While the US is the hegemonic state, and the sicknesses of the world largely emanate from it, Europe is falling apart as well, it is simply doing so more slowly–unless you are Greece, Portugal or Spain.
Europe has unquestionably swung right, and England in particular was entirely complicit in the great financial collapse. Neither were Germany, or France or pretty much everyone else not involved.
Germany’s behaviour since the financial collapse has been disgusting and cruel.
Nonetheless, the northern Europeans, overall, have done a better job than the US. They have made mistakes, one of which was playing along with Bush–there was an opportunity around 04 to put the boots to America, as Europe, to break America’s hegemonic power. Europe was too scared to take the chance, and as a result America has rebounded and Europe has grown weaker–in large part because they also have refused to discipline their bankers, and because they have decided to cannibalize the weak sisters.
Everyone in the developed world, with the small and essentially irrelevant exception of Iceland, and perhaps the Scandinavians except Sweden, is going in the wrong direction. Apparent exceptions, like Germany, are only apparent. Germany’s exports are reliant on the Euro being lower than it otherwise would be because of weak sister nations in the Euro. Germany is cannibalizing the South of Europe to stay prosperous, but it’s not a sustainable situation.
The Scandinavians, overall, are handling things best, with the Swedes the worst of the bunch. They have privatized a great deal, they have not been able to handle immigration well, and have developed an underclass.
England is completely dependent on the financial industry for its survival, having, under Thatcherism and the Labor governments which continued Thatcherism, completely destroyed its industrial base. Ireland is a basket case, whose politicians repeatedly betrayed its citizens in the aftermath of the financial collapse in order to bail out banks at maximum cost to their own population.
France has been complicit in Germany’s crimes and seems not to understand that they can’t have their socialist policies in a Europe where everyone doesn’t break the rich. The Greeks are victims, but they rolled over: they had a chance to vote for Syriza, but believed the Troika’s lies that if they just played along it wouldn’t be so bad. They failed to understand that to Germans and French, they aren’t actually Europeans and need not be treated as such.
Italy suffered a coup when Mario Monti was put in power without an election and imposed austerity. To be sure, his predecessor was a scumbag, but he was, y’know, elected.
Spain, again, made the mistake of bailing out banks.
You never borrow money from the Troika to bail out your bankers. All it does is add more unpayable debt and thus increase the depth of austerity.
Europe is on a downward trend. They started from a better place than the US (universal healthcare, decent welfare systems), but that does not alter the trajectory. Their fall is an odd mixture of an insistence on keeping the EU together, while refusing to actually make the EU a proper federal state and take care of everyone in it. As it stands, the EU does not make sense: most countries, including Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal, but not limited to them, would be better off leaving it. Or, frankly, the rest of the EU should kick Germany out, and erect tariffs against their goods.
England should be kicked out as well, for serial bad behaviour.
It is impossible, right now, to regulate the world economy in any way beneficial to ordinary citizens of the majority of states. The doctrine of free trade, which is really about free financial flows and deregulation of labor, has made actual economic policy almost impossible unless a country finds a way to opt out of the neoliberal consensus (aka. China), or use its structure to their (temporary) advantage (aka. Germany.)
Everyone is going to have to learn that impoverishing other nations is not a sustainable path to wealth. We are destroying countries at a ferocious rate: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Greece, Portugal, the Ukraine; with many others tottering and in clear decline (Spain and Italy, for example).
Europe is not immune to these trends; nor immune to the policies which cause them. In fact Europe has become a major force for idiot austerity and for destroying nations, as the core states sacrifice the South in hopes that the Gods of austerity will spare them.
They won’t.
Celsius 233
The U.S. hegemonic march won’t stop and I’m beginning to think that climate change is being (and has been) a strategic part of a larger plan.
The U.S. has been slow to come to the party (validating/acting on climate change) publicly, but I suspect privately there are plans afoot to maneuver for strategic supremacy. I think (foolishly) believing it can somehow suffer fewer effects by posturing to certain advantages.
Part of that is keeping the EU from achieving economic strength and kettling the M.E., Africa, Russia and China. China won’t have it and we’ll see how Putin’s chess game is down the road.
Every now and again there are low key statements from the Pentagon and even the CIA acknowledging climate change as fact and I think it’s clear they have researched how it will affect its overseas strategies.
America’s apparent inaction (climate change) would make sense (?) when viewed in this way.
Calling Dr. Strangelove…
Tsigantes
The perfect statement Ian, thank you.
