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by mcv 1959 days ago
Why Europe yes but US no? Europe is also not immigrant-averse and not an island. It doesn't border on Mexico, but it does border on many other countries.

I don't see why Europe would suffer a much different fate from the US.

I think the main thing holding the EU back is their love for austerity. They could do a lot more to invest in their economy.

1 comments

Europe as a going United concern is headed towards a breakup. Germany’s demographics (and patience) will not not hold to support countries like Greece and Italy, which funded pensions instead of spending their bailouts responsibly. France will flourish, like it always does, because it’s more or less self sufficient and is strategically located and internally configured, but other countries like Spain will flounder due to internal conflicts. All of these will lead to a mixed to poor economic condition of slow growth and low to negative interest rates.
Maybe if you are writing a political thriller.

EU as a concept is still highly supported amongst adults and young adults. And if anything Brexit strengthened that, since UK is a now a clown that everyone laughs at with all the issues they are going through.

A lot of young people migrate between EU countries and just that is the biggest visible positive that all working adults recognise. Its something people would not want to lose willy-nilly. Something realllly serious would have to happen for EU to fail catastrophically.

Nationalism is on the rise. We are 7 decades removed from the horrors of conflict on the continent. Everyone who remembers that is dying.

The EU is a globalization project in an era where globalization is on the decline. It was held together by US warships and will fall apart as they recede, a vacuum filled by local, competing powers. Europe will not be immune to it, since it is after all composed of many cultures and many economies with competing aims.

It’s not a matter of what people want, it’s a matter of economic realities that will impugn any high-minded desire for unity and collaboration.

Die Zeit: "In the dispute over the delivery delay of the AstraZeneca vaccine, the EU Commission is currently making the best advertisement for Brexit: It is acting slowly, bureaucratically, and protectionist. And if something goes wrong, it’s everyone else’s fault. This is how many Britons see the EU, and so the prejudices were confirmed at the beginning of the week"

https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2021-01/astrazeneca-eu-k...

MSN Money: "Bild tore apart Von Der Leyen's explanation of the vaccine delays and threat to stop supplies heading to the UK line by line, accusing her of placing 'junk' orders for vaccines three months behind Britain. 'She says: "We know that there is no time to lose in a pandemic," but what she means is: "We may have wasted time. But we will NEVER admit that",' the newspaper wrote. Meanwhile 'Brexit Brits continue to receive full supplies,' the paper added.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/german-media-savages-e...

New York Times: "E.U. Makes a Sudden and Embarrassing U-Turn on Vaccines"

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/30/world/europe/covid-vaccin...

The Telegraph: De Standaard, a Belgian newspaper, said the success of the Prime Minister’s move was a source of great frustration to the French, in particular, who are lagging far behind in their vaccine programme. It suggested that Brexiteers would take heart from that because Paris had regularly taken a hardline stance in the Brexit negotiations. The Flemish newspaper said that Mr Johnson liked to take risks and in this case, as opposed to in Brexit, the gambit had worked.

An El Mundo editorial accused the EU of a "failure" on vaccine procurement, citing a "lack of coordination between member states to articulate a homogeneous process" which is "ruining the prospect of achieving herd immunity after the summer"

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/28/best-advertiseme...

Daniel Stelter, Manager Magazin: It is dawning on the German and European population that the political class has failed across the board in meeting the enormous economic and social challenges of the Corona crisis. It marks the accelerating decline of the EU. Everybody in the economic sphere now knows that whenever there is a problem at a production site in the EU, there is a risk of being hit with an export ban: vaccines today, biotech tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow what? This destruction of trust in the EU as a place of business (Standort EU) is all of a piece with its tendency towards over-regulation and planned-economy control. The gap between wish and reality in the EU is greater than ever. By failing to procure vaccines, the EU has validated Brexit and given all EU citizens an objective reason for euroscepticism.

https://www.manager-magazin.de/unternehmen/autoindustrie/exp...

But yeah sure, it's a clown and everyone is laughing ... all the stuff I just quoted is fiction only happening in a political thriller.

What are you even trying to say though?

I command you for putting effort to writing a post.

But you probably have no idea of british politics beyond headlines for newspapers. Uk dealing with covid was a circus on fire.

Here [0] UK has highest death per capita behind Belgium (super high pop density) and Slovenia (they had also excelent ideas on dealing with covid - have slovenian friend).

Johnsons gov did multiple 180 when dealing with covid, recently promised schools will stay absolutely open, only to closed them after 1 day that they were open.

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1111779/coronavirus-deat...

I am not going to change you mind anyhow so have a great day living in your political thriller.

I think I understand British politics pretty well, being British.

Here [0] UK has highest death per capita behind Belgium

No, it has one of the highest numbers of "people who died within 28 days of a positive test" which isn't the same thing. COVID is highly infectious but not very deadly, so with this definition the more you test the more such events can be found. This problem becomes obvious when you look at excess death stats and discover more people have died of COVID than the overall increase in deaths.

The UK does more than double the amount of testing Belgium has done [1]. This will automatically lead it to reporting more deaths in proximity to a positive test.

Johnsons gov did multiple 180 when dealing with covid, recently promised schools will stay absolutely open, only to closed them after 1 day that they were open

Like almost everywhere except Sweden the UK has a problem with any attempt to reopen being sunk by supposedly 'expert' scientists who seem to consider lockdowns to be free. Johnson is trapped by the public's expectation that scientists know what they're doing, which in this case they don't. Constant see-sawing, announcing garbage numbers and other problems have been seen in many countries, not just the UK. Really only Sweden has managed to avoid this, thanks to Anders Tegnell who has been both (a) consistent and (b) correct. It'd be great if the UK had Tegnell too, but no such luck.

I am not going to change you mind anyhow so have a great day living in your political thriller.

You could change my mind if you raised points I hadn't previously considered months ago, or weren't claiming things that are obviously false about how the UK and Brexit are currently being reported.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToS...

Still, the US seems to have a lot more internal conflicts. People are openly discussing civil war there. I think the EU does a better job of learning from its past, and support for the EU is pretty high.

Of course there will always be problems in the EU, but I don't see it breaking apart any time soon.

Support Greece? By forcing it to pay back bad German bank loans that should be defaulted?