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W-K 666 Send message Joined: 18 May 99 Posts: 19129 Credit: 40,757,560 RAC: 67 |
Most existing EU member countries seem to want political union as well as economic union, we in the UK don't want political union. We are quite happy with our own national law and statutes, and will resist a central European government wanting to amend them above our heads. We also get angry when criminals and terrorists can go to the euorpean Court of Human Rights (ECHR), and with a clever lawyer can argue all sorts of things that stop us extraditing or imprisoning them. But we agree with European harmonisation in terms of safety standards, basic food standards, and equipment i.e.plus & sockets, as that facilitates trading of goods between member countries, which is why we have the CE mark. It has been discussed over here. Should Britain and the United States merge? |
Jim1348 Send message Joined: 13 Dec 01 Posts: 212 Credit: 520,150 RAC: 0 |
Every democracy struggles with finding a balance between democracy and other forms of government for this simple reason. The more democracy you have, the less things you get done and the weaker the decisions will be. It is certainly slower as you go in the direction of more democracy. Napoleon got a lot done in a short period of time, not to mention others I could name. But by "weaker" I think you mean it reflects more different interests, and does not just optimize one factor for one interest group. However, the decisions of the more democratic institutions are usually stronger in terms of support by the people (or at least neutralizes the opposition more). In fact, that is the problem the EU has now; it is not seen as representing the actual will of the people. You may debate the accuracy of that view, but if they had more popular support they would not be in the fix they are now. |
Мишель Send message Joined: 26 Nov 13 Posts: 3073 Credit: 87,868 RAC: 0 |
It is certainly slower. Napoleon got a lot done in a short period of time, not to mention others I could name. But by "weaker" I think you mean it reflects more different interests, and does not just optimize one factor for one interest group. By weaker I mean its a compromise. And while compromising is necessary in politics, its often not a 'good' solution as in it does not fix the problem. Also, it remains to be seen whether it gets more support from the people since compromises are generally either toned down or downright neutered versions of what the people supported. A hypothetical example, say you have one party to promise lowering taxes and a party that promises to raise taxes. A compromise would be not to adjust tax levels at all. The result, neither party is happy as both of them failed to achieve their objective. Its also not a solution because essentially nothing changes. The government misses out on revenue that it could have used to bridge the budget cap nor does it cause an increase in spending which lower taxes would have achieved, so the economy doesn't benefit. Basically the more compromise is needed, the less that gets done and the longer it takes for them to accept that nothings gets done. Compromise only really works if both parties have similar ideas on where to go and how to achieve that but where the only difference is the extend of what they want to do (IE, if both parties wanted to cut taxes or raise taxes, in which case you would have a compromise on the extend of the tax cuts or raises). And compromise is not as damaging when its done in a non-crisis situation so the effects of 'only half' solutions doesn't worsen the crisis. As for the EU, its desperately trying to get more citizens involved, with for example making a bigger deal out of the European Parliament elections, giving more power to the parliament and the introduction of citizens initiatives, but as it stands, a lot of people in Europe just don't care. They don't come to vote, they don't make use of the possibilities they are offered, so democratic representation remains low. At the same time, the EU is still a very technocratic organization. It is very involved in detailed, technical legislation, while its powers in areas and decisions that would get more people interested are relatively limited. But I agree, if the EU wants more political unity, it must get more citizens involved and raise popular support for the EU. |
Jim1348 Send message Joined: 13 Dec 01 Posts: 212 Credit: 520,150 RAC: 0 |
