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V. Illych L. posted:i don't understand where that comes in here? NATO is premised on the existence of a soviet union and communist geopolitical threat to stay together. the existence of the soviet union and its sphere is a necessary part of the geopolitical picture which made it impossible for the BRD to rearm and invade belgium, because it presents an external threat which makes a general subordination to the americans necessary or desirable. the EU is not such a necessary part. i am addressing blut's hypothetical in which the EU does not exist and therefore the bonn government annexes the low countries. The Soviet Union, as part of their foreign policy, treated the idea of a German re-armament as a major boogeyboo. If you like, we can treat this cynically as a part of their aspiration to world domination or whatever, but it seems a-historical to simply say German militarization wasn't a major thing for the politics of Europe. It remains a mystery to me why you seem to think the EEC acting as a peace-building measure to keep Jerry from murdering everyone around them is a controversial stance.
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Jan 19, 2024 20:24
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Rappaport posted:The Soviet Union, as part of their foreign policy, treated the idea of a German re-armament as a major boogeyboo. If you like, we can treat this cynically as a part of their aspiration to world domination or whatever, but it seems a-historical to simply say German militarization wasn't a major thing for the politics of Europe. It remains a mystery to me why you seem to think the EEC acting as a peace-building measure to keep Jerry from murdering everyone around them is a controversial stance. because of the aforementioned gun to the head of germany in the form of ramstein airport and US nuclear weapons on german soil already fulfilling that function. west germany literally had no opportunity to remilitarise independently of the US. the US would have no interest in their client going shopping in belgium or austria. the marshall aid reconstruction effort was made possible only in the context of the germans being part of the US economic sphere. basically, the way ww2 turned out dramatically reduced the autonomy of the german ruling class and its ability to independently assert itself, and faced it with a potentially existential challenge in the form of the communist bloc to keep it even further in line. that, not the economic integration with neighbouring states (austria is even mentioned - they were not a part of the original coal and steel union, and should be a highly tempting target for the germans under this scenario) is what kept germany doing more or less what it was doing up until willy brandt. in order to realise this tendency, germany would've had to openly disassociate itself from US overlordship in a probably violent way, which there clearly was no way of doing. i sincerely don't see what the soviet angst about a remilitarised BRD (which to be clear absolutely did happen to some extent in the context of NATO, including the rehabilitation of certain nazi generals to very high office) has to do with this analysis.
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Jan 19, 2024 20:36
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the claim "the only thing keeping the BRD from turning Fully Nazi and invading all its neighbour save france, from which it would be deterred by nukes, was the european coal and steel union" is a pretty extraordinary one imo, especially considering the relatively high degree of economic integration in europe pre-ww1 which did not keep any such militarism in check fun fact: the french horizon blue uniforms in ww1 were originally supposed to be a weird purple colour based on the tricolour, but they were importing the red dye from germany and had to do without V. Illych L. fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Jan 19, 2024 |
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Jan 19, 2024 20:39
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I hit backspace on my earlier post, but it seems like you are arguing that Germany only existed as a US vassal state during the Cold War. Am I misreading this? This seems to deny a lot of agency on the part of European states, and what the integration movement set out to accomplish in the first place. Why would de Gaulle have objected to things if everyone in central Europe were a US puppet? To be clear, I am not arguing all the various Nazis kept in power in both Germanies would have led to a Hitler 2, electric boogaloo, but a lot of people were genuinely concerned about what Germany re-arming would mean. Keeping them mollified by having an economic stranglehold over the rest of Europe seems to have worked, no hitlers required, just endless austerity. I think the news article about Germans being idiots over austerity is what started this particular discussion, even?
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Jan 19, 2024 20:52
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Yeah, have to agree with Lenin here. The meaningful barrier to German aggression was the fact that it was not an independent polity, not anything else. Actually, I don't find it entirely unreasonable to see all these European organizations as starting out as essentially a propaganda tool to let European leaders convince themselves and their constituents that Western Europe was still important and independent/Just a tool to simplify American influence within Europe, like a modern version of the princely states of India. Rappaport posted:To be clear, I am not arguing all the various Nazis kept in power in both Germanies would have led to a Hitler 2, electric boogaloo, but a lot of people were genuinely concerned about what Germany re-arming would mean. Keeping them mollified by having an economic stranglehold over the rest of Europe seems to have worked, no hitlers required, just endless austerity. I think the news article about Germans being idiots over austerity is what started this particular discussion, even? A Buttery Pastry fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Jan 19, 2024 |
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Jan 19, 2024 20:53
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Doesn't that boil down to the EU being a NATO plot? I am interested in hearing the details for sure, but denying agency for all Western European actors for decades seems extreme.
