Which is still absolutely idiotic when consider matters pertaining to nation states.
You can't compare nations to city-states - they're very big apples compared to small oranges.
The EU has no legitimate government of its own. It has no military. It has no real political negotiating power.
Well, you got two of those three statements right. Try again - but this time, please try to use accurate statements instead of off-the-cuff assumptions.
It is a largely irrelevant paper tiger; basically nothing more than NAFTA (which, incidentally, is actually larger than the EU by at least a trillion dollars) with a common currency and parliament.
And what's the big, big difference between the EU and NAFTA? When Mexico's economy goes south and their currency devalues, does it affect the dollar much at all? Of course not. But when Greece's economy went south, the rest of the EU HAD to get involved, because the effects of Greece's economic meltdown affected the value of all their nations - the Euro - as a whole. It's as if we had no choice but to rescue Mexico in order to save the dollar.
Remind me again, how many member nations has the EU had to bail out since 2008?
And there was this little thing called the 'Great Recession'. You may have heard of it. But then, if you're glued to Fox News, that was just another vast liberal conspiracy to destroy America (yawn).
And they had to do so - because they had to save the Euro.
How high is its average unemployment rate?
In a few of the nations, higher than our own, but in most it's either comparable or lower, IF you take our ACTUAL unemployment rate, counting those who no longer look for employment. Ya gotta watch those definitions of unemployment, y'know - because it's really important to measure apples to apples.
What is its economic growth rate?
Lower than our own - but if you'd paid attention, you'd have seen that a lot of the EU took the path of austerity - like Britain, which narrowly avoided a THIRD dip in their Great Recession. And late last year, the IMF came out and said that the EU's economic troubles were exacerbated largely because they (the IMF)
severely underestimated the damage that austerity would do to the EU's economy.
What about its population growth rate?
Yes, their growth rate is getting lower as a whole, as it does in ALL - repeat, ALL - very prosperous nations. The higher the standard of living, the lower the growth rate. Check the European nations with the highest standards of living - higher than our own - and you'll find they have the lowest population growth rates. If you want a high growth rate, keep the people poor. If you want to solve Africa's population boom, help them become prosperous. Simple and quite true in concept, if very difficult in practice.
I'm sorry, but there is simply nothing about the EU's current position which suggests that it can survive as a sustainable entity; let alone a major global power player.
Especially if you're enamored of the Fox-and-conservative-pundits-fueled view that nobody in Europe can do anything right, they're all suffering under the crushing heel of tyranny, and they actually are allied with the French (horrors)!
Those of us who aren't terrified to actually look at what's good in addition to what's bad, who don't look down our noses at those with other philosophies and political systems (except for real, honest-to-goodness tyrannies (which doesn't exist today in Western Europe)) know that Europe's got a LOT of advantages today. Yes, they're facing a lot of challenges - a population that's growing older, anthropogenic global warming (which you probably think isn't real, either), and a greater real threat from terrorism than we face - but they're a heck of a lot LESS monolithic than we've become...which means that they're better able to adapt to what's necessary to respond to a challenge.
Oh, wait - that's all just heresy and nonsense to you. Sorry - I forgot that I'm not supposed to use words that are
verboten in the conservative echo chamber.
The EU's economy is larger than that of the United States by barely a trillion dollars.
And this is a bad thing how?
China is expected to
surpass the United States within a few decades, with India close on their heels. The EU's economy, by way of contrast, is currently exhibiting
negative or next to no growth at all.
AND if you paid attention, you'd see that when developing economies grow, they almost always show really high growth rates...whereas developed economies almost never show the kind of growth rates that developing economies show. What you're pointing out isn't the result of political philosophy or economic systems - it's the result of the difference between developING and developED economies...and while China's economy is so big, what you don't get is that their population is so big that their economy is still developING.
Frankly, even during supposed "boom" times, the EU only ever exhibited growth in the
2%-3% range when the US was routinely posting 4% or higher anyway. You do the math.
See my previous paragraph above.