By weaker I mean its a compromise. And while compromising is necessary in politics, its often not a 'good' solution as in it does not fix the problem. Also, it remains to be seen whether it gets more support from the people since compromises are generally either toned down or downright neutered versions of what the people supported. A hypothetical example, say you have one party to promise lowering taxes and a party that promises to raise taxes. A compromise would be not to adjust tax levels at all. The result, neither party is happy as both of them failed to achieve their objective. Its also not a solution because essentially nothing changes. The government misses out on revenue that it could have used to bridge the budget cap nor does it cause an increase in spending which lower taxes would have achieved, so the economy doesn't benefit. Basically the more compromise is needed, the less that gets done and the longer it takes for them to accept that nothings gets done. Of course it is a compromise, and it does not satisfy all the people; maybe none of them. Otherwise, you are just advocating the view that higher taxes are "good". But revolutions are made when one side gets its way all the time, even with "good" solutions (though they are undoubtedly better than "bad" solutions, whatever that means). By the way, I think we need higher taxes in the U.S. (don't know about Europe), but I don't think it is worth compromising the democratic institutions just to get them. As for what you need to do with the EU, I really should bow out at that point, not that I don't have "good" ideas, but I don't have to live with them; you do. |
Jim1348 Send message Joined: 13 Dec 01 Posts: 212 Credit: 520,150 RAC: 0 |
One last point, if anyone here has not read the Federalist papers, that is the place to start. You are wasting your time otherwise. |
Мишель Send message Joined: 26 Nov 13 Posts: 3073 Credit: 87,868 RAC: 0 |
Of course it is a compromise, and it does not satisfy all the people; maybe none of them. Otherwise, you are just advocating the view that higher taxes are "good". But revolutions are made when one side gets its way all the time, even with "good" solutions (though they are undoubtedly better than "bad" solutions, whatever that means). It was a hypothetical example, but not an unrealistic one. And yes, I do think that in certain cases taxes should be raised, or at least for certain groups of people. I think its an absolute disgrace that a multi-billionaire like Warren Buffet pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. If you earn more, you should pay a higher rate, its only fair. Whether Europe requires more taxes would depend on the country I suppose. Each country raises its own taxes so the tax rates vary. But in general I think the rates are high enough, perhaps its more useful for some countries if they deal with corruption and tax loopholes instead of raising taxes. Anyways, my point in that example was that because of the democratic process and because of compromise, nothing happens. Which is not a really big problem if the country is doing fine. But the country is not doing fine, so compromise becomes a major weakness. But like I said, its a balancing act between having a democratic process and having something else. A balancing act between representation and fairness against efficiency and results. And, that was what I tried to point out, this balancing act was to much towards the democratic process in some of the Greek city states, and that came at a cost, namely effective governance. |
Мишель Send message Joined: 26 Nov 13 Posts: 3073 Credit: 87,868 RAC: 0 |
What's been happening is the elitists are also currently supported by the majority of the free press and the solution is proposed (raise taxes) and the compromise is to not raise taxes as much. It's not "neither party is happy as both of them have failed to achieve their objective," it's neither party is happy because one side didn't get everything they wanted and the other side lost more ground. Just in respect to the US, you guys pay a ridiculously low tax rate compared to what you expect from your government. You can't spend billions on defense, billions on security and more billions on social security. Definitely some of that has to go. The question is what has to go. Or, like a bunch of smart people noticed, you could start making taxes look a bit more like they would look in Europe, which would mean that the government reduces the budget gap without having to slash to much in a number of its programs. But there is one problem and that is exactly why the Republicans don't want to raise taxes. The problem is that America is actually poor. Well, no, scratch that, its that the majority of Americans are poor. You see, American wages haven't increased since the 80's (thanks Reagan). Except perhaps if you belong to the lucky few percent, in which case your wage has increased by ridiculous levels. The problem is, rich people alone can't keep an economy running, so they devised ways of mitigating the fact that peoples incomes don't increase. The first way has been by lowering tax rates. Instead of earning more money, you now simply pay less money so have more money to spend. Which is great but it does increase the budget deficit. The second way was allowing people to rake up debt. Credit card debt and sub prime mortgages were the result. But now you have reached the limit. The government debt is becoming a serious problem, the government spends to much and doesn't earn enough. And this is where democracy fails. The democratic process is inherently almost incapable of fixing the problems that exist today. The wealth distribution in America is so distorted that whatever you do, you're screwed. Increase taxes? No one can afford that and the