave a clear signal for what their priorities really are.
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Aug 30, 2019 08:57
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The sole purpose of austerity is to breed fascism, and the EU has subjected Greece to the strongest strain of austerity it could refine.
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Aug 30, 2019 10:11
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His Divine Shadow posted:I'd love to know how those problems would be solved. Because as far as my understanding goes, Italy's problems cannot be solved, because of the euro and the view of the EU re deficit spending. It really depends on which set of problems you're referring to. Because I can assure you, there's a host of interconnected problems which require disparately different approaches. The changes our society needs are the kind of changes triggered by losing a large scale military conflict.
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Aug 30, 2019 11:13
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Or, at the very least, they are triggered by facing the demands of dispossessed masses with military training.
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Aug 30, 2019 11:15
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Just want to say I'm still howling with laughter that Salvini ended up getting pantsed by his big brain gambit.
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Aug 30, 2019 11:46
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Let me put in context what another poster said (sorry for the selective quoting)Fair Bear Maiden posted:excessive bureaucracy, corruption, justice, job market These four macro-issues, for instance, cannot be solved until our amoral familism is challenged: -our bureaucracy is incredibly reform-resistant because it's its answer to a society that views the state as an enemy; -the state is seen as an enemy because unless the state acts in favor of my nuclear family, it's not acting in my favor; -therefore my best interest is electing a friend of mine, instead of a competent statesman: he'll act in my favor as long as I keep helping him; -therefore corruption becomes an institutional need, otherwise there's no interface the citizen will accept towards bureaucracy and state; -therefore justice has to be lenient with corruption, and the best way to be lenient with corruption is to be generally lenient; -therefore job markets have a huge handicap when competing with other nations. But we can look to this from another viewpoint. Our enterpreneurs cannot go past the strong familism our society has, so: -companies cannot go past 10 employees*, because what I consider my ingroup cannot provide more than a handful of workers; -therefore our job market is composed by a huge amount of weak and small companies, with small earnings and small revenues; -therefore corruption will help in making sure enterpreneurs can avoid paying taxes to survive; -therefore laws have to be leninent with enterpreneurs, otherwise we won't have job-creators; -therefore bureaucracy has to answer somehow to this situation and make sure, somehow, a minimum quota of taxes is getting paid; -therefore, entering any market as a big entity is a long, complicated and expensive matter; -therefore, the job market keeps stagnant and companies won't grow. *(there's a caveat here. Any company with more than 15 employees needs a union representative. Remember, bureaucracy is an issue, in this context). I could go on with other examples: I'm afraid it looks like I'm cherry-picking issues and solutions, but one of the core issues our country has, is the inability of going past the small tribe mindset. And how can you break this cycle when your politicians come from the same mindset? edit: ^^^^ Tesseraction posted:Just want to say I'm still howling with laughter that Salvini ended up getting pantsed by his big brain gambit. Char fucked around with this message at 12:40 on Aug 30, 2019 |
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Aug 30, 2019 12:00
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Char posted:It really depends on which set of problems you're referring to. Because I can assure you, there's a host of interconnected problems which require disparately different approaches. My understanding of the situation is that Italys exports are penalized by the euro being too highly valued, on the order of 10%, while the opposite is true for the germany to an even greater degree. So that's one thing. Then there is the thing that the eurozone countries are signed into the fiscal suicide compact so even temporary taking on debt for purposes of fiscal stimulation are off the table and the rest of the EU would raise one helluva racket if you tried to anyway and it might even set of a new euro crisis, which might lead to it's dissolution even. So to me it seems all Italy can do is austerity and that only makes things worse.
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Aug 30, 2019 12:00
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His Divine Shadow posted:My understanding of the situation is that Italys exports are penalized by the euro being too highly valued, on the order of 10%, while the opposite is true for the germany to an even greater degree. So that's one thing. Alternatively fiscal policy is nowhere near as powerful as everyone pretends (or would like it to be), and the neoliberal dream of boom and no bust through sound fiscal governance is bullshit.