I would only add:
(1) That the EU back in 2004 did not refuse to support the USA because no country (apart from UK, France and Greece) was willing to take on the costs of its own military defense. Political support was the price of this unwillingness.
(2) The Irish economy is now openly run and administered by Germany’s KfW, the fund originally set up to administer the Marshall plan and now operating as a sort of second central bank on behalf of German industry. Thus Ireland, the manufactured “success story” and Poster Boy Graduate of the ‘programme’ is literally today a German economic colony and ‘offshore’ base for German finance.
(3) Finally, further political/economic union in the EZ / EU will only lead to even worse conditions, since the EU’s unelected bureaucrats have 100% adopted US neo-liberal policies since the crisis. At present it is only the fragments of our retained sovereignties and democratic vote that provides any protection from full-on, unelected, Ukrainian-style policies being imposed on national populations.
Ian Welsh
Either the EU needs to go full national, in which case the “national” governments become provinces and lose meaningful power, or it needs to dissolve, imo. If it goes full national, the South and East can vote in non-Austerity governments, at least in theory. Right now Germany has a veto over any weak government’s policies: an in practice, that means every southern and Easter state. Even France is coming under heavy pressure to go back to brutal austerity. Hollande’s unpopularity is making that even more likely.
Or just kick the Germans the hell out.
Larry
Thanks Ian for this affirmation on my point with MFI in yesterday’s blog on this.
someofparts
“Or, frankly, the rest of the EU should kick Germany out, and erect tariffs against their goods.
England should be kicked out as well, for serial bad behaviour.”
wow – nail on the head
I wish some really good writer would do a thoughtful fictional exploration of that alternative reality.
Bill H
To the extent that our government is recognizing global warming at all, they are doing so not in order to drive real change, but in order to use it as a means of control of the population and of the governments of other nations; to drive toward austerity, and use it as a means to accelerate the pilfering by taxation of what wealth still remains in the hands on the underclass.
Celsius 233
Bill H
April 3, 2014
To the extent that our government is recognizing global warming at all, they are doing so not in order to drive real change, but in order to use it as a means of control of the population and of the governments of other nations; to drive toward austerity, and use it as a means to accelerate the pilfering by taxation of what wealth still remains in the hands on the underclass.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Which is pretty much what I said in the first post here.
Fuck all, why do I bother?
Texas Nate
I keep suggesting suicide Celsius 233 but you keep not listening.
nationalist
The decline of Europe is mass colored immigration. The nations they are destroying are their own, which will cease to be recognizably European in 40 years.
Mandos
LOL send in the clowns
Bruce Wilder
A fantasy-left, “we’re all in it together” aboard Lifeboat Earth outlook isn’t the only possible response to long-term climate change, overpopulation and resource depletion. It’s not the case that a failure of mass-politics to respond appropriately is a failure to respond at all.
One interpretation of our world politics is that the globalized elite is squeezing the resource consumption possibilities of populations across the globe, throwing peripheral populations out of Lifeboat Earth, in order to keep the party going for a small elite and their servants. Rather than undertake the massive infrastructure investments that would be necessary to build an economy that could deliver mass prosperity with radically reduced energy use and even more radically reduced fossil fuel consumption, we’re just going to make most people everywhere poorer and poorer and poorer.
I’m not saying there’s a conspiracy. That would require a much more deliberative and coherent policy process than exists. Instead, policy is “guided” by mind-numbing ideologies, as exemplified by the Euro austerity, one of the main features of which is that these ideological and rhetorical frameworks cannot be intelligently engaged on their own terms. There’s no obvious “alternative” that “solves” the immediate problem, without breaking the system. This is a feature, because it encourages the risk-averse moderates, who will not commit to a definite model of the world, to favor a policy of “kick the can down the road.” Breaking the system always seems supremely scary, when you are not equipped, or cannot be bothered, to imagine a feasible alternative.
No one really believes in neoliberalism as an ideology, not even, or maybe especially, its main practitioners. Neoliberalism’s main usefulness is that it is a great engine for generating rhetoric, one that almost any educated person can operate to spin out branded b.s. So, we get this rhetorical pea soup fog smothering popular understanding or political participation. Where the ideologies of the mid-20th century aimed to raise consciousness and motivate political participation, neoliberalism aims at suppressing political participation, and where participation breaks out anyway, in mass desperation, channels it “harmlessly” into more neoliberal policy.