economy tanks. Cut back significantly on spending? On what? One half doesn't want to cut back on defense, the other half realizes that it can't cut back on social security because to many people need those programs. So what needs to happen? Wealth redistribution. But how and more importantly, how are you going to convince half the country in an age where everyone thinks only on the short term? The elitists think of the citizens as nothing more than sheep. They could be a bit farther away from reality, but not much farther before even the press turns against them. Hah! The elitists rightly think of you as sheep, given how they managed to convince Americans that unionized labor is bad, that social security is a threat to freedom, that the rich need government protection and that the people that pointed out the massive wealth disparity in the US are little more than lazy welfare moochers. They managed to convince the country that its okay if they pay less taxes than their workers. That its normal that the government should prioritize spending money on the military industrial complex to build stuff that kills and destroys people and property in far away countries before spending money on its own citizens. They convinced the American people that a bunch of illiterate goat herders in Afghanistan are such a major threat to American liberty and safety that Americans now readily spend the most money of the world on their army and have given up a large number of civil liberties. The elites consider you cattle because for the past few decades you people have done nothing to counter that assertion. With regard to the EU, I could find specific examples of a typical guy in France or Greece and what they do to ignore their own governments, let alone what the EU is trying to do. The more the EU desperately tries to get more citizens involved, the more the citizens are going to ignore. If the EU wants more citizen involvement, they need to wait for issues to come up from the bottom. The EU is not like the US federal government or really any government. They are just in control or have a say in certain policy areas, most of which are very economic and technical policy areas. They don't decide over things like national security, or taxes, or healthcare or anything else that occupies the mind of the average citizen. But aside from that, they have the option for grassroot movements to have their say. Thats what the citizens initiative is for. You want a specific piece of legislation? Get a citizens initiative, get enough signatures and the EU is required to consider it. Its kinda like those 'we the people' petitions you have in the US. The top-down approach fails every time it's tried in history. There was a famous guy born in Austria that tried the top-down approach in the neighboring country he moved to last century. He knew what was best for his adopted country and tried as hard as he could to make things really nice for his citizens. He raised popular support by unifying more and more citizens based on timing, speeches which ended in a cresendo, unifying symbols, standardized phrases and what was hoped to be short-term debt. He failed miserably. Not exactly. Obviously Hitler failed but that wasn't because of this top down approach, that was because he started a war that got his country ruined in the process. But there are plenty of examples in history where the top down approach worked wonders. If you look at Russian history, you'll see that every time Russia made a leap forward, it was almost exclusively due to a progressive Tsar that pretty much forced the country to change. Peter the Great pretty much singlehandledly modernized Russia after European example. Other Tsars (and later also Stalin) were responsible for similar feats. The only thing I can say about the top down approach is that it often comes at a cost. Still, the same can be said about bottom up approaches. They to can result in horrors. |
Jim1348 Send message Joined: 13 Dec 01 Posts: 212 Credit: 520,150 RAC: 0 |
Of course it is a compromise, and it does not satisfy all the people; maybe none of them. Otherwise, you are just advocating the view that higher taxes are "good". But revolutions are made when one side gets its way all the time, even with "good" solutions (though they are undoubtedly better than "bad" solutions, whatever that means). Of course it is not fair; even Warren Buffet says he should pay more taxes. It is the ideologues who object (in the Republican party, while we are on the subject, though that is not relevant here). However, you don't quite get the point. Unless you are trained as a lawyer, it is probably easy to miss: Who is to say that it is not "fair", and what process do they use to get their idea of "fairness" implemented? In a democracy, it is the people. The further you get away from that, the deeper the waters you get into. And Europe is more likely to get into those deep waters much faster than the U.S. |
Jim1348 Send message Joined: 13 Dec 01 Posts: 212 Credit: 520,150 RAC: 0 |
