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Do you want the EU to continue?

Do you want the EU to continue?

  • Total voters
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Infinite Chaos

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Simple question: Do you want the EU to continue?

Please also explain why you voted as you did if you voted YES or NO.
 
I want it to continue

It has many problems like any other comunity has too. So yes, it can be made better, but it gives us security (more than american troops in my opinion) and wealth. Why shall we throw that away?
 
Infinite Chaos said:
Simple question: Do you want the EU to continue?

Please also explain why you voted as you did if you voted YES or NO.
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Yes, but as a United States of Europe supernation with actual transfer payments instead of economically toxic austerity and bailouts, as opposed to this ridiculous half-measure/demi-abortion of a European superstate.

The Euro currency in its current configuration is ridiculous, serves as a de facto gold standard for the EU's constituent countries, and favours exporter nations within the EU at the expense of all others.
 
Speaking as a long time Euro-resident and previous Euro-skeptic, I'm very pro-EU. The economic advantages are enormous and completely obvious. Even if the EU didn't exist, you'd still have to have all the agencies that debate and agree on trading and industry standards.

The most important reason however is it gives us the power to stand up to bullies like Russia, China, the US and major corporations. Without a unified block for negotiations and push back individual tiny countries would be steam rolled by these other powers. It also virtually guarantees that there can't be an intra-EU war and the defense savings by pooling resources is tremendous.

I believe we should take it a step further and have a common EU military. As it is now, we have dozens of tiny armies all with different standards, languages and equipment. If it were a unified army it would be much more effective at dealing with external threats than the hodge podge group we have now.

Fact of the matter is, with the world the way it is today, European countries need to work together to oppose the strong negative influences in the world both economic and militarily. I also find it super awesome that I can just load up my family in the car and vacation in just about any European country without a passport or having to exchange currencies. It's a vacation paradise.
 
I dunno about the other EU members but I think it will be good for the UK to leave it.

Anecdotal, but I was in Hong Kong last year and met some Brits on their way to Australia, when I asked them why they were heading Down Under, they told me they couldnt make a living as a plumber or other tradesman because people from Eastern Europe were bidding for jobs way lower than them in the UK, so they couldnt afford to live there.
 
german hick said:
I want it to continue

It has many problems like any other comunity has too. So yes, it can be made better, but it gives us security (more than american troops in my opinion) and wealth. Why shall we throw that away?
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Of course you do. This allows Germany to control Europe without having to lose another war.
 
washunut said:
Of course you do. This allows Germany to control Europe without having to lose another war.
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Germany has always controlled Europe since the end of the Roman Empire.

Sent from my Honor 8X using Tapatalk
 

One of my friends is a Brexit supporter for exactly this reason actually; job got exported to EE. Having said that, I'm not sure if Brexit would fix the issue in his specific case, because this wasn't a case of freedom of movement laws allowing them to come into the country to work for less there; they just outsourced. At best it might make outsourcing to Eastern Europe somewhat more expensive.


Overall, I think by far the single biggest issue with the EU is easily the Euro for reasons largely stated here, due to the inability of the single currency to accommodate the varied and unique needs of its member countries without the transfer payments normally utilized to iron out economic disparities of constituent regions: Buxton says Eurozone is 'unsustainable' - FTAdviser.com , though it is certain that freedom of movement laws significantly contribute towards downwards wage pressures via expansion of the labour pool which primarily benefits only those well off in the more developed member countries.
 
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the EU is good for Scotland and Scotland is good for the EU, is it perfect no nothing is it's a damn improvement on the UK where we are ignored and marginalised ... you only have to look at EU solidarity with Ireland meanwhile we were ignored within the UK
 
YES!!!!

For reasons already aptly stated by other here, and by myself elsewhere in the past.
 
I propose that Russia (Putin) wants to see it fail on account of disunity being the name of the game for him. Like a divided Europe would not have accomplished solidarity over sanctions on Russia, however hypocritical those might seem in view of the extra-curriculars deals that some members still make (Nordstream comes to mind).

The US, especially under the currently proposed idea of a deal being only that if it can be made with one and not a bunch of nations that are (is) working jointly.

In addition seeing a unified economic body of nations as a competitive threat to own national interests.

Hardline Brexiteers on the emotive gut-reaction of wanting to see what they despise, fail (IOW taking the ball home with them on the principle "if we won't play, nobody is allowed to").
 

Those people lied to you.
There's been skills shortages in all areas of construction for the last 10 years or more. At one point last year (I even started a thread on it) bricklayers could earn £100,000 a year and getting a plumber in many parts of the south is incredibly hard.

Skills shortage biggest concern in plumbing sector | Heating & Plumbing Monthly Magazine (HPM)

Shortage of Qualified Plumbers Plaguing The Plumbing Industry | WaterWork Plumbing

In fact I've spent the last 4 years trying to convince my eldest son to take up a trade but he wanted to do Business Admin. He now has a good job as a junior manager with a major tyre company but he's now trying to take a pay cut to go work as an electrical engineering apprentice for Mercedes.
 
nailed it, especially by what I've bolded.:applaud

Thing being that those nations wanting what you propose have as much political appetite for such changes as the nations that are reaping off the benefits of the current constellation DON'T.

It isn't just the governments of the latter (like any other, a reflection of their electorate), it's the people of course.

