[monting]

Don’t mean to sound defensive (I’m not American), and I mostly agree with you.

But, from a non-European perspective, Europe doesn’t seem to be doing well? It seems the EU is slowly disintegrating, and the monetary union isn’t working. Also the political landscape seems to be in turmoil as well.

[TomK32]

In politics things come and go in waves. Yes, there's populists but the Brexit chaos shows everyone that leaving the EU is a very stupid idea. Of course the Tories are ideal as they apparently love shoveling shit onto fans facing them. Unlike the unpopular US Congress, the EU parliament has members from 128 parties grouped into 8+1 fractions. I just wish we'd send our brightest minds into this parliament and stop member countries from abusing it as a semi-retirement for some of their politicians.

The EU is making progress every year: I grew up near a border which was gone by the time I was a teen and nowadays using my mobile phone in any of the EU28 will cost me extra. It's those small things that the people do love about the EU and would miss if they'd just think harder about it. It's also boost regions otherwise neglected by their respective country's government. No one in Westminster gives a fuck about the North or Wales, the EU does, with lots of money being invested.

I hope we see a decade of consolidation and more unification e.g. in the tax, finances and transparency. Junker's own blunders as Luxembourg's prime minister are unforgivable.

[holografix]

Also non-American and non-European here. My impression is that the EU is getting itself into a huge mess mainly due to abused good intentions taking in immigrants and as a byproduct of the GFC and Middle East’s proxy American x Russian war.

While the Americans seem to not be operating as a democracy for a while and are instead a Corporocracy. It became fairly obvious after the GFC. The three “super powers” in the world are not democracies.

[TomK32]

First of all, a lot of those arriving and asking for asylum are sent back because they don't qualify.

Moving on, we Europeans are making a decent profit from selling weapons to the Middle East and African countries. We might as well take on those refugees driven out by the violence our weapons cause.

Europe's history, even the years since WWII, is full of migrations: Post-war displacement affected more than 10 million people, refugees from East to West Germany, Brits fleeing the rain for sunny France and Spain (they are a few hundred thousands), Hungary 1956 dispersed 200,000 hungarians of which 70,000 crossed this little bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Br%C3%BCcke_von_Andau and the last decade saw a massive flow of young people from southern Europe to the north which causes long-lasting problems for the southern countries. The list goes and and will go on. Some EU countries have 10% or more of EU-nationals in their population which in my eyes will become a hot topic in terms of higher level elections as right now you are only allowed to participate in local elections if you are not a native.

[noir_lord]

Which are you three?

I make it US, EU and China - 4 if we count Russia for the 8000 nukes but not by most other measures.

[why-el]

This is a conversation about education. The EU, with all its faults, is leaps and bounds ahead of the US in the democratization of education, even though the US was the nation that pioneered the field in the first place. Goes to show how extreme the whole political spectrum of the US has gotten.

[mycorrhizal]

Aren't a lot of these European countries a lot more pragmatic (cut throat?) about who can go to college? For example in Germany, I was under the impression that around adolescence they start dividing people into the university path people and the non-university path people. I don't think this type of system would go over well in the US with its individualism/"control your own destiny" mindset.

I'm not saying the European countries have it wrong, but their systems seem far from free college for everybody (how it is often reported in the states) and much closer to free college for the worthy. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

[TomK32]

We have this in Austria but if you are dedicated to take the lower school paths and later decided to get extra education to go the Uni, there's nothing that stops you. There's nothing unusual in a mid-20 taking evening school and going to uni two or three year. And not just that, if you dropped out with nothing at all, evening school allows you to get even the lowest ranking of the three paths: Hauptschulabschluss. The cost for you? Nothing!

When you have finished your Hauptschule or Realschule (lowest and mid path) you usually start a job but part-time you also go to a job-school (Berufsschule) where you learn more specific things that are useful for your job. This dual-education works great and is being exported to other countries where german manufacturers get active but don't find the skilled workers they are used to.

[why-el]

It's not as cut throat as you make it sound. People who go to "practical" schools can always switch back. I lived in Germany and have friends who got Bachelor's degree at 35+. Another good reason to make it affordable is that people will always have options.

[haukilup]

> This is a conversation about education.

Actually, this particular part of the thread you're responding to is about wealth inequality, economic policy, short-term political thinking, whether the EU is doing well comparatively, and policies that create a large amount of potentially avoidable anxiety - among a few other topics.

Education is only a related topic for this specific comment chain.

[avip]

Most Europeans do not associate themselves with the EU but rather with their nation state. Also - not all Europeans are in the EU to start with.

[fwsgonzo]

I don't see how that relates. Maybe you see something I don't?

[pbiggar]

> But, from a non-European perspective, Europe doesn’t seem to be doing well? It seems the EU is slowly disintegrating, and the monetary union isn’t working. Also the political landscape seems to be in turmoil as well.

The purpose of the EU is to prevent war. The EU hasn't had a war in 75 years. That is the longest that Europe hasn't been at war in its recorded history.

[cc439]

Are the balkans not part of what has traditionally been considered Europe? I seem to recall a little conflict involving ethnic cleansing back in the late 90's...

Also, I understand that Russia is considered less and less "European" with each passing year but the Ukraine and Russia (or at least all of its centers of power) are located within the European continent by definition. There's also the issue of the IRA's war against Northern Ireland and the UK as a whole, while that conflict doesn't meet the commonly agreed definition of "traditional warfare", it was the very template every modern insurgency bases itself upon. In a sense that was a war by any modern definition since traditional warfare seems to have become a relic of the past.

[pbiggar]

Balkans were not part of the EU when that conflict happened in the 90s.

The EU was a necessary prerequisite of the peace process in northern Ireland, as is being brought into sharp focus now With Brexit.

[toasterlovin]

Is your take that the EU, and not nuclear weapons, is the driving force behind the European peace since 1945?

[repolfx]

The EU didn't even formally exist until the early 1990s, before then it was just an overgrown trade federation.

The EU is if anything a force against peace, as it takes a totalitarian "you obey us on everything or we work with you on nothing" approach which may appear to create temporary peace, but only by suppressing dissent. The USSR was also by this approach very "peaceful".

[iguy]

I'd wager that even without nuclear weapons, dividing Germany in half and keeping half a million or so foreign soldiers there for 50 years would have been pretty effective at keeping the peace.

[toasterlovin]

The feasibility of that depends on the stability brought about by nuclear weapons, though, no?

[iguy]

Perhaps. It's possible a cold stalemate between the two non-nuclear armies would have lasted a while, I don't think there was much enthusiasm for full-scale fighting.

[pbiggar]

Porque no los dos?