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Jan 19, 2024 21:08
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Yeah, have to agree with Lenin here. The meaningful barrier to German aggression was the fact that it was not an independent polity, not anything else. A Buttery Pastry posted:The Germans became Calm Hitlers the moment the Americans and Russians took the boots off the German neck, and within two decades they were running Europe like they had rearmed. I'm not sure that's really an argument that economic integration is what keept the Germans in check. Becase you can't be seriously suggesting that Germans being assholes about debt/gdp ratios in the Eurozone is the same as starting actual shooting wars with all their neighbors.
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Jan 19, 2024 21:16
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mobby_6kl posted:And... everyone thought the occupation is going to continue indefinitely? mobby_6kl posted:Becase you can't be seriously suggesting that Germans being assholes about debt/gdp ratios in the Eurozone is the same as starting actual shooting wars with all their neighbors.
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Jan 19, 2024 21:33
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Rappaport posted:I hit backspace on my earlier post, but it seems like you are arguing that Germany only existed as a US vassal state during the Cold War. Am I misreading this? This seems to deny a lot of agency on the part of European states, and what the integration movement set out to accomplish in the first place. Why would de Gaulle have objected to things if everyone in central Europe were a US puppet? "vassal state" is rather crude and implies total subservience. the relationship of the BRD to the US in the early postwar era is not entirely dissimilar to the relationship of the DDR to the soviets in the same period; they are clearly the junior partner in the relationship, and there are absolute limits to what they get to do, but they could and did pursue their own policies within the space afforded to them. the independence of the BRD to do things varied with sphere and time; willy brandt got to do ostpolitik. helmut kohl could not have annexed austria, EU or no EU - the americans would have put their foot down and that would be that. de gaulle did not have a significant american military presence in his country and did not have the political liability of having to assume the blame for everyone knowing someone who died during the war. france was (and to some extent remains) more independent of the US than germany.
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Jan 19, 2024 21:48
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to put it this way: if the DDR had attempted to start poo poo with austria without explicit sanction by the soviets, the DDR government would have fallen quite quickly because there was a large soviet military presence within their country which would have simply deposed that government. they could put up the berlin wall, though, after a bit of wheeling and dealing. agents have agency depending on their circumstance; it is neither absolutely present nor absolutely absent. nations have sovereignty in the same way - the presence of a serious military threat (say conveniently placed nuclear bombs and the political memory of the second world war) necessarily limits a nation's ability to act contrary to the interest of the foreign entity controlling said threat
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Jan 19, 2024 21:54
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Yes, Germany should have remained occupied and divided. Don't we generally reject these kind of colonialist attitudes? What's the difference between thinking this and Putin thinking Ukraine should have stayed part of Russia?
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Jan 19, 2024 21:54
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Yes, Germany should have remained occupied and divided. If we're going in that direction, more like a) everyone at the time thought that, and b) if they did, that they were sure it could be maintained indefinitely. A Buttery Pastry posted:No, which is why I wrote Calm Hitlers. quote:I'm not sure that's really an argument that economic integration is what keept the Germans in check. The point is, if at the time you weren't certain that Germany would stay occupied forever, that the US wouldn't just get bored, that commies wouldn't be a bigger problem, etc., it seems like it would be prudent to pursue other approaches to keeping the Hitlers chill.
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Jan 19, 2024 21:56
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Rappaport posted:Doesn't that boil down to the EU being a NATO plot? I am interested in hearing the details for sure, but denying agency for all Western European actors for decades seems extreme. It also doesn’t explain why or how Germany can unilaterally enforce austerity across Europe in this century. It’s not like Germany controls the votes… anywhere, really. Not the EP, not the EC, not the ECB.