Not just the Germans (to name just one people that profits and probably the most of the lot) all want to go water-skiing behind the galley, but let somebody else ferchrissake man the oars.
 
Ironically it were just those fears (of being swamped by cheap East European labor) that led most EU nations to put a transition period of restriction on free movement of labor (not free movement as such) on "new" Eastern members.

Only countries that didn't (in my re-collection) were Sweden, Ireland and Britain. With the latter's Blair administration actually building bridges of silver. That measure having found large bi-partisan support in parliament.


Undoubtedly!
though it is certain that freedom of movement laws significantly contribute towards downwards wage pressures via expansion of the labour pool which primarily benefits only those well off in the more developed member countries.
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not to counter your argument, seeing how it is basically sound, but just to go anecdotal:

Polish workers took much from the German plumber, bricklayer, carpenter etc., but only initially. Once standards at home improved, many of those went back to set up business at home and, in the course of that, build their own houses there. Often, so I hear, by employing cheap labor from Ukraine.:lol:

Quite apart of which Germany bit-by-bit imposed strict controls on anyone employing "Eastern" workers to see that they were paid the minimum wage and their employers insured them for the mandatory health and other social security items.

UK could have followed that approach but failed to do so.
 
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While the EU could be improved, all the alternatives are appalling for most people, 99% of Britons in Britain.
Probably more of the couple of million retired Brits living or working in Europe, and all of the 31/2 million Europeans living and working in Britain who haven't gone back already, who have had to apply to stay in their own home.
 
The whole "the Euro is bad" thing makes no sense. If the Euro is bad then so is the Dollar and Pound and pretty much any currency of large nations.

The whole idea of transfer of payments issue, is a crack pot theory that is so easily disproved. Take the dollar. Many Americans state that it works because of the federal system transfers funds around a nation.. Yea and so what? The poorest states 100 years ago are still the poorest and least developed. Same with the Pound.. Wales, Scotland and NI all were poor dumps before the EEC and thier development over the last 50 years is not because of being in the pound, but because of funding from other EU nations. Why? Because there was relatively no investment by Westminster before the EEC.

The transfer of payments do happen in the EU and have been happening long before the Euro was around.. It was done via regional aid and people in the rich North wanting summer homes. Regional aid has done far more for EU member states than any common currency like the Dollar has ever done. Just look at Spain, Portugal and yes even Greece.

What is different between the Euro vs the Dollar and Pound, is that states in the Euro have to deal with thier problems rather than maintaining the addiction to transfers like in the US and UK. Only nation so far in the EU that resists such change is Italy but they will realize soon that they have to change. Even the French make changes.

Sent from my Honor 8X using Tapatalk
 
I'm not a European, but I have lived in Europe at times and can appreciate the power of EU numbers in its myriad nuances.

I do think Europe should contribute more to its security, and I believe the EU is hypocritical on some issues, but overall I believe it is more of a continental plus than a minus.
 

The EU spends about 240 billion in USD on defense (the individual members of the EU.

The only real potential threat to the EU members is Russia and it is spending 68 billion, and is not likely able to spend any more, and likely will spend much less in the future.

EU Defense spending is certainly enough to defend the EU member states from potential threats to the EU, if it were collectively spent and organized (at least for major items like naval and air force
 

Ultimately though, if you have more people willing to work the same job, the end result is that, all else being equal, you have to pay less in wages and benefits to retain the same level of labour aside perhaps, from minimum wage/union established floors; that's about as indelible an economic fact as that austerity is toxic for distressed economies.


PeteEU said:
The whole "the Euro is bad" thing makes no sense...
Click to expand...

There is nothing particularly crack pot about transfers being an invaluable tool of correcting internal economic imbalances (though it is certainly not the end all-be all, nor was such claimed).

Though it is certainly true that some beneficiaries do not leverage transfers to better their condition, that is not a universal, indelible truth; this is about on par with saying that all welfare recipients are merely queens looking to cost off of govt beneficence. At their absolute worst, equalization payments prevent runaway and spiraling disparities, and do not actively pose an obstacle to recovery unlike austerity. Certainly transfers have had more success than austerity, and has more sound economic theory behind it than a wholesale rout of the public sector (including the obligated fire sale of govt assets/services that are actually profitable to private entities) and govt spending in an already distressed economy, resulting in economies that tend to shrink faster than their debts (Greece's debt to GDP jumped sharply from 2008 to 2011, and despite a brief and swiftly reversed dip in 2012, has largely remained static since). Though there's no doubt that once prodigally spending countries like Greece absolutely needed a substantial overhaul of superfluous/excess spending initially, you can only cut so much in the way of legitimate inefficiencies before you start to hew into the bone, and that point has been passed in Greece for many years. The primary difference between US, Canada, China and the like versus the EU is that unconditional austerity is virtually never employed as a cure for constituent provinces/states, because it is rightly recognized as an impedance, not an aid to restoring economic function and vitality. Even in Canada where austerity was rumoured to have worked miracles in the 90s under Chretien, that had more to do with the low Canadian dollar and substantial cuts to the interest rate; traditionally stimulative measures.

Greece's bailout is finally at an end – but has been a failure | Larry Elliott | World news | The Guardian

The Evidence Is In, and Austerity Is Declared a Loser - Truthdig

Austerity is the wrong prescription for the world's wellbeing | Larry Elliott | Business | The Guardian

YouTube
 
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