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Aug 30, 2019 12:06
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Private Speech posted:Alternatively fiscal policy is nowhere near as powerful as everyone pretends (or would like it to be), and the neoliberal dream of boom and no bust through sound fiscal governance is bullshit. I don't really know how to parse, or answer this because it does not seem related to anything I touched on? I was talking about stimulating the economy in the sense of the state borrowing money and investing into infrastructure, education, public works and such, not very neoliberal to me.
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Aug 30, 2019 12:23
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His Divine Shadow posted:My understanding of the situation is that Italys exports are penalized by the euro being too highly valued, on the order of 10%, while the opposite is true for the germany to an even greater degree. So that's one thing. You are assuming that Italy is capable of enacting fiscal stimulus, but our national debt is a whopping 2.4kB Euro - more than 130% of our GDP. "But during the Renzi administration, GDP/debt ratio was stable, which could mean there's someone in Italy that knows how to handle the situation" - yeah, the Renzi administration that was basically defenestrated. (As a reference, in the 2007-2013 timeframe, GDP/debt went from 99% to 130%). So you'd need to go to the EU discussion table with a sound plan and with a good economic/fiscal management track record, to avoid looking like an idiot asking for more money, right? Well, the recently dissolved government was openly flirting with the idea of withdrawing from the Euro... And it goes back to what I've said before. How come the average Italian citizen isn't able to connect the dots and understand that the options are keeping a good relationship with the EU policymakers, trying to become one, or lying down and wait death? Well, is the EU part of those I consider my "family", or not? Char fucked around with this message at 12:40 on Aug 30, 2019 |
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Aug 30, 2019 12:34
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His Divine Shadow posted:I don't really know how to parse, or answer this because it does not seem related to anything I touched on? I was talking about stimulating the economy in the sense of the state borrowing money and investing into infrastructure, education, public works and such, not very neoliberal to me. I was talking about the ECB specifically, so the first part which I quoted. Just - mostly looking at eastern europe - there doesn't seem to be a huge difference between countries which adopted and which did not adopt Euro, everything else being roughly the same (Slovakia, Czech, Poland, Hungary, the baltics). Of course everyone is subject to the fiscal/state support rules regardless, that's besides the point. I'm just very sceptical of how powerful independent central banks really are, both stronger and weaker currency has it's own set of drawbacks. e: Hence why the UK Financial Times is metaphorically making GBS threads bricks about the exchange rate, despite all the wonderful opportunities to revive flagging exports due to the weaker pound. Private Speech fucked around with this message at 12:49 on Aug 30, 2019 |
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Aug 30, 2019 12:44
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Char posted:You are assuming that Italy is capable of enacting fiscal stimulus, but our national debt is a whopping 2.4kB Euro - more than 130% of our GDP. Well, if you can't get the government to spend more money, then I don't see what you can do in order to get out of your current predicament. I also don't see what you could possibly do that the EU policymakers would look favorably on except willingly impose austerity on yourselves.
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Aug 30, 2019 12:48
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His Divine Shadow posted:Well, if you can't get the government to spend more money, then I don't see what you can do in order to get out of your current predicament. I also don't see what you could possibly do that the EU policymakers would look favorably on except willingly impose austerity on yourselves. Well, you don't get to a 130% debt to gdp ratio without spending: you get it by spending improperly. You'd probably earn a lot of favors by touching what Fair Bear Maiden said, since the EU knows why we're failing in keeping our debt in check, ignoring interests. Char fucked around with this message at 13:24 on Aug 30, 2019 |
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Aug 30, 2019 12:53
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Private Speech posted:I was talking about the ECB specifically, so the first part which I quoted. Just - mostly looking at eastern europe - there doesn't seem to be a huge difference between countries which adopted and which did not adopt Euro, everything else being roughly the same (Slovakia, Czech, Poland, Hungary, the baltics). From what I've read, the eurozone has been doing worse than non-eurozone countries and most economists that I have read which are not neoliberals or conservatives, lay the blame at the euros feet for a myriad of reasons. From my perspective, our current economic problems in europe and which is tearing the EU apart, all stem from the euro. As for the UK, their economy hasn't been centered around exports for decades and turning an economy around takes while.
