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  • Originally posted by kato View Post
    They better be given the amount of money we're shoveling over there. The EU is providing 5.3% of the Bulgarian GDP. And with Romania, well, most Romanian unemployed are now in Germany...
    Originally posted by kato View Post
    Consistency much?
    No such thing as a good tax - Churchill

    To make mistakes is human. To blame someone else for your mistake, is strategic.

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    • That was 6 years ago, when the British economy was still better and could still employ Romanians ;-)

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      • Originally posted by kato View Post
        That was 6 years ago, when the British economy was still better and could still employ Romanians ;-)
        Interesting, their GDP is about 10% higher than in 2011.
        No such thing as a good tax - Churchill

        To make mistakes is human. To blame someone else for your mistake, is strategic.

        Comment


        • Yeah, but Romanians have a 60% (!) higher disposable income than back then (compared to 9% for the UK)...

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          • Originally posted by kato View Post
            Yeah, but Romanians have a 60% (!) higher disposable income than back then (compared to 9% for the UK)...
            So, 700 is more than 3500 these days, eh?

            Now only us peasants from the south need to get the memo ;-)
            No such thing as a good tax - Churchill

            To make mistakes is human. To blame someone else for your mistake, is strategic.

            Comment


            • Firstly, kato - FYI I'm not avoiding your points - there is simply too much to address and I'm extremely time-limited at the moment. Man against time here.

              Others - when I've spoken of experiences and perspectives in supporting Brexit - that people have been left behind, families have been shattered with the post-industrial transition, increasing centralization, and the metropole benefitting while the marginal areas fall behind - please do not take it the wrong way.

              You might be well off and content with life - but at the same time you're not a City of London or Kensington/Chelsea multimillionaire either. Even if you are firsthand not suffering the impacts of centralization/deindustrialization personally, and have food in the cupboard and a roof over your head - you have witnessed many of the policy failures over the last few decades, and witnessed its effects on people you know in your communities.

              Please do not take my comments as meaning you personally if they do not apply specifically to you - I am generalizing to a certain extent here.

              That being said - I do not support the manner and means with which Brexit was carried out - I view it as the culmination of several failures over a long period of time, and an unnecessary tragedy. Politicians with spurious motives manipulated a portion of the half of the UK into voting for it. It was a result of needless escalation that occurred over the last several years - I would have preferred the UK stay in the EU as a reality check for the centralizers trying to create a European superstate.

              History didn't play out the way I would have personally liked it to have - but at the same time, I cannot fault people for voting for Brexit, as they felt their hand was forced. I cannot fault the superstate diehards living in the rest of the EU either - they also felt their hand was forced.

              I'm just an outsider here with an outside perspective. I choose neither the EU superstate or Brexit.

              My comments may seem like I'm equivocating and playing both sides, but I am most definitely not. I believe/believed there was a third way. The third way is simply not politically viable or practical at the moment due to the way history unfolded.
              Last edited by Ironduke; 15 Apr 17,, 17:08.
              "Every man has his weakness. Mine was always just cigarettes."

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              • What in your view is the primary cause of this "centralization/deindustrialization" you speak of?

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                • My view: Tieing the German economy to the Italian currency performance.

                  Should have done that 30 years earlier.

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                  • Originally posted by snapper View Post
                    What in your view is the primary cause of this "centralization/deindustrialization" you speak of?
                    Information age technology applied to manufacturing, including automation. Less need for manual labor. Cities that have not become regional hubs in the services-based economy that has emerged, have fell behind. Especially cities that were sited near various natural resources, various factory towns, etc., have been hit particularly hard.

                    There are economies of scale in which concentrations of a huge variety of skilled services labor in a location further creates virtuous cycles, whereas rust belt cities that have failed to transition away from an industrial base are experiencing a vicious cycle.

                    For example - Pittsburgh, Minneapolis - successful transitions - virtuous cycles. Milwaukee, Flint, Cleveland, Duluth, Detroit, and a hundreds of cities with 50,000 or less people - vicious cycles. An industrial job lost in an area that cannot establish itself as an attractive destination for a concentration of skilled services labor - there is nothing to transition into - and that industrial job causes several other job losses in turn.
                    "Every man has his weakness. Mine was always just cigarettes."

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                    • Reduction through automation in manufacturing and industry was a thing of the 90s in Europe for the most part. "Industry 4.0" as the current step (hate the term, personally) mostly hits the service and administration fields - because production already is automated.

