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Melissia wrote:Essentially, the writer's position is that our government's inability to truly cut the budget is actually why our economy is recovering better than the EU economy

Which is frankly a ridiculous position to take. If you look at government spending as a percentage of GDP, the US is below most of Europe.

If you want to make the US look like Europe, economically, what you need to do is increase spending.

biccat wrote:

Melissia wrote:Essentially, the writer's position is that our government's inability to truly cut the budget is actually why our economy is recovering better than the EU economy

Which is frankly a ridiculous position to take. If you look at government spending as a percentage of GDP, the US is below most of Europe.

If you want to make the US look like Europe, economically, what you need to do is increase spending.

Aye I think bics got the right of it here, I have always said I prefer the US way of doing things, we spend far too much cash on social programmes, some of the fethers (read millions!) here get on the government tit aged 18 and dont leave it till they fething die.

Oh and all their kids do the same.

But in the USA they let people starve so, as always, a balance between the US and the UK would probably be about right.

mattyrm wrote:But in the USA they let people starve so, as always, a balance between the US and the UK would probably be about right.

We actually have police that make sure poor people starve. It's a program Reagan started. If they can't find any poor people then they find genders to unequalize or something.

I hope your other 23 posts were funnier than that one.

mattyrm wrote: I hope your other 23 posts were funnier than that one.

Probably not I have been licking a lot of paint brushes lately.

mattyrm wrote: I hope your other 23 posts were funnier than that one.

Upon closer review - no.

Oh, we're doing buildings now?

We need more Dutch stuff here!



And because you don't have them!

HonorHarrington wrote:

ArbeitsSchu wrote:

mattyrm wrote:

HonorHarrington wrote:

there has only ever been one Capitol.

He was probably making a somewhat childish quip regarding the fact that it was burned down during the war of 1812.

At the same time, I don't understand why there is a cock waggling contest between some posters regarding the US and the rest of the world. Usually younger, but Frazzled isnt averse to it as well.

Its something I have never understood, in the same way that teenagers say things like "Oh Bono is from my town as well!"

If some blokes built the white house, or fought in WW2, or invented the light bulb, what the feth does that have to do with any of you?

Coolness by proxy doesn't make you look any better, so why be so defensive all the time?

Or (as it turned out) a rather pointed comment about how little they teach that factoid over there....

They don't properly teach BRITISH history here. Why would they teach any other?

Otherwise..is there a 'care face' icon on here? I'm just counting time until the US Empire falls on its face like all the other empires do, and then we can get on with things.
It would help if it was actually a factoid. There's a big difference between charring the outside and burning a building down. It's the same building it always has been. There is no "old" one; there is just the one.
They also teach the burning of Washington fairly prominently in the US. The White House was gutted and so badly burned it had to be painted...white. The Capitol's interior was burned and little else. Between you and Joey I'm losing faith in the British educational system.

mattyrm wrote:Aye I think bics got the right of it here,

Not really. Austerity measures provably cause economic downturns.

But what I was referring to was actually the US Government's attempts at economic stimulus, which managed to pass in part despite the Republican attempt to turn us into the EU and have prevented our economy from going the way of Greece's, Spain's, and so on as opposed to the idiotic Republican idea that when Americans are at their lowest point we should rip the carpet out from under them and dump them down a pit.

Melissia wrote: goes on to make the point that the reason why America functions as a pretty decent single-currency area, despite radical disparities in wealth and productivity between different regions, is that unlike the EU, it guarantees very large transfer payments from richer to poorer areas to smooth out the differences.

][M]ost individual European countries have a lot of within-country transfer payments from rich people to poor people but Europe as a whole is marked by a high level of inequality and near-total absence of transfers. .

But, the EU is not a nation-state therefore the principle does not apply. Why should people in Germany or the UK send wealth to poorer EU member states. Does America send wealth to Nicaragua and Panama? Does China send wealth to the USA? Since the EU is a completely unelected body and unrepresentative it is massivly unpopular for any leader to suggest sending wealth away to other countries. So I think the economist has his head in the clouds if hes expecting the EU to cohere to the US model. The US has an elected federal gvt where most real authority and decision making lies. In Europe no such body exists and more to the point there is no such thing as a European identity or common interest like in a functioning nation-state like the US. The idea of sending wealth away is therefore gaulling and quite frankly wrong. I do believe the Americans (traitors to His Britannic Majesty King George III) had a revolution over 'no taxation without representation'; so you should understand why the issue is unsettling.