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Jan 19, 2024 22:01
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V. Illych L. posted:"vassal state" is rather crude and implies total subservience. the relationship of the BRD to the US in the early postwar era is not entirely dissimilar to the relationship of the DDR to the soviets in the same period; they are clearly the junior partner in the relationship, and there are absolute limits to what they get to do, but they could and did pursue their own policies within the space afforded to them. the independence of the BRD to do things varied with sphere and time; willy brandt got to do ostpolitik. helmut kohl could not have annexed austria, EU or no EU - the americans would have put their foot down and that would be that. I still don't see it. If Germany did not exist effectively as a state during the Cold War, either of them I guess, then this still makes the EU a NATO project, rather than nations trying to coexist peacefully. Which in the cases of Germany and France are fraught, but all the same. Do you contend everything that happened post-Hitler in Europe was US projecting force? I still do not comprehend how you can hand-wave German continental aims away in a discussion about, ultimately, German-enforced EU austerity. If you want to argue that all concerns about German re-armament were unfounded since the US controlled them at the time, OK, but this still doesn't really address the political situation in Europe at the time, why anyone thought the ETYK process was worth it, etc. If everyone is a NATO stooge, this kind of makes sense, but I don't think that passes muster.
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Jan 19, 2024 22:24
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Rappaport posted:I still don't see it. If Germany did not exist effectively as a state during the Cold War, either of them I guess, then this still makes the EU a NATO project, rather than nations trying to coexist peacefully. Which in the cases of Germany and France are fraught, but all the same. i don't understand the sense in which you mean that EU would be a NATO project, but the EU clearly exists within the broader framework provided by NATO. there's a reason that adherence to the two projects tends to coincide. i would say that whereas the EU is a project for the consolidation of the interests of the bourgeois of all levels in europe with that of the intelligentsia, NATO is a security framework for the permanent geopolitical alignment of europe with the US (and so a contract of the general but highly privileged subservience of the european bourgeoisie to that of the US). also please don't generalise so broadly - "everything" that happened in europe is obviously not the US projecting force (ostpolitik, which i mentioned, is imo germany doing its own thing). however, the US presence in europe imposes somewhat shifting but very hard limits on what the europeans can get up to. one of those limits is "don't invade belgium", another is "run a market system", another is "don't gently caress with the dollar". the british and french ran into this issue during the suez crisis, where the arrangement was made quite clear to them. i have said, to my knowledge, nothing about austerity. my positions in the present discussion have been 1) the EU did not have as one of its founding principles the prevention or abolition of "hitlerism", and 2) the EU and its antecedents were not the primary thing preventing german military aggression against its neighbours in the post-WW2 era. austerity and german dominance of the modern EU is a somewhat different phenomenon for which i don't have a theory which i'm willing and able to formulate and defend within the genre conventions of D&D posting. my points are typically quite narrow and as i phrase them, because when one tries to formulate more general points in D&D which go against a certain ideological persuasion (which i tend to want to do) one finds oneself quickly having to invest a disproportionate amount of effort and getting probated when one slips up. this is why i insist on these rather tedious quote-and-repeat patterns of discussion, and why i spend a lot of effort trying to clearly delineate what i am interested in discussing and what i am not. e. for the record: sometimes, these points will be legitimately unclear, as with our earlier exchange about EU as a peace project vs the EU as an antifascist institution, or have premises which may be controversial. in these cases i'm of course willing to engage in discussion of those premises - it's good manners to offer an alternative explanation when one rejects other people's explanations, which is how we got into this whole thing about US military presence and NATO etc to begin with - i propose the US' presence and overwhelming military power against the BRD as a better main cause for BRD not invading belgium than the treaty of paris. V. Illych L. fucked around with this message at 22:51 on Jan 19, 2024 |
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Jan 19, 2024 22:47
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Mano posted:Please list the invasions being done France, UK, Spain, Poland, Russia, Austria. Maybe also add the rest like Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden. And attacking close neighbors and peer adversaries was a feature of German geography. I'm fairly sure if the UK - the Empire where the Sun Never Sets - had been situated where Germany is they would have created all sort of trouble for their neighbors. Nationalism and the same sense of entitlement would have made it inevitable. Europeans spent half a millennia subjugating much of the planet but for some reason people treat the world wars like it is in German DNA but the same isn't true of colonialism and France or the UK. If the EU prevented Germans from repeating the world wars what prevented the UK from doing more colonialism?
