🇪🇺 Discussion: The European Union

[Franklin Richards]

In European Union, water dehydrates YOU.

 

[hopefuldreamer]

Seriously... can't we just expermient on THEM, see how long they last without water?

 

[Destructus86]

Am I the only one who feels like the world is falling apart? Massive financial unrest, social unrest, an increase in all forms of nature disaster. It's just crazy...

 

[Lighthouse]

Am I the only one who feels like the world is falling apart? Massive financial unrest, social unrest, an increase in all forms of nature disaster. It's just crazy...

Compared to WWII, the 60s, the Black Death, the Crusades? We often think the world is getting worse when it's actually getting better.

 

[Destructus86]

Compared to WWII, the 60s, the Black Death, the Crusades? We often think the world is getting worse when it's actually getting better.

The Crusades and the black death weren't global. WWII was global, but that was a war. This isn't.

 

[the_ultimate_evil]

seriously can someone tell me why people actually wants to be a part of these crazy bastards little club

 

[hippie_hunter]

Voters in Spain have ousted the ruling Spanish Socialist Workers Party by an overwhelming margin. The center-right People's Party has captured 186 out of 350 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 44.6% of the vote. The Socialist Party has dropped to 110 seats and 28.7% of the vote, it's worst performance ever.

So far only over half the vote is counted for the Spanish Senate with the People's Party capturing 134 seats and the Socialist Party capturing 50.

Spain has become the third nation in ten days to switch leadership in Europe due to the economic and fiscal turmoil.

 

[the_ultimate_evil]

this could get very interesting

 

[Dr. Evil]

There are also elections in France coming up.

 

[hippie_hunter]

- S&P has downgraded Belgium's credit rating to AA.

- Moody's has downgraded Hungary's credit rating to junk.

- Italy's 10 year bond yields has risen to 7.26% above the 7% threshold that forced Portugal and Greece to receive bailouts.

- Spain's 10 year bond yields has risen to 6.7%.

- The British government is preparing for a possible Eurozone collapse within weeks.

- The Spanish government is considering to request a bailout.

- Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel, and Mario Monti have conceded that if Italy defaults, the Euro is done.

 

[craigdbfan]

- S&P has downgraded Belgium's credit rating to AA.

- Moody's has downgraded Hungary's credit rating to junk.

- Italy's 10 year bond yields has risen to 7.26% above the 7% threshold that forced Portugal and Greece to receive bailouts.

- Spain's 10 year bond yields has risen to 6.7%.

- The British government is preparing for a possible Eurozone collapse within weeks.

- The Spanish government is considering to request a bailout.

- Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel, and Mario Monti have conceded that if Italy defaults, the Euro is done.

The Euro was a bad idea from the start if you ask me.

 

[hippie_hunter]

French President Nicolas Sarkozy and European Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs and the Euro Olli Rehn have conceded that without further fiscal integration, the Eurozone will break up.

 

[Destructus86]

Can someone break it down for me...i'm not the sharpest arrow in the quiver when it comes to this sort of thing.

If the financial crisis doesn't end in the Euopean Union....are they splitting up?

 

[hippie_hunter]

Can someone break it down for me...i'm not the sharpest arrow in the quiver when it comes to this sort of thing.

If the financial crisis doesn't end in the Euopean Union....are they splitting up?

The European Union most likely isn't in danger of splitting up. The European Union is more than just the Eurozone.

But the major leaders concerning the Euro have conceded that if a solution isn't found soon, the Eurozone will be forced to break up. It just isn't sustainable without a central authority to control the budgets and debt of the various nations within the Eurozone. The currency just isn't sustainable when you have Greece, Spain, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, and other weaker countries dragging the currency down.

 

[Destructus86]

The European Union most likely isn't in danger of splitting up. The European Union is more than just the Eurozone.

But the major leaders concerning the Euro have conceded that if a solution isn't found soon, the Eurozone will be forced to break up. It just isn't sustainable without a central authority to control the budgets and debt of the various nations within the Eurozone. The currency just isn't sustainable when you have Greece, Spain, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, and other weaker countries dragging the currency down.

Interesting...

Would you say that Eurozone is a good example of how a world government wouldn't work? It seems like if a few countries can't keep it together...a one world united government would have an even harder time....

 

[hippie_hunter]

Slovenia's voters have voted the ruling center-left Social Democrats out of power winning only 10 seats in the National Assembly. Down from 29.