My personal take on it.

Totalwar1402 wrote:But, the EU is not a nation-state therefore the principle does not apply. Why should people in Germany or the UK send wealth to poorer EU member states. Does America send wealth to Nicaragua and Panama?

We do in a sense, but that aside, Nicaragua and Panama are not part of the US. But Spain, for example, IS part of the EU.

Totalwar1402 wrote:Does China send wealth to the USA?

Let's not get in to that argument.

Totalwar1402 wrote:So I think the economist has his head in the clouds if hes expecting the EU to cohere to the US model.

Actually he's pointing out that the EU model doesn't work and that the US shouldn't follow it.

Melissia wrote:

Totalwar1402 wrote:But, the EU is not a nation-state therefore the principle does not apply. Why should people in Germany or the UK send wealth to poorer EU member states. Does America send wealth to Nicaragua and Panama?

We do in a sense, but that aside, Nicaragua and Panama are not part of the US. But Spain, for example, IS part of the EU.

Totalwar1402 wrote:Does China send wealth to the USA?

Let's not get in to that argument.

Totalwar1402 wrote:So I think the economist has his head in the clouds if hes expecting the EU to cohere to the US model.

Actually he's pointing out that the EU model doesn't work and that the US shouldn't follow it.

You misunderstand (I think). I don't mean state as in the American model where you have an elected assembly with a broader national federal gvt. When I say nation-state I mean the definition of being a soveriegn country with a government and national policy; as well as an attendent identity. The USA is that. The EU is not. This makes collective decision making impossible since there is no federal gvt in the EU with powers of wealth re-distribution. As it stands each part of the EU is its own nation-state and naturally believe they have a right to keep their own wealth. The EU is not the United States of Europe even if a small number of people sincerely wish it was. I'am getting at the political and moral reasons why it isn't working in the EU rather than the US since there is no collective identity or collective institutions so theres never going to be real progress on wealth distribution. Being a Brit, I have zero problem with wealth moving to Scotland, Wales or Northern ireland but thats because they are (for the timebeing) part of the British nation so that is justified. What I'am trying to say is that just because some politicians signed a treaty without confering with their electorate that we are in a union does not mean I see Spain any differently to Pakistan or as you would view Colombia.

Totalwar1402 wrote:You misunderstand (I think). I don't mean state as in the American model where you have an elected assembly with a broader national federal gvt. When I say nation-state I mean the definition of being a soveriegn country with a government and national policy; as well as an attendent identity.

I was referring to the economic models used by the two organizations.

The EU economic model of extreme austerity with little to no policies of growth is pushing many of their countries in to a recession.

Totalwar1402 wrote:Does America send wealth to Nicaragua and Panama?

Yes.

Totalwar1402 wrote:Does China send wealth to the USA?

Yes.

Although both of those questions, and answers, are irrelevant. The EU has a problem because they've got a unified monetary system, but not a unified fiscal system.

Melissia wrote:

Totalwar1402 wrote:You misunderstand (I think). I don't mean state as in the American model where you have an elected assembly with a broader national federal gvt. When I say nation-state I mean the definition of being a soveriegn country with a government and national policy; as well as an attendent identity.

I was referring to the economic models used by the two organizations.

The EU economic model of extreme austerity with little to no policies of growth is pushing many of their countries in to a recession.

Sorry, I was being rude there. I was just going on about a parrallel political point about why theres no will between EU member states to move wealth around from Germany to Italy or to create the central economic institutions the other poster was talking about since its a matter of national soveriegnty. Also theres a difference between giving packages of aid or loans to other countries and the sort of redistribution inside a nation-state. Basically the problem is political and I meant what I said about the American revolution quote, there is no support among any electorate, especially at a time of economic woe for having to give massive support to poorer countries in the EU. Which is why the politicians, especially in my country, have repeatedly insisted that aid has taken the form of IMF loans and other ways.