JohnB
Good analysis – there is still a last-ditch option though, for periphery countries: Adopt ‘alternative’ economic policies, which allow regaining control over fiscal spending – such as Rob Parenteau’s excellent proposal here:
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2013/12/exit-austerity-without-exiting-euro.html
It’s a very clever idea. This can allow countries to stay within the Euro medium-term, while allowing a significant increase in fiscal spending (but it’s still subject to limits – I reckon TAN’s (Tax Anticipation Notes) can only be stretched so far.
One way they are most especially useful: One of the more damaging barriers to leaving the Euro, is the chaos that would ensue in the transition period, and TAN’s would allow all the infrastructure to be put into place that is necessary for a switchover away from the Euro, long before that is likely to become necessary.
Bill H
@Celsuis233: Excuse me for stepping on your toes. I meant no offense.
Celsius 233
Bill H
April 4, 2014
@Celsuis233: Excuse me for stepping on your toes. I meant no offense.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Not offended per se, just struck me as bit odd you voiced such a similar thought with no mention.
I’ve not seen this idea (using climate change strategically) expressed before. It does play to the failure to act for such a long time; many decades, this isn’t new.
I’m a grumpy old fart, so don’t worry it…
Bill H
@Celsius233: ” bit odd you voiced such a similar thought with no mention.”
I guess I owed you a citation on the “strategic advantage” part, but I was more focused on the “means to accelerate the pilfering by taxation of what wealth still remains in the hands on the underclass,” which I didn’t see mentioned in what you had had to say. I guess you were in such a hurry to claim “I said it first” that you didn’t read my comment as thoroughly as you might have done.
You are a commenter that I particularly look forward to seeing, and who I read with considerable enjoyment both here and at the Agonist, where I comment and sometimes write as Jayhawk. That I respect you does not mean that I am a dog you can kick whenever you are in a bad mood, so for heaven’s sake lighten up. Your words, my words, and everyone else’s words are all printed in the same ink.
Celsius 233
Bill H
April 4, 2014
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Well, that’s interesting; but as to lightening up? Not my style normally, but when I can engage, I generally listen a bit more/better.
I appreciate your considered reply and I don’t kick dogs, or anybody else (usually).
But I don’t suffer bullshit either.
Basically, I’m pretty fed up watching the decline over 69 years and am one of little faith.
But then, most of the long term posters here are probably of the same ilk, plus or minus…
S Brennan
Ian,
Why no mention of the “re-unification” of Europe and the consequent effect of a large un-employed labor pool suddenly undoing decades of social contracts and the diminishment of labor’s powers on the body politic. Granted, Thatcher had already emasculated England, Scotland & Wales with tax cuts and heavy government intervention in labor markets, but the rest of Europe held fast until the onslaught of “cheap” labor.
I bring this up, because in the US , the “liberal” Democrats reliance on ethnic identity politics over the general welfare [i.e. labor] concerns have aligned them fully with exploitative labor practices favored by Wall Street.
Today in “liberal” circles it is anathema to call for curtailing immigration from H1-B [et al] to desperate unskilled 3rd world labors until the US recovers from it’s U-6 unemployment of 14.3%. And a STEM degree hasn’t been an escape from unemployment and low wage for decades in spite of Bill’s Gates bleating to congress.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/is-the-stem-job-advantage-a-myth/
Since this will bring cries that: I “must surely be a racist” for defending the domestic labor market, let me point out that I was educated in these matters by two old school liberals; Caesar Chavez & Barbara Jordan.
reslez
Bruce Wilder PERMALINK
April 3, 2014
One interpretation of our world politics is that the globalized elite is squeezing the resource consumption possibilities of populations across the globe, throwing peripheral populations out of Lifeboat Earth, in order to keep the party going for a small elite and their servants.
—
Another word for this is ‘collapse’. They won’t be spared.
I’m sure there are conspiracies, smallish ones our kids will read about in 50 years while scratching their heads.
Jessica
@Celsius 233 & Bill H,
What you are saying is true if the oligarchs and elites are reasonably coherent and have some kind of long-term vision (even if that may look like absence of vision to many of us because we are not included)
However my best guess is that they are not that coherent. I think that from around the 1980s, much of the US oligarchy/elites have been in plunder-while-you-can mode, in other words operating in ways that are not even in the long-term interest of the oligarchy/elites as a whole.
Certain pockets within the oligarchy/elites may have some (often highly blinkered) vision because they have to for their role within the oligarchy/elites. Even that is to some degree not for the sake of the oligarchy/elites as a whole but just their own segment of it, for example DOD be willing to seeing global warming but using it as an excuse for more funding for itself.