New party, the center-left Positive Slovenia won 28 seats, becoming the new ruling party. The center-right Slovenian Democratic Party won 26 seats, center-right Gregor Virant's Civic's List won 8 seats, the centrist Democratic Party of Pensioners won 6 seats, the right winged People's Party won 6 seats, and the right winged New Slovenia won 2 seats.

 

[hippie_hunter]

Interesting...

Would you say that Eurozone is a good example of how a world government wouldn't work? It seems like if a few countries can't keep it together...a one world united government would have an even harder time....

Pretty much. I think that even if a deal is reached, the Eurozone is still doomed. The Germans are going to have the bulk of the control in Brussels and the various people's in the European Union aren't going to like it when the Germans tell them to perform more acts of austerity.

The lack of democratic legitimacy concerning the European Union is going to be it's downfall IMO.

 

[Destructus86]

Pretty much. I think that even if a deal is reached, the Eurozone is still doomed. The Germans are going to have the bulk of the control in Brussels and the various people's in the European Union aren't going to like it when the Germans tell them to perform more acts of austerity.

The lack of democratic legitimacy concerning the European Union is going to be it's downfall IMO.

Wow, really interesting stuff. Thanks!

 

[Paradoxium]

Here Comes The S&P Downgrade Barrage - Full Statement

 

[Dr. Evil]

Croatia signs EU Accession treaty:

http://news.yahoo.com/croatia-signs-eu-accession-treaty-091525721.html

 

[the_ultimate_evil]

honestly i would just love the uk to tell europe to stick it up they're collective arse, but this si such a double edge sword we agree and basically give up a lot of our own free will and civil liberties, tell them no and we lose most if not all trade partners. its extremely shaky ground


though i do find it funny that germany will have the most power, a lot of world war jokes could be made there

 

[The Englishman]

**** Europe!!!!

 

[Axl Van Sixx]

Interesting...

Would you say that Eurozone is a good example of how a world government wouldn't work? It seems like if a few countries can't keep it together...a one world united government would have an even harder time....

It proves that you can't artificially integrate separate economies. Despite globalization and the increased integration of the economy on a world scale, the nation-state is still the default form of government and individual nations often act in contradictory ways. We're seeing those contradictions now as the eurozone tears itself apart, with the divisions primarily between the strongest economies (France, Germany) and the weakest ones.

However, I don't think this refutes the idea of integrating many different countries into a single economy; it's just that that economy has to be planned, not subject to the anarchy of the capitalist market.

Am I the only one who feels like the world is falling apart? Massive financial unrest, social unrest, an increase in all forms of nature disaster. It's just crazy...

No, you're right - the world is falling apart, and you can pin the blame for that squarely on the capitalist system. This is the kind of world you get when profit rules all and human needs just aren't a concern.

Greece and Italy are now ruled by unelected technocrats, loyal only to the banks, who are about to ram through massive austerity programs that will result in prolonged misery for the people of those nations. But austerity is happening all over the world right now. Over and over, we hear that the people must suffer to appease the "markets". This idea - of sacrificing people to please some abstract deity - reminds me of another civilization in decline...

This is also why I find it very helpful to have a philosophy that anticipates these events and is able to look beyond that to imagine a better future. Just as capitalism can only offer "misery without end", humanity now faces a choice, as it did a hundred years ago, between "socialism or barbarism" (Rosa Luxemberg).

Compared to WWII, the 60s, the Black Death, the Crusades? We often think the world is getting worse when it's actually getting better.

But sometimes the world is just going to get worse and worse unless we make it better, and to that, everybody needs to start walking like an Egyptian. The working class is on the move around the globe, and objective events will only increase popular anger as the economy continues to decline.

I should also point out that World War II resulted directly from the Great Depression, the biggest capitalist crisis until the one we're experiencing now. Not saying another world war is likely - the existence of nuclear arms would make such any such war apocalyptic in its implications - but it does worry me when you see our leaders constantly beating the drums for war against Iran, or the U.S. putting 2500 troops in Australia to continue encirclement of its biggest creditor (i.e. China).

 

[hippie_hunter]

Greece, Spain, and Italy have no choice but to enact austerity. You can't just print money out of nowhere, you can't just allow that much debt to accumulate, and in Greece's case: you can't lie about your numbers.