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Jan 19, 2024 23:39
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Owling Howl posted:
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Jan 20, 2024 00:27
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This conspiracy narrative that Germany had some kind of secret plan to dominate Europe after reunification is absolutely bizarre and doesn't stand up to even the slightest scrutiny. - The Euro wasn't a German master plan. It was forced on Kohl against his will, who then pushed it through domestically against the will of the German population. - After the Greek debt crisis Germany(together with France) was always one of the members consistently pushing for closer political & fiscal EU integration and a common budget. - Germany was economically in the shitter throughout the 90s and early 00s and often referred to as the new sick man of Europe. Its economic rise only began in the mid 00s, roughly a decade after the founding of the EU. - The fiscal responsibility faction inside the EU is huge and represents likely the majority of the EU population and of which Germany is just one member state. A single nation with only 1/6 of the whole population couldn't force poo poo on everyone else, especially not in the unanimity and consensus focused EU.
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Jan 20, 2024 02:19
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V. Illych L. posted:i don't understand the sense in which you mean that EU would be a NATO project, but the EU clearly exists within the broader framework provided by NATO. there's a reason that adherence to the two projects tends to coincide. i would say that whereas the EU is a project for the consolidation of the interests of the bourgeois of all levels in europe with that of the intelligentsia, NATO is a security framework for the permanent geopolitical alignment of europe with the US (and so a contract of the general but highly privileged subservience of the european bourgeoisie to that of the US). I am making the Daniel Jackson face and suggesting we may be hung up on grammar? If the argument is that European nations ceased to exist after World War two, and remained only as subjects manipulated by the United States (and I suppose the Soviet Union), then anything Germany and France do make their coexistence seem cozier is window-dressing, and it was only by the military might of the United States that Jerry was kept from their murderous ways. But this doesn't preclude the Paris treaty from being something stated as a project for keeping Jerry pacified, you are just arguing that Europe has had no agency post-Hitler and it was all a US-choreographed stage drama. What I find bizarre is the insistence on the lack of any weight Germany's own actions may have had on European politics. If European politics may be reduced fundamentally to an extension of US politics, it both denies anyone of agency post-Hitler and supposes everything about the EU is just empty words on a page. If I am to work backwards, then I would agree with you that the EU, or the EEC, is not an expressly anti-Hitlerian project, or that the EU is not an anti-fascist organization. We could argue that the EU is an unwitting participant in the resurgence of fascist tendencies, even. But none of that gives credence to the idea that European unification wasn't intended as a peace project. If we want to argue it all came out of United States supplied guns, well OK I guess, but this does not seem like a particularly useful analysis of how Europe functions. Why are there any divisions in Europe if it is all ultimately a projection of US internal politics? If we insist on infantilizing the Germans and saying everything in European foreign politics is ultimately a sham, how does that help us understand the dysfunctions of the EU?
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Jan 20, 2024 03:19
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Torrannor posted:Don't we generally reject these kind of colonialist attitudes? What's the difference between thinking this and Putin thinking Ukraine should have stayed part of Russia? GABA ghoul posted:This conspiracy narrative that Germany had some kind of secret plan to dominate Europe after reunification is absolutely bizarre and doesn't stand up to even the slightest scrutiny. GABA ghoul posted:- The fiscal responsibility faction inside the EU is huge and represents likely the majority of the EU population and of which Germany is just one member state. A single nation with only 1/6 of the whole population couldn't force poo poo on everyone else, especially not in the unanimity and consensus focused EU.
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Jan 20, 2024 09:01
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I think that interpreting Austerity as an unilateral German invention is wrong. It is an international movement that caught on more in the EU then in other places. And it caught on more in Germany then in the rest of the EU. Reasoning why is more complicated, I don't actually have a strong theory. Though with rich countries being at least theoretically able to be debt free it makes sense to catch on better there. And it allows us to complain that "southerners" can't balance their budgets, which appeals to a society very invested in keeping their racism deniable. A Buttery Pastry posted:Who claims such a conspiracy exists? Hell, a lot of criticism of Germany is that it doesn't have any strategic nous, it just sorta fucks things up through misunderstood history and stubbornness. There are a lot of articles about it. I think they are dumb and British mostly, don't actually think we have any believers itt. I think there were even several articles posted itt when Brexit was discussed last time. Articles that argue that the Euro imitates the Prussian customs union and is an attempt to take over Europe.