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Aug 30, 2019 13:03
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His Divine Shadow posted:From what I've read, the eurozone has been doing worse than non-eurozone countries and most economists that I have read which are not neoliberals or conservatives, lay the blame at the euros feet for a myriad of reasons. From my perspective, our current economic problems in europe and which is tearing the EU apart, all stem from the euro. Slovakia: The Consequences of Joining the Euro Area The Czech Republic v Slovakia: Why One Benefited by Joining the Euro (this one is more dodgy than the other two) Czechs Deceived Themselves That Koruna Was Better Than Euro - Visegrad Insight And I have to say tacitly applauding the drop in pound as being good for the UK is pretty ballsy. e: fixed links, phoneposting e2: The argument for not joining the euro in czech republic went as follows - cheaper currency will bolster exporters in an export oriented economy, allowing them to pay lower wages in international monetary terms while selling their products for the same amount. Practical result - wages depressed for half a decade while big export companies profits soared. Great letist success right there (except it was pushed for by the conservatives? wonder why). Comparative advantage is loving garbage for the people on the "getting paid less for their work" end. Private Speech fucked around with this message at 13:32 on Aug 30, 2019 |
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Aug 30, 2019 13:14
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Yes some countries have been able to work inside the euro or at least it has been a neutral factor. But to me it was expected that the euro will be bad for some countries (Germany for instance) and good or at least neutral for other countries (Italy, Greece, Spain, France). And on the whole, the eurozone is doing worse than non eurozone countries. https://www.barrons.com/articles/the-euro-areas-gdp-is-worse-off-than-it-looks-51556652754 https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/mar/24/the-europe-union-has-bigger-problems-to-deal-with-than-brexit Private Speech posted:And I have to admit tacitly applauding the drop in pound as being good for the UK is pretty ballsy. And I don't think I was doing that no, I think that's an unfair take. It's obviously bad for the UK since they are not an export oriented economy and any attempt to move to being one would take decades, so in conclusion it's bad for the UK now and a good while ahead .
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Aug 30, 2019 13:35
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Private Speech posted:Practical result - wages depressed for half a decade while big export companies profits soared. Great letist success right there (except it was pushed for by the conservatives? wonder why). Comparative advantage is loving garbage for the people on the "getting paid less for their work" end. It doesn't seem this invalidates the argument that having your own currency can boost exports, this seems to be a result of how the profit was shared, after all the export companies made great profit as you said. And without a currency to tweak instead they'll do things like cut pay, welfare and impose austerity measures.
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Aug 30, 2019 13:40
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But, again, how do you think it will benefit the export-oriented economies? Everyone takes that as an undisputed truth, but if one digs down to it the only thing that comes up is effectively a giant subsidy to exporters at the cost of the real wages paid to their workers. Which then has major negative impacts on consumer spending and thus the wider economy. That's why I talk about the comparative advantage - the main effect of weaker currency is to devalue wages of local workers relative to the value of exports they produce. This is great if you own a company using factory labour for whatever, but not so great if you are one of the workers and your salary is depressed to hell and back. Have a look at the last link in particular, for a breakdown of the results.
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Aug 30, 2019 13:42
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Char posted:Well, you don't get to a 130% debt to gdp ratio without spending: you get it by spending improperly. To be fair our debt has reached such proportions that it is no longer feasible to service it and also have a functioning society in the long run, i seriously think that any long term solution will need debt forgiveness. Investors are banking on the fact that Italy won't be allowed to default and thus domino the entire western economy, and will be bailed out in the event, but I really don't see any level of growth where italy can re-establish itself as a functioning society without eliminating the giant millstone on our neck dragging us to the bottom.