The current "capitalist" crisis isn't the result of capitalism. It's the result of bad government policies along with bloated and overly generous entitlement systems.

 

[Axl Van Sixx]

Greece, Spain, and Italy have no choice but to enact austerity. You can't just print money out of nowhere, you can't just allow that much debt to accumulate, and in Greece's case: you can't lie about your numbers.

The current "capitalist" crisis isn't the result of capitalism. It's the result of bad government policies along with bloated and overly generous entitlement systems.

Blaming the Greek crisis on bloated entitlements is no different from conservatives blaming Wall Street's meltdown in 2008 on lazy minority homeowners; it's a scapegoat to distract from the real problem. The reason Greek debt got so huge in the first place is because the wealthy weren't paying their taxes, and because the government wasted public funds on prestige projects like the Olympics.

You might find the following article helpful:

The myth of the "lazy Greek workers"

Let us look at some facts. According to Eurostat, Greek workers work on average longer hours than the rest of Europeans. They work a 42-hour week, while the average working week in the 27 member states of the EU is 40.3 hours and within in the “Eurozone” it is 40 hours. So that is myth number one dispelled.

Again, according to Eurostat, Greece also has the most underpaid private sector employees compared to the rest of the “Eurozone”. In Greece, the average gross monthly wage, including social security and taxes, is 803 euros [about £700 or US$1063], while the lowest gross salary in, for example, Ireland is 1300 euros, in France 1250 euros and in the Netherlands 1400 euros. So myth number two doesn’t stand up to any serious analysis of the real figures.

[...]

What about the age of retirement and pension levels? If we were to believe the bourgeois media Greeks live in a kind of workers’ paradise, where they can all retire early and nice big pensions. Again, facts and figures are stubborn things and they give a completely different picture. The average age of retirement in Greece is 61.4 years, a little higher than the European average of 61.1 years.

And what about these fat Greek pensions? According to the GSEE Labour Institution, the average pension in Greece is 750 euros per months [£650 pounds or US$990], while in Spain this figure reaches 950 euros, in Ireland 1700 euros, in Belgium 2800 euros and in the Netherlands 3200 euros. Moreover, this figure was calculated before the implementation of the new government measures, which increase the age of retirement from 65 to 67 years while at the same time cutting pensions by 30 to 50%.

Furthermore, according to the annual report of the joint GSEE-ADEDY trade union confederations on the economy and employment levels in 2009, of the current four and a half million labour force, more than a million work without any social security or other forms of legal protection. According to the report of the Commission for Social Security, established by the Greek Ministry of Labour, this figure reaches 30% of the overall workforce, while in the rest of the EU the percentage of workers in these conditions are only between 5 and 10% of the total.

And whose fault is that? Contributions are supposed to be calculated by the bosses, who pay a part themselves and the remainder is paid by the workers out of their wages. But that would mean declaring the workers legally and paying taxes on the profits made. The bosses prefer to hire a sizeable number of workers illegally, in the “black economy”, and thus save on both taxes due to the state and contributions. If the bosses had paid all taxes due in recent years, and if they had paid what they are supposed to pay into social security funds, the situation would not be anywhere as bad as it is today. It is the Greek capitalists and the foreign investors who have profited from this situation. But who are they blaming? The Greek workers and poor, of course!

And yes, it's a crisis of capitalism because without the boom-and-bust cycle, without the wealthiest class in Greece deciding that country's policies, and without the rule of an unelected group of international financiers over every country's monetary policy, we wouldn't be talking about a Greek crisis right now. If Cuba was having economic problems, I'm sure you'd be quick to blame "communism" for those problems. Why so uncomfortable when the shoe's on the other foot?

Greece, Italy and Spain only have no choice than to enact austerity because there's currently a global economic crisis that was the result of the capitalist system's natural propensity to crisis. Not even conservative defenders of the free market will deny that capitalism experiences periodic boom and bust cycles; this is obvious to everyone.

But even working within the logic of capitalism, which says that somebody has to pay for the crisis, why are you so quick to agree with the ruling class's position - that we need to cut "entitlements", i.e. we need to go after the social programs that poor and working class people rely on? Why not tax the rich instead? Why do you buy so easily into the argument that we need to go after the poorest, weakest, most defenceless members of society to pay off that debt rather than the rich and powerful, whose policies got us into this mess in the first place?