I never said there should be unconditional help. While I don't think radical troika austerity is the way to go, the EU should demand the southern states reforms to make their economic structure more effective. Like I said a cuple of weeks ago, here in Spain we have a bunch of superfluous administrative decisions, an excess of civil servants, etc... if our own politicians aren't changing this, then the EU should demand it to be changed.

As I said in the post I quoted, giving up sovereignty is also important, and that, of course, includes southern countries.

It's not beneficial for any member state when another country, especially if it's a big one, has its economy crash. Spain and Italy aren't even in the bottom half of the list when it comes to looking at wealth and production... yet I think the EU should aim to reach a long term ideal where the standard of life is homogeneous among the whole continent. It's not about trying to make the Spanish or Italians as rich as the Scandinavians, but rather make sure that even the Bulgarians and Romanians can aim for that standard of life.

As Brexit suddenly starts to make sense, the anti-Brexxers scramble to justify their stance...

This sounds nice on paper, but in practice, harmonizing the living standard of Europe means a big decrease for countries like Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, but even for France.

Like... do you seriously think that a time when unemployment will be huge and large swaths of the population suffer big losses in wealth and living standard, even in Ger/NL/A/FL... is the moment when it makes sense to ask additional sacrifice from them? Do you seriously think that a time where a lot of people will be pissed off by the decline they had to endure is the right moment to ask them to give up national sovereignty?



Regarding the looming reemergence of the eurozone debt crisis: according to a study by the ECB, the median household net worth in Italy is about twice as high as in Germany, and also significantly higher than in the NL. So if Italy should run into trouble with refinancing, how about their state redistributes some of the wealth of its own people before asking the taxpayers in other countries to pay for it?

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Apr 10 2020 10:07am

Is it not Spain's own responsibility to manage their decision making, including the size of government and spending? It's a democracy, it's on the Spanish people to elect the right people that represent their views.

I just think there is a fundamental difference to what you think the EU should be, what it currently is, and what it was meant for. If you can't trust your own politicians so want the EU to tell you what to do, that is giving up 100% sovereignty which there is no mandate for even if you personally want that.

Northern countries are also not richer in all metrics. Mean wealth per capita is lower in Netherlands/Germany than in Spain/Italy.

Like I said: Italy, Spain and France are richer on a median net worth per capita basis, according to the ECB itself. Not entirely sure if this is also true for mean net worth per capita, too lazy to look it up.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Apr 10 2020 10:09am

Oops, that's what I meant yeah. Median wealth is higher.

Mean is about equal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_per_adult

Thanks. Yes, the tldr of all of this is the following:


The difference in net worth per capita is largely driven by the higher share of people living in their own house/condo in Spain/Italy/France, while the share of people living in rented apartments is much higher in Germany/the Netherlands.

The actual living standard in the northern, fiscally solid states like Germany or Netherlands is higher nonetheless, but this is largely fueled by a better job market, lower unemployment and cheaper rents - and these factors are what allows the northerners to keep renting instead of acquiring their own real estate property. Conversely, the high number of unemployed people who can keep living in their own houses or those of their parents/siblings is what has allowed Spain and Italy to get through the post-2008-crisis.

The big issue that's on the horizon is that the good job market and the cheap rents in Germany or the Netherlands might be gone post-corona. The jobs for obvious reasons, and the rents will explode even more than they already did over the last 5 or so years when the governments and the ECB are printing euros like crazy. Under these circumstances, I really dont see how it could be politically feasible for any government of the northern bloc to agree to eurobonds or other forms of institutionalized transfers to the south.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Apr 10 2020 10:44am

The UK now has more deaths per day than Italy or Spain at their peaks. We're only including hospital deaths in our figures so there is likely underreporting of deaths due to people dying in their homes or in care homes. We'll probably end up with the most deaths in Europe, which is absolutely unforgiveable being an island with forewarning about the outbreak.

Italy had no forewarning about COVID-19 and Schengen countries had open borders with Italy so were bound to have outbreaks, whereas we have the advantage of being an island. We didn't close our borders off or even bother testing/quaranteening people coming in from Italy or China early on in the outbreak. Mass gatherings like Cheltenham festival were still occurring while other countries were already on lockdown.

There's now over 9,000 dead because the government didn’t act quickly enough to curb Coronavirus and yet large sections of the media are prioritising their obsequious deification of Boris Johnson as a national hero simply because he is recovering from it.

why do you think that is? flawed / late government response, bad infrastructure, flippant attitude?