Celsius 233
@ Jessica
April 4, 2014
~~~~~~~~~~~~
I was referring more to the government specifically; especially, its lack of policy on co2, let alone acknowledging, the fact of human’s affect on climate.
The consistent defeating of meaningful action at the various global conventions on climate change.
jcapan
“No one really believes in neoliberalism as an ideology, not even, or maybe especially, its main practitioners. Neoliberalism’s main usefulness is that it is a great engine for generating rhetoric, one that almost any educated person can operate to spin out branded b.s. So, we get this rhetorical pea soup fog smothering popular understanding or political participation. Where the ideologies of the mid-20th century aimed to raise consciousness and motivate political participation, neoliberalism aims at suppressing political participation, and where participation breaks out anyway, in mass desperation, channels it “harmlessly” into more neoliberal policy.”
Bruce, you fucking rock!
Bill H
@Jessica: Like Celsius233, I was also referring specifically to government. Stripping wealth from the underclasses through taxation is strictly a short term goal,and I would say counts as a short-term goal, not a long term one. Not to mention that I would say the power play Celsius233 refers to qualifies as typical government shortsighted policy, rather than some sort of “long term vision.”
See, Celsius old buddy, I didn’t slight you. 🙂
Bill H
“Stripping wealth from the underclasses through taxation is strictly a short term goal,and I would say counts as a short-term goal, not a long term one. “
I meant to say, Stripping wealth from the underclasses through taxation is strictly a short term goal,and I would say counts as shortsightedness, not a long term thinking.
gepay
I think the elites have long range plans. I see Nixon opening up China in the 70’s not as a way to open up a market of a billion people but as the start of a globalization of labor markets so as to break the power that working people in developed economies had gained after the depression/WW2. One now doesn’t have to imagine what can happen when 1/2 a billion regimented workers are added to the world’s manufacturing labor market.
Think of how tripling the price of oil (in the 70’s did in any resistance in the developing world – Do you really think the global developing world debt problem in the 80’s was not planned as a control mechanism – how well it worked with what Perkins has related with his economic hitman expose. Just look at Jamaica. Go and find what Walter Wriston (former chairman and CEO of Citicorp) had to say at the time about the global debt problem.
Notice how the present bailout of the world’s banking system was possible because Thatcher and Reagan fixed the wage-price inflation spiral that led to the stagflation of the 70’s. -the breaking of the unions power in the US and England. In the past decade the US Fed has created 10s of trillions of dollars without inflation to stem the deflation that would have caused another world wide depression. Notice the date of when the bankruptcy laws were changed in the USA. What was the date of Bernanke being appointed Head of the FED – do you think it was luck to have someone who in 2002 gave a presentation on how the Great Depression might have been fixed? Not to say they have fixed the present financial system. It will surely break again.]
Or perhaps we’ll have another global war again. In the last WW the PTB (Powers That Be) made sure most of the destruction happened in Russia and Germany, or Japan and China.
This is not to say there is this monolithic small group of elites – they are pluralistic. While most of the PTB are happy about imposing a small carbon footprint on everybody but them and the US military (the bitch for enforcement for the elites) the oil, energy, and mining corporacracies (it sounds better than corporatocracies – say that fast five times) are not along for the ride.
CO2 is not a pollutant. While man’s technology can destroy the ecology of the Earth (can you say overfishing with trawlers or nuclear winter or Roundup ready crops with terminator genes), the climate is a much too robust chaotic system to be grossly changed by the addition (relative to the size of the atmosphere) of a small amount of CO2. We have so many real problems that have to be addressed. Man made climate change is just another control mechanism for the elites. Which is not to say that our whole economic system doesn’t need to be changed from its present first principle of cancer like growth. The US military-industrial-national security-intelligence complex is a much bigger threat to the world’s people than man made CO2. It is not to say that we shouldn’t change our dependence on fossil fuels while they are still widely available and can power the changeover.
The elites long range plan is for androids or robots to be perfected so that they can just do away with 90% of the human population. The Earth can’t support 10 billion people living like they do. “Who ya gonna get to do the dirty work when all the slaves are free?” will no longer be a problem. You don’t think Prince Phillip and those types would love it if Sub Sahara Africa was one big game preserve with a few robotic mining operations here and there.
Celsius 233
@ gepay
April 5, 2014
CO2 is not a pollutant.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Is that true? I suggest not. Normally c02 is beneficial; however, in excess, it causes many problems detrimental to not only human habitation, but to sea life and many other species, both animal and vegetable. It would appear co2 in excess can be termed a pollutant.
So, what’s your point?