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Jan 20, 2024 11:15
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V. Illych L. posted:so was "germany would've invaded belgium if not for the EU" a joke or was it in earnest? i'm afraid this is all too close to your normal mode of analysis for me to discern, so you are going to have to be very literal and explicit with me. The insatiable Prussian lust for the blood of Belgians is no joke
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Jan 20, 2024 14:45
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Rappaport posted:I am making the Daniel Jackson face and suggesting we may be hung up on grammar? If the argument is that European nations ceased to exist after World War two, and remained only as subjects manipulated by the United States (and I suppose the Soviet Union), then anything Germany and France do make their coexistence seem cozier is window-dressing, and it was only by the military might of the United States that Jerry was kept from their murderous ways. But this doesn't preclude the Paris treaty from being something stated as a project for keeping Jerry pacified, you are just arguing that Europe has had no agency post-Hitler and it was all a US-choreographed stage drama. this is not the argument. the argument, as i have stated it several times, is that states exist in a state of mitigated sovereignty. i have also not stated that europe has had no agency post-hitler. i have stated the opposite several times. one can argue that the EU and its antecedents was a force for peace in europe and that it was formed with the purpose of preventing war. none of this is irreconcilable with my stated position that the primary reason that germany hasn't annexed belgium broader geopolitical situation of the cold war, in extremis the fact that the americans would have simply prevented them by military means. quote:What I find bizarre is the insistence on the lack of any weight Germany's own actions may have had on European politics. If European politics may be reduced fundamentally to an extension of US politics, it both denies anyone of agency post-Hitler and supposes everything about the EU is just empty words on a page. you are taking "X is not the primary reason for Y" to mean "X has no relation whatsoever to Y", and "A is mitigated by B, and B; ergo A does not exist". this is not a reasonable interpretation, especially when i have spend a lot of time by posting standards specifically stressing that it's not what i mean. the existence of snow is counteracted by warm winds; the existence of warm winds does not mean that there is no such thing as snow. the weight of snow currently on my roof contributes to trapping heat in my loft and keeping it fairly warm, but it's the insulation and electric heating which is doing the main work here. "without the snow, you would be freezing your balls off" is therefore not a correct thing to say. at no point have i made the case that germany's own concerns have had no weight, just that they have had limits. quote:If I am to work backwards, then I would agree with you that the EU, or the EEC, is not an expressly anti-Hitlerian project, or that the EU is not an anti-fascist organization. We could argue that the EU is an unwitting participant in the resurgence of fascist tendencies, even. But none of that gives credence to the idea that European unification wasn't intended as a peace project. If we want to argue it all came out of United States supplied guns, well OK I guess, but this does not seem like a particularly useful analysis of how Europe functions. Why are there any divisions in Europe if it is all ultimately a projection of US internal politics? If we insist on infantilizing the Germans and saying everything in European foreign politics is ultimately a sham, how does that help us understand the dysfunctions of the EU? again, i'm not interested in arguing that the EU was not intended as a peace project - i think there is such a case to be made, but it's difficult and i'm not willing to invest the required effort into making it properly, especially since - as you note - it requires arguing against the text of the founding document. what i am interested in doing is refuting the idea that without the EU, germany would've militarily assaulted all its neighbours after militarising during the post-war era. that is nonsense.
