neverfail wrote: ↑Fri Jul 31, 2020 4:19 pm
Sertorio; do you mean like this?
Sertorio wrote: ↑Thu Jul 23, 2020 3:31 am
Uniting Europe will result on the richer paying for the poorer. As it happens in Australia, the US or any other country.
Agreed, within both the US and Australia (most other countries with a money based economy would likely be in the same boat) the balance of tax income to government and benefits payable means that broadly what you claim is correct. But that is '"within the family". How will the likes of the provident Germans, Scandanavians and Dutch feel about being taxed year after year, decade on dedade and generation after generation? I can imagine that would not relish it one little bit. Why should they?
"Within the family", which requires the existence of a feeling of identity. I agree. But I also feel that we are coming, slowly but surely, to have that feeling of identity in Europe. And, curiously enough, I think Americans are doing a lot to help us following that path. The more aggressive they are in respect of Europe, the more sanctions they pile on us, the more they want to force us following their policies, the more we will realize that compared with the Americans we, Europeans, are a lot more alike than we used to think. That's why we no longer see, for instance, Ursula von der Leyen as a German, but simply as the President of the European Commission, "our" President of the Commission, who makes a point of speaking English, in order to be as neutral as possible. It will take some time yet, but we will get there, at least as far as the majority of Europeans are concerned. There will always be idiots who refer to the "PIGS" and who think that Southern Europeans only care about wine and women, but soon they will not be able to influence European policies.
neverfail wrote: ↑Fri Jul 31, 2020 4:19 pm
Instead, if the southern countries wish to share in the fruits of unification then they should be compelled to heal themselves of their vices first or else go their own way. (In this regard I am of one mind with Cassowary though unlike him I do not regard them as "bums".) Most notably the palpably worse record of corruption and impropiety in public life that may even part-explain the higher per-capita public debt of these countries.
It's funny how you take your misconceptions for realities. Let me use Portugal as an example.
We have corruption in Portugal, but no more than any Northern European country. We have former ministers and secretaries in jail, for corruption, we are trying other ministers, and even a former prime-minister for corruption, we are trying one of our former bankers for a number of economic crimes. No longer is there a sense of impunity among those type of people in my country. And if our economic performance has been worse than that of Northern Europeans, it isn't because of corruption or because we are "bums". We work more hours and have less holidays than Germans, for instance. Our economic shortcomings are due to an history of underinvestment. We haven't been able to reach yet the level of state of the art technology in many industries, and the stock of capital per worker is still lower than it should be. Workers and managers are now more skilled, but there is room for improvement. Mostly in the smaller firms. But we have been able to balance our foreign trade in goods and services, and we had a small budget surplus in 2019. At the same time our public services have greatly improved, although our judiciary is still not capable of making decisions within reasonable time. And we have one of the lowest crime rates in the whole of Europe, with Portuguese being considered one of the most tolerant peoples in the whole world. If we get a small help from Europe, in the framework of a politically more united Europe, we will be as productive and competitive as any country in Europe.
neverfail wrote: ↑Fri Jul 31, 2020 4:19 pm
The EU officially holds to some lofty ideals. Among these is democracy, rule of law and respect for civil rights and freedoms. You can easily see that these have been adopted from the US constitution and that a "united, federal Europe has used the US template as the broad model for the structure of this united Europe. Unfortunately, political developments in at least two of the former Warsaw pact recent entrants, Poland and Hungary, demonsterate that the politics of some member states still kankers for an order more authoritarian and less democratic than the Aspired to European norm.
Even in Italy there are no shortage of Italians who, because their multi-party democracy has worked so badly ever since it began, hanker after its replacement by a political strongman (as long as he is honest, as Benito Mussilini was reputed to have been. With such a multiture of standards could European structural unity survive for long? I doubt it!
Democracy and human rights were known in Europe much before they were applied in the USA. And the American federal model is definitely not what we need. In view of the differences existing in Europe, we must use a confederal model for our political union, which will be able to accommodate those differences, even those which some of us may find less palatable.
You should come again to Europe - and I don't mean the UK - and see for yourself how things are moving. Maybe then you will be able to talk about Europe in a more objective manner.