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                      • I am afraid I am more inclined toward kato's position of "Tieing the German economy to the Italian currency performance" but would go further and give a single name to the problem; the euro. It was a political project from the start but had economic consequences; countries that did not qualify to join (such as Hellas) were permitted, knowingly, to defraud their way in and in economic terms it was doomed to fail. A single currency area such as the US, Britain, even Greater Muscovy works because the majority of people all speak a common language; if there are no jobs in say Rostov but Petrograd needs lawyers or factory workers etc fine but if there are no jobs in Portugal but there are in Lithuania well there is a problem. The euro was the greatest mistake of this attempt at European unity; every rule written has been broken and the bank robbery of Cyprus (although it was ironically a good thing) strictly speaking illegal under the EU's own damn laws! The second highest cause of death in Greece in 2011 was suicide. When the Irish voted "no" on the Lisbon Treaty (which replaced the Constitution word for word in some articles if I recall right which had been voted down by both the Dutch and French I think) they were just told to vote again! So you understand why some of us might think it is not working ideally?

                        I am not anti Europe - hell I am all for a new Roman Republic speaking Esperanto if you want but even they had different mints and local customs were observed but this kind of Justinian Byzantine top down rule is the very factor creating the destabilisation.

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                        • London's losing the EMA and EBA as expected:
                          http://www.dw.com/en/britain-to-lose...ort/a-38447451

                          The British government in response gives us its usual disbelief of reality:
                          https://www.ft.com/content/72ead180-...1-d5f7e0cd0a16

                          21 member states have pitched for hosting the EMA by now (all except the Baltics, Poland, Bulgaria and Luxembourg). Poland and Luxembourg are both trying extra hard for the EBA instead, which has a similar competition round going on; Germany is trying for both btw, but on the EBA has arranged French support by offering to shift some responsibilities between EU offices if they get the EBA so that France would similarly get some additional power.

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                          • Originally posted by snapper View Post
                            The second highest cause of death in Greece in 2011 was suicide.
                            Uh... and in most of the rest of the EU it was the highest non-natural cause of death. Greece has the lowest suicide rate in the entire EU, and in 2011 even had particularly low rates.

                            2011, Greece: 4.20 suicides / 100,000 citizens
                            2012, Greece: 4.41 suicides / 100,000 citizens
                            2013, Greece: 4.76 suicides / 100,000 citizens

                            2011, EU28 : 11.68 suicides / 100,000 citizens
                            2012, EU28 : 11.73 suicides / 100,000 citizens
                            2013, EU28 : 11.67 suicides / 100,000 citizens

                            What was special in 2011 and 2012 is that Cyprus (yeah, Cyprus, which we were supposedly robbing) had even lower suicide rates than Greece for once - 3.97 in 2011, 3.82 in 2012. By 2013 Greece managed to regain its top spot as least-suicidal country of the EU.

                            Germany for comparison is virtually at EU average level (slightly above, around 11.7-11.9); the UK is at half (!) that, basically showing us that their economy apparently isn't bad enough to be driven to suicide either. The highest rates are recularly recorded in the Baltic countries, with Lithuania topping the list at around 30-36 per 100,000 citizens (meaning a Lithuanian in 2011 was 8 times more likely to kill himself than a Greek!). The USA for a more international comparison was at its highest rates in the previous 3 decades around that time, at around 13.0 suicides per 100,000 citizens.

                            Source (Eurostat).
                            Last edited by kato; 16 Apr 17,, 20:17.

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                            • I visited Hellas at the time and know what was done to the figures. It remains a stain on the honour of all involved in the many Greek bailouts.

                              And were not the bank accounts of Cypriot citizens plundered at the behest of the ECB? Now I admit that alot of illegal Muscovite money was laying in some accounts and so in some respect it served well but for the ECB to insist the banks take money from their accounts clients to repay the ECB itself? I call that robbery and if you cannot understand why some may disapprove and perhaps fear what is to come after such measures then your history is missing.
                              Last edited by snapper; 17 Apr 17,, 03:23.

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                              • Originally posted by snapper View Post
                                I call that robbery
                                Property entails obligations. Its use shall also serve the public good.

                                The banks i bank with warn me with every single letter i get from them and every single thing i sign there that i shouldn't leave more than 100,000 Euro laying around at any single institute. Don't yours?

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