In fact, your post is rife with contradictions, hmm…
JimD
Celsius 233 permalink
April 4, 2014
Bill H
April 4, 2014
@Celsuis233: Excuse me for stepping on your toes. I meant no offense.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Not offended per se, just struck me as bit odd you voiced such a similar thought with no mention.
I’ve not seen this idea (using climate change strategically) expressed before. It does play to the failure to act for such a long time; many decades, this isn’t new.
I’m a grumpy old fart, so don’t worry it…
Excuse me here. I generally just follow here and do not post much, but this exchange just fries me. Celsusis233 you are just way over the top. You think you are the first to come up with this idea? I have written blog posts running to 1000 words multiple times on this very point many times on other blogs going back near 10 years. You did not come up with this first nor do you own the idea. Nor do I as I am sure that I was not the first to think this and imagine a good literature search would come up with the substantial points being covered at least 20 years ago.
When another poster writes a post rephrasing or covering one of yours that is a version of supporting your position. It should be welcomed as such and not viewed as a opportunity to attack someone for not being sufficiently subservient to your special intellect.
End of rant.
JimD
gepay permalink
April 5, 2014
“CO2 is not a pollutant. While man’s technology can destroy the ecology of the Earth (can you say overfishing with trawlers or nuclear winter or Roundup ready crops with terminator genes), the climate is a much too robust chaotic system to be grossly changed by the addition (relative to the size of the atmosphere) of a small amount of CO2. We have so many real problems that have to be addressed. Man made climate change is just another control mechanism for the elites. Which is not to say that our whole economic system doesn’t need to be changed from its present first principle of cancer like growth. The US military-industrial-national security-intelligence complex is a much bigger threat to the world’s people than man made CO2. It is not to say that we shouldn’t change our dependence on fossil fuels while they are still widely available and can power the changeover.”
—————–
Pollutant is not the relevant word here. The physical effects of CO2 levels in the atmosphere have been understood since the late 1800’s. The science on the effects of CO2 levels, and continuing emissions, on trapping heat and raising global temperatures is rock solid and far beyond debatable. To express otherwise is to deny unequivocal facts. Anyone reading such a post will naturally then call into question any other opinion of the poster as probably either uniformed or motivated by ill intentions.
We do have many ‘real’ problems, but thinking man caused climate change is not real is foolish. AGW is the single greatest challenge in human history as continuing along our current path will inevitably lead to catastrophic changes to Earth’s climate with the obvious risks to the survival of significant numbers of humans and a continuing complex civilizational structure. Addressing it is so important that all other ‘real’ problems pale to mostly insignificant status as none of them can be solved unless we successfully address AGW. The primary focus has to remain on the primary problem.
Celsius 233
@ JimD
You think you are the first to come up with this idea?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now who’s over the top?
Quit acting like a jackass; I in no way said or claimed to be first in that idea.
What I did say was; I’ve not seen this idea (using climate change strategically) expressed before.
Grow up and stuff your ego.
JimD
Celsius 233
Clearly you are.
You act with extreme arrogance.
You expect some form of subservience.
You are rude.
You expect some attribution to you for non-original thoughts
And you seem to lack the maturity to apologise for your inexcusable behavior.
markfromireland
@ Ian
Which presumably why the average Danish dental student is:
1: Female.
2: From as the Danes put it “En anden etnisk baggrund end dansk” which as you don’t speak Danish I’ll translate they’re from “Another ethnic background than Danish”. Specifically they’re the daughters of Kurdish immigrants (most Turks in Denmark are in fact Kurdish). Dentists in Denmark earn a lot more than doctors do.
I’ll agree with you that there’s lots wrong with how immigrants are treated in Denmark (can’t speak directly to the Swedish case) but it’s more to do with lack of social acceptance than lack of opportunity. Danes say that Denmark is a tolerant place and it is but there’s a difference between tolerance and acceptance. But acceptance is starting to take place it just takes a generation to get underway.
The first generation of immigrants to Denmark weren’t very promising material at first sight:
Around half of them were illiterate in their own language (and in Turkish) when they got here but they were willing to learn and to work so they buckled down and learnt to speak read and write Danish which is a bloody difficult language to learn and took God-awful jobs that nobody else would take while doing so. They’ve built a halfway decent life for themselves and within a generation their sons and daughters are getting the same education and professional opportunities as their Danish coaevals I don’t think they’re doing too badly. I have quite a few Kurdish friends and colleagues in Denmark – I think they’d be quite pissed off at being called an underclass when they’ve made such a success of their lives.