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Aug 30, 2019 13:45
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mortons stork posted:To be fair our debt has reached such proportions that it is no longer feasible to service it and also have a functioning society in the long run, i seriously think that any long term solution will need debt forgiveness. Investors are banking on the fact that Italy won't be allowed to default and thus domino the entire western economy, and will be bailed out in the event, but I really don't see any level of growth where italy can re-establish itself as a functioning society without eliminating the giant millstone on our neck dragging us to the bottom. There's also secret door number 3: you'll be given an endless loop of extend-and-pretend loans where the first pays off the private bondholders and banks, the second pays off the IMF, and others are just into infinity to the ECB or some renewed version of the Troika. And to pay it back you gotta austerity, because you'll never be competitive with those labour regulations and * gasp* a minimum wage. You can do that for a like decade or so until the fascists finally take the prize.
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Aug 30, 2019 13:53
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Private Speech posted:But, again, how do you think it will benefit the export-oriented economies? Everyone takes that as an undisputed truth, but if one digs down to it the only thing that comes up is effectively a giant subsidy to exporters at the cost of the real wages paid to their workers. Which then has major negative impacts on consumer spending and thus the wider economy. I think having your own currency is better out of the options available to a country. Because a weaker currency is mainly an issue if you go abroad and spend your money or when buying foreign products. It also makes it more logical to buy domestically produced products. On the flip side to your example we can also cite Sweden that have used their currency to their advantage and is one of the better performing economies in europe. And in Finland we had the competitiveness pact instead which involved various things like freezing salaries, working more hours without more pay and less vacation on top of austerity measures. We have got a sizable amount of young people fleeing to Sweden here despite the weak crown. His Divine Shadow fucked around with this message at 13:56 on Aug 30, 2019 |
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Aug 30, 2019 13:53
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The EU-based alternative to all this is a federalised Europe with wealth transfers across the EU and EU bonds. A for-realsies one that (by magic) isn't led by psychotic debt-terrified Germans.
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Aug 30, 2019 13:56
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I fondly remember the times when Greece had a mere 130% debt to gdp ratio....<3
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Aug 30, 2019 14:00
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Dante80 posted:I fondly remember the times when Greece had a mere 130% debt to gdp ratio....<3 If I remember correctly that was before the 'Greek debt crisis' where you lot had blown it all on hookers and blow? What's it now, after all the 'sensible reforms'? I think 180% or something. I really hate few people more than Dijsselbloem.
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Aug 30, 2019 14:03
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His Divine Shadow posted:On the flip side to your example we can also cite Sweden that have used their currency to their advantage and is one of the better performing economies in europe. And in Finland we had the competitiveness pact instead which involved various things like freezing salaries, working more hours without more pay and less vacation on top of austerity measures. We have got a sizable amount of young people fleeing to Sweden here despite the weak crown. I don't know as much about the Finnish/Swedish econony to really say either way, but I imagine there are other influences aside from the value of the currency which differentiate between the two economies. For an example that I am more familiar with one can compare e.g. the South Korean and Czech economies - ten years ago the average wage in South Korea was roughly 20% lower than in the Czech Republic, while these days the Korean wages are over 50% higher. Both economies have very low uneployment, full control of their currency, strongly export-oriented economy and governments (at least in the past) willing to do anything to boost exports. And yet the South Korean economy has soared due to highly innovative high-tech industry which managed to crush it's mainly taiwanese competition quite well (and Finnish ones to a smaller extent too, for that matter). That's the brutal nature of capitalism. Now less austerity and debt forgiveness would be great, I agree, and potentially using a "money printing" approach to effectively force debt forgiveness/default might even be worth it for some countries like Greece, but I don't think that export-oriented monetary policy is a particularly effective approach in general. Private Speech fucked around with this message at 14:13 on Aug 30, 2019 |
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Aug 30, 2019 14:03
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