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Jan 20, 2024 15:00
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A Buttery Pastry posted:As I recall, France was kind of fence-sitting during the whole crisis, but ended up following the German lead. Had Germany gone the other way and pushed for actually good policies, France would have followed suit, and suddenly you would have had the four largest states in Europe all pulling in the same direction. While there would still be a lot of Northern European shitheads and Eastern Europeans who would have to be convinced that it was in everybody's interest to reform, it would be a lot harder for them to push the narrative and politics without Germany. You don't need to represent a majority directly, if you economic and political influence extends far beyond your borders. And where does this influence stem from? Because it certainly isn’t military force projection. If it’s from Germany contributing 25% of the EU budget, well then it’s really all the other states not wanting to jeopardize that. If it’s some other threat, I’d like to see it. Germany doesn’t have the power to force anything through the EP, EC, or ECB, without the support of other EU member states. Back during the financial crisis, my memory suggests that most of Northern Europe was pretty aligned on the austerity stance. Some of that is history (DE) or culture (NL), some of it was blatant racism how swarthy Southern Europeans were lazy and had lived beyond their means. But it wasn’t a unilateral German plan, never mind a master plan.
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Jan 20, 2024 15:21
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V. Illych L. posted:again, i'm not interested in arguing that the EU was not intended as a peace project - i think there is such a case to be made, but it's difficult and i'm not willing to invest the required effort into making it properly, especially since - as you note - it requires arguing against the text of the founding document. what i am interested in doing is refuting the idea that without the EU, germany would've militarily assaulted all its neighbours after militarising during the post-war era. that is nonsense. This is the most anodyne analysis of European foreign politics, and I salute you. I don't agree with it, but it sure is a concept.
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Jan 20, 2024 15:24
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morothar posted:If it’s from Germany contributing 25% of the EU budget, well then it’s really all the other states not wanting to jeopardize that. If it’s some other threat, I’d like to see it.
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Jan 20, 2024 17:36
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A Buttery Pastry posted:This is called financial abuse. I wouldn’t go that far. Germany agreed to pay in that share, nobody’s been forcing it in at least a few decades.
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Jan 20, 2024 20:32
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morothar posted:I wouldn’t go that far. Germany agreed to pay in that share, nobody’s been forcing it in at least a few decades.
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Jan 20, 2024 20:58
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VictualSquid posted:I think that interpreting Austerity as an unilateral German invention is wrong. It is an international movement that caught on more in the EU then in other places. And it caught on more in Germany then in the rest of the EU. It's probably just arguing about semantics, but Germany is not "pro-austerity". The post war government and societal consensus has always been just bog-standard Keynesian economics and the government never had a problem turning on the public debt hose during any of the last few economic crises. I don't know if there are still any genuinely pro-austerity governments left in the world. I think that whole idea died out after WW2. AFAIK the Keynesian approach is still the consensus among economists and governments around the world and ideas like MMT are pretty fringe outside of some online communities and certain parts of academia.
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Jan 21, 2024 13:06
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GABA ghoul posted:It's probably just arguing about semantics, but Germany is not "pro-austerity". The post war government and societal consensus has always been just bog-standard Keynesian economics and the government never had a problem turning on the public debt hose during any of the last few economic crises. I don't know if there are still any genuinely pro-austerity governments left in the world. I think that whole idea died out after WW2. Why does this line of thinking persist? The article that began this outlines Germany's obsession with austerity. quote:This is no accident: it is precisely what a Constitutional debt brake is designed to do: prevent fiscal deficits from swelling for contingent political reasons and instead forcing them to shrink. In attempting to shield public finances from political influences, this mechanism denies the inherently political character of any fiscal policy and depicts austerity as a neutral, good bookkeeping practice.