Guy, Your are advancing my goal of annoying the Europeans so much that it will make our withdrawal from the world that much easier, so I will not bother to try to set you straight on all of that. But remember Rush's "This is day XYZ of the Clinton Siege"? That was during the greatest period of economic prosperity the world has ever seen, while Bill was even balancing the budget. That was followed by W.'s $3 trillion invasion of the wrong country and even more disastrously the failure to regulate the derivatives market, which led to the melt down in a similar manner to 1929. President Obama has done a great job recovering from that disaster, and the deficit is even coming down. I know, you wouldn't know that listening to Fox News, and certainly not from Rush. |
skildude Send message Joined: 4 Oct 00 Posts: 9541 Credit: 50,759,529 RAC: 60 |
An uncompromising minority in Congress, Unfortunately you have to raise taxes after you've gutted them, Nobody needs to destroy the rich, they'll do that on their own, though it would be nice to see hereditary wealth taken out of our system(see English Lords). one can only wonder how our welfare rolls are increasing as the wealthy see fit to send all decent paying manufacturing jobs overseas. The poor have little recourse(please no diatribe about bootstraps and pulling oneslef up). Food stamps are welfare so you hit the same note twice but I agree that job creation is important and business might consider it beneficial to employ and pay people at a decent wage so their employees might someday purchase the goods they make. Definition- Republican party. Keep bringing up the same bad ideas and expecting different results. Oh and I am still waiting for the conservative alternative to ACA. In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face. Diogenes Of Sinope |
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James Sotherden Send message Joined: 16 May 99 Posts: 10436 Credit: 110,373,059 RAC: 54 |
The US would never decommission 11 battle groups. Not unless we ecomicaly implode. WE have trade routes on the seas that need to be protected also. Plus we have treaty obligations to NATO. We rotate ships as do other nations into NATO. The only ship NATO lacks is an aircraft carrier. France has one, The UK is building one. They could have one now but politicis won out on that. Europe has many fighting ships and submarines. They would only lack our carries if it ever hit the fan. The other reason we will never get rid of carries is China. They seem to like carriers of late have bought a few from Russia for study. Expect them to build one of there own, And like ours. As much as I would like the US to not be the worlds policeman. It is far to late for that. We tried it twice. WW1 and WW2 and got sucked in anyway, And unprepared for both I might add. Both of us on both sides of the pond need to stay strong so any enemy will think twice about starting a war with either. And I do not mind at all that Europe tweaks our noses, After all we shove it in some places it shouldnt belong in. But We also have our gripes with Europe, I hope they can take a little nose tweaking also. The world needs both of us. [/quote] Old James |
James Sotherden Send message Joined: 16 May 99 Posts: 10436 Credit: 110,373,059 RAC: 54 |
Think of the present world as 79AD. Rome was not self contained. It needed ever expanding terratory to exist. When they reached the limit. In northern England and in the German forests. That was it. From then on it was being squeezed by tribes. And the political greed, backstabbing for political gain, and the inepitude of its leaders and generals. Plus add the facts that the Roman Empire would recruit warriors of other nations and train them to fight Roman army style. Kind of shortsighted I think. And dont forget that the Byzantine Empire lived on for another 1000 plus years. [/quote] Old James |
Мишель Send message Joined: 26 Nov 13 Posts: 3073 Credit: 87,868 RAC: 0 |
However, you don't quite get the point. Unless you are trained as a lawyer, it is probably easy to miss: Who is to say that it is not "fair", and what process do they use to get their idea of "fairness" implemented? In a democracy, it is the people. The further you get away from that, the deeper the waters you get into. And Europe is more likely to get into those deep waters much faster than the U.S. I'd say that depends on the country in Europe. But for now, we are all democracies, and whats fair and whats not gets decided by the people. We have a stronger tradition of socialist movements though, so its gonna take a bit longer for us before we reach the gross wealth inequalities like in the US. |
Мишель Send message Joined: 26 Nov 13 Posts: 3073 Credit: 87,868 RAC: 0 |