Incidentally, the fact that the EU actually has a population almost twice as large as that of the United States, with more or less the same general tech level, and possesses a collective economy worth only roughly a trillion dollars more than the United States in spite of this fact should really speak volumes about just how far behind the curb they really are in terms of overall competitiveness.
If the EU only included nations like Germany, Norway, Sweden, and the other, more prosperous European nations, then you'd have a point. But since they also included quite a few of the less successful nations - like Greece - then of course you'd see such a difference.
Come to think of it, America's numbers when it comes to standard of living would be a whole lot higher if we jettisoned most of the old Confederacy. But even though several of those states are the poorest in the nation, we'll keep them around anyway. Bummer.
By all rights, they should be absolutely running the tables on us.
When it comes to science and education, they are...and because of this, in the coming years, they may well do so economically, too.
Standards of living simply are not as important as economic growth on any long term basis.
So that means that, say, the Philippines has better long-term economic prospects than the U.S. does, because even though we have a MUCH better standard of living, they've had much better growth rates for years. Knowing the place as well as I do, I'd say that anyone who denigrates the importance of maintaining a high standard of living for the people is simply full of it.
China and India might very well be slightly behind the curb now, but with the growth levels they are currently experiencing, standards of living have absolutely no where to go but up.
Yeah, like the NINE-DAY traffic jam that Beijing had a couple years back. Look it up - the word 'epic' truly applies. You see, they're making beaucoup bucks in their factories, but perhaps the single most important thing when it comes to improving a nation's standard of living is INFRASTRUCTURE...and the lack of infrastructure (when it comes to roads) is what led to that nine-day traffic jam in Beijing.
The same is not true of the EU. The continent is already basically at its peak in terms of living standards, and economically stagnant. This implies that they are more likely to ultimately find living standards back sliding than moving forward.
Once again, we hear the tired old conservative argument that "Europe's about break apart, fall, disintegrate, diminish, drain down into the abyss of history!" Yawn. See me in twenty years and then we'll discuss it.
A handful of companies largely devoted to niche luxury products or known for unscrupulous monopolistic business practices does not a competitive economy make.
Yeah, shame on us here in Washington state for having Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon, and Starbucks. But we're still doing pretty well, just as Europe is with Airbus, the German auto industry, and a little company called BP.
I don't care if a person happens to live in a damn utopia. If that standard of living comes at the cost of basically ceding global hegemony to someone else, the system they live under pretty clearly is not "the best."
Y'know, if you'd actually go live there for a while, you just might find that in some ways they're freer than we are. In some ways we're freer, of course, but it's a mixed bag at best. If being 'free' is so much more important to you than having a high standard of living, then go live in a third-world nation, because there's so many things you can do there that you simply can't do even in America. But if you want to live in a place that's safer, cleaner, and much more prosperous for everyone (and not just the top 1%), then living in a socialized first-world democracy (like those in Western Europe) is for you.
Again, as I pointed out in my very first post, Europe as it is today couldn't even exist if it were not the stability and military protection US global hegemony provides. If we should ever falter in this role, the European welfare states you seem to hold in such high regard will inevitably follow.
Actually, I disagree. You'll think I'm looney-tunes for saying this, but the time of empire-building has passed. This isn't to say that nations don't need to maintain a military, but they're not nearly so important as they were a couple generations back. For instance, even as nationalistic as Russia is, you'd find the people there would strongly oppose invading another nation...and it's not so easy to ignore the will of the people now that they've got a taste for being able to protest and to get those protests publicized around the world in a matter of minutes.
Yes, there will always be those who lust after power, ever more power - but in the modern world, and in a way this is due to the horrors that we've all seen or read about over the 20th century - they lust instead after economic power, rather than hegemonic power. That's why you no longer see even attempts at empire-building by the great powers of today. I mean, sure, there's China and the Spratly Islands and a few like examples, but these are chump change compared to the empire-building of bygone generations.
It's a whole new world out there, Tom - and it's changing ever more rapidly. "That's the way it's always been" does not always mean "that's the way it always will be".