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Jan 21, 2024 13:32
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Owling Howl posted:And attacking close neighbors and peer adversaries was a feature of German geography. I'm fairly sure if the UK - the Empire where the Sun Never Sets - had been situated where Germany is they would have created all sort of trouble for their neighbors. Nationalism and the same sense of entitlement would have made it inevitable. Buddy, IF, neighbours?? We went to war with France on a weekly basis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-French_Wars I mean gently caress, we kept getting into wars with Spain so much that needed a disambiguation page too https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Spanish_War
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Jan 21, 2024 14:04
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Rappaport posted:Why does this line of thinking persist? The article that began this outlines Germany's obsession with austerity. What about this is a sign of "pro-austerity" for you, instead of just Keynesian economics though? Both the federal and EU debt limit differentiate between structural and cyclical deficits and are more relaxed about the later ones. Even the absolute limits on debt are suspendible during national crises or a serious recession. I certainly can't remember any evidence of that mentality in government during my lifetime here. As soon as there is an economic downturn, the wallet comes out. The country just went through a massive and unprecedented public spending spree during the pandemic, initiated by a conservative government. It is still running a massive deficit. And you do have to put that current deficit into perspective. Germany is currently not in a serious recession. The labor market is as tight as it has ever been after the WW2 recovery and expected to only get tighter. Inflation is very high, but so are interests. It's not exactly the conditions where Keynesianism screams to hit the GO! button on the money printer. Just so there is no misunderstanding: I think the federal debt brake is a very bad idea and I want it gone as soon as possible. Traditional Keynesianism has no way to account for the value of long term investments in decarbonization/sustainability. Nor does it have any idea what to do with a society in total demographic collapse and labor shortages. Nor does it account for situations where there has been a lack of important and valuable public investments because the public budget is now 50% pension expenditures and there hasn't been an economic down turn that would justify financing these investments through debt. The whole situation is very, very stupid and I suspect it will get much more stupid as the pivot to sustainability and lack of population growth will wreak havoc on our current understanding of boom-bust cycles. GABA ghoul fucked around with this message at 15:11 on Jan 21, 2024 |
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Jan 21, 2024 15:08
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A Buttery Pastry posted:The financial abuser is Germany. By… paying in more than it should by virtually any metric (other than implied guilt), and other countries not wanting the gravy train to stop?
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Jan 21, 2024 17:18
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morothar posted:By… paying in more than it should by virtually any metric (other than implied guilt), and other countries not wanting the gravy train to stop? As someone pointed out it's still order(s) of magnitude less than say US states contribute to each other.
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Jan 21, 2024 18:14
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morothar posted:By… paying in more than it should by virtually any metric (other than implied guilt), and other countries not wanting the gravy train to stop? "more than it should by virtually any metric"? Germany's per capita contributions aren't #1 in the EU, and are broadly in line with the rest of the richer parts of the EU:  I don't think anyone ITT (or in most places elsewhere) is calling for Germany to contribute more per capita to the EU, though. The issue most people have with German financial policy is their efforts to force unneccessarily harsh austerity measures on other parts of Europe because of the schwarz nulle fetish.
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Jan 21, 2024 18:28
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morothar posted:By… paying in more than it should by virtually any metric (other than implied guilt), and other countries not wanting the gravy train to stop?
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Jan 21, 2024 18:56
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Blut posted:The issue most people have with German financial policy is their efforts to force unneccessarily harsh austerity measures on other parts of Europe because of the schwarz nulle fetish. Except Germany doesn’t have the power to enforce austerity unilaterally. The reason austerity was enforced in the wake of 2008 is because of a Northern consensus, yet nobody complains about any of the smaller countries. Somehow, it’s Germany waving a magic wand to force austerity upon everyone. A Buttery Pastry posted:Financial abuse is using your your control of the purse strings to control your domestic partner. The EU is not a romantic polycule. It’s a series of treaties between sovereign nations pursuing national and regional interests. Never mind that the other countries that were calling for austerity measures weren’t being ‘threatened’ by Germany.
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Jan 21, 2024 19:33
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This is more life FinDom
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Jan 21, 2024 19:38
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morothar posted:Except Germany doesn’t have the power to enforce austerity unilaterally. The reason austerity was enforced in the wake of 2008 is because of a Northern consensus, yet nobody complains about any of the smaller countries. Somehow, it’s Germany waving a magic wand to force austerity upon everyone. That "Northern consensus" was driven by Germany. If Germany had been advocating for more reasonable measures then the other two legs of the pro-austerity troika, NL and Finland, by themselves, would not have been able to bring anywhere near the same damaging leverage to bear on the PIIGs. Germany is literally right now in 2024 still dangerously enthrall to the idea of austerity. To the point of enforcing damaging austerity on itself as we speak, and may austerity its way into a prolonged recession this year. Despite having a completely sustainable debt level and infrastructure, energy generation and climate change measures crying out for immediate funding.
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Jan 21, 2024 20:13
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If Germany fails to contain their far right, those folk are working on Dexit. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/22/germany-far-right-afd-leader-alice-weidel-eu-exit-campaign
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Jan 22, 2024 21:17
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