Can't pay billions on defense!!! Yeah no. Europe has two nuclear powers within its borders, and while indeed we don't have the army you guys have, we still have an army quite capable of keeping the shipping lanes clear of pirates. That operation in Somalia? Yeah, the EU participated in that, there were European ships there as well. We build our own tanks, our own planes and our own aircraft carriers. We already build those things and we don't buy them from the United States. In case you haven't noticed, Europe has quite a large arms industry itself. Sure, we wont field 11 aircraft carrier battle groups, or build an entire fleet of long range strategic nuclear bombers. But why would we? We are not planning to invade Russia or China. We don't need to send aircraft carrier battle groups around the world to show off our strength. And honestly, the past 60 years have pretty clearly demonstrated the uselessness of most of those weapons you just named. Tanks are almost obsolete these days. Strategic nuclear bombers are also obsolete with the advent of ICBM's or fighter planes capable of carrying nuclear warheads. And as regular bombers those B-2 and B-52 fleets are just ineffective. Hell, carpet bombing in general is becoming ineffective in today's conflicts. Also, you use that huge army of yours to defend first and foremost American interests. It so happens that quite often European and American interest coincide, but the US will never send a carrier fleet outside of NATO context to any kind of place just to satisfy European interests. Finally, you dont need to actually spend this much money on defense to maintain the fleet of ships and bombers. The current spending on defense is the result of 13 years of fighting the war on terror. You could return to late 90's level of spending on defense and still be able to maintain most of the army. And wonder to yourself, all those billions spend on defense and what do you have to show for it? Two wars which you didn't even win. And was the enemy some kind of technological superior force? Nope, just a bunch of radicals with bombs made from stuff you can find in your local gardening and electronics store. Yep, money well spend. And yeah, lets talk about keeping shipping lanes clear. Do you really need a super advanced stealth ship capable of firing long range missiles and what not, when the opponents consist of poor and hungry criminals with AK-47s and RPG's in little rubber boats? Also, what bad guys? Al Queda? They are not a threat to world trade. North Korea? Not really a threat either? Iran? Thats more like a missed business opportunity in a large part thanks to American sanctions. No, the real bad guys that threaten world trade live inside the United States. They work on Wall Street and they have amassed the power to bankrupt nations overnight if they think it will benefit them personally. It is unrestricted free market capitalism that is beginning to pose a danger to our wealth and interests. Its capitalist greed that focuses on short term profits rather than long term growth that is threatening us. It was not Iran or terrorists or China or Russia or North Korea that started the Euro crisis, it were American banks and the way America defined the financial market systems. Of course, we were so stupid to join you in that game when we should have gone our own way, so its not entirely America's fault. We bare the blame as well. |
Мишель Send message Joined: 26 Nov 13 Posts: 3073 Credit: 87,868 RAC: 0 |
The real question is: Why doesn't Europe understand THEY LIVE in the US House, and depend upon their riches because of the US? In terms of trade we are important trading partners of each other. You are as much dependent on Europe for your riches as we are dependent on America for our riches. If you were to go at it all alone (autarky) well, just ask any economics 101 teacher what would happen. As for the bit about the military, we could perfectly defeat Libya without assistance. Just because the US was giving us assistance doesn't mean we would have lost without it. In general, just because the US gives its military allies assistance in completing a military task that would benefit US foreign policy goals doesn't mean we wouldn't be able to do it ourselves. We are allies, and allies support each other. Or would you say that the US was incapable of defeating Iraq and Afghanistan without British assistance? Because remember, the British helped you invade those places. And after the invasion it were your European allies that helped you keep the peace. So the real question here, why do you think that the world revolves around America? |
Мишель Send message Joined: 26 Nov 13 Posts: 3073 Credit: 87,868 RAC: 0 |
Europe still does not understand the GREAT investment the US taxpayers made, over the last 60 years, securing World Trade. Do tell, how have your 11 carrier groups 'secured world trade'? It were international agreements such as the GATT that did that. Those investments you did in the army were because you were paranoid about the Communists invading and destroying liberty. Not because you wanted free trade around the world. And what does the US use its army for these days? Mostly to hunt down terrorists. Sure, you patrol some sea lanes, but so do European nations, so you can't say we should share that responsibility as we have already taken that responsibility. So why do we need our own aircraft carrier battle groups? Why do we need to sink in so much money in a military apparatus when it gains us so little? These are questions you should ask yourself. |
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