The second generation have it better – how not? They’re born here, educated here, and the older insular and frankly often downright racist generation of Danes are kicking the bucket in ever increasing numbers. Not saying that there isn’t lots of room for improvement still there is. But underclass? Nope for the most part very hardworking citizens who add a hell of a lot more to the country than they take.
mfi
markfromireland
@ Ian:
Just when I almost manage to forget that you’re an economist you write stuff like this:
Ian, the primary and overriding imperative of that set of institutions which became the EU was preventing the two Northwestern European regional superpowers from doing what they’d been doing once a generation and going to war. Trashing large parts of the continent and slaughtering vast numbers of civilians as they do so.
Stopping the French and Germans from going to war (and dragging the Russians in to the fight as they do so) is the prime purpose of the EU and it’s worked. They haven’t gone to war with each other for more than sixty years. Everything else Ian, EVERYTHING, is secondary to that.
Actually I agree with this one not least because they’ve consistently acted as America’s trojan horse.
mfi
Ian Welsh
MFI,
I was referring to Sweden (the Swedes, the worst of the bunch). Of the Nordics, I know the least about Denmark I’ve spent a fair bit of time reading up on Sweden, Finland, and to a lesser extent, Norway.
When you start having immigrant riots, you’ve got a problem.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/06/02
Thus, the Nords are the best of Europe, but Sweden appears to be developing some significant problems, including an underclass.
And I can only spit when I look at what has been done by northern Europeans, in particular Germany, to the South. Of course the South is complicit, who isn’t, but such radical austerity was not necessary. A choice was made, as in the US, to bail out bankers, no matter the cost to anyone else. Austerity is an ideological decision, there were other options, but with the exception of in Iceland, they were not taken.
(*Immigrants almost everywhere, in study after study, pay more into the system than they take out, as a group. Even so, if mishandled, immigrants can develop into an underclass. That appears to be happening in Sweden, and it appears, largely, to have happened in France.)
markfromireland
nationalist permalink
April 3, 2014
The decline of Europe is mass colored immigration. The nations they are destroying are their own, which will cease to be recognizably European in 40 years.
Mandos permalink
April 3, 2014
LOL send in the clowns
In the words of the song: Don’t bother, they’re here.
Except that given their spelling I suspect that the person calling themselves ‘nationalist’ is yet another pig-ignorant North-American racist who has never lived outside of North America and is so badly educated that they’re without even the slightest idea of how demographics and populations replacement ratios work. (Not that we don’t have racists over here we do).
mfi
Ian Welsh
I’m not an economist, though I do know a lot of economics.
I’m aware of the goal of the EU. Allow me to make a slight change: feel free to keep Germany in the EU, just kick them out of the Euro. The policies they have pushed since 2007 have been almost entirely to the detriment of every Southern country in the EU, as well as Ireland. I do not say this casually. I hear they think they can tell France not to run deficits too.
Those who have studied how WWII happened, know that needless austerity is one of the preconditions of war. That Germany is destroying the economies of the South with its policies peacefully as opposed to imposing them as war conditions, does not alter the fact that massive unemployment, especially massive youth unemployment, is a bad, bad thing.
Political unions work when they help everyone. The key members of the EU appear to have forgotten this.
They don’t have to listen to outsiders like me, they could listen to sturdy members of the elite, like Soros and Stiglitz and Pikkety, who believe that their policies are cruel, stupid and undermining the European project.
markfromireland
@ ian – I’ll get back to this in a few hours – my two new kids have just got back home (going infinitely better than my most optimistic hopes) and are demanding I pay attention to them.
Ian Welsh
@MfI Have fun. Glad to hear it is going well. 🙂
S Brennan
“massive unemployment, especially massive youth unemployment, is a bad, bad thing.”
Yes indeedy, when “liberals” [forgot/ignored/willfully-ignored] this fact, is when they ceased to win primaries/elections…because they were no longer relevant to peoples daily lives.
Any policy that pushes unemployment above ~4% is putting capital over labor. Creating an oversupply of labor through [any policy] depresses wages and puts average citizens in competition with each other for resources, this results in a “dog eat dog” mentality which is easily manipulated into rightward shift of public sentiment. Ordinary Americans have not had a raise in decades:
http://cdn.theatlantic.com/newsroom/img/posts/Screen%20Shot%202014-03-29%20at%209.23.25%20PM.png
US citizens generosity/sympathy towards the world has declined in lockstep…and as Ian points out, un/underemployment has been problematic worldwide.