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Is Europe Disintegrating?

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Re: Is Europe Disintegrating?

#81
post #7

You can't have short-term, mass migration without having something happen or change. We will see a huge change in European political landscape within the next few years. People have to slowly assimilate into a culture in order to allow for a gradual, peaceful change in that culture. Shocking these types of systems with any sort of migration is a recipient for instability. Please keep in mind that this isn't any sort…

The US takes in about a million legal immigrants per year [1], the EU took in 1.6 million immigrants from non EU countries in 2014 [2]. The US has a population of 320 million, and the EU has 508 million. So the immigration is about the same per capita. So I think it should be possible to deal with that. [1] https://www.dhs.gov/immigration-statistics/yearbook/2015/tab... [2[ http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-exp…

Where did those immigrants come from? What is their socio-economic background? Are they refugees, or perhaps tech workers? What about those coming to Europe?

Re: Is Europe Disintegrating?

#82
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see an overall trend of of authoritarianism and nationalism as a response to immigration and an increasingly changing world. There's also a pretty heavy streak of anti-intellectualism as voters were encouraged to fundamentally reject experts that gave (IMHO well-founded) warnings about the ill-effects of Brexit and Trump. In short: Nationalism in, Globalism out.

My own country, Canada, seems to be doing a good job, and I'm not sure but I think we have even higher immigration rates than Europe or the United States and we're still a fairly liberal, progressive and integrated society. I think our secret is selective immigration, we are much more selective than Europe in regards to who we let into the country and we don't have the illegal immigration issue on the scale that Amer…

Controlling for immigrants, hmm. Doesn't sound like a popular idea in europe or in the US in democratic circles.

Re: Is Europe Disintegrating?

#83
post #42

Interesting article. I do believe that the EU will collapse, and that it is only a matter of time. First of all, there is not a single instance in History where a common currency, such as the Euro, succeeded. It always has collapsed. Different people in France have developed about this exact subject. I believe that more and more people are in favor of existing the EU. In the case of France, the first thing that peopl…

Your house/building analogy is flawed because there are extremely significant rules/regulations about what your house can look like and what materials you can use to build it leveed by all sorts of levels of government as well as HOAs. Doubly so if you live in a historical neighborhood. And somehow people do manage to live in skyscrapers without flooding the first floor. I'm not sure if anyone ever attempted a curren…

[deleted]

Re: Is Europe Disintegrating?

#84
post #7

You can't have short-term, mass migration without having something happen or change. We will see a huge change in European political landscape within the next few years. People have to slowly assimilate into a culture in order to allow for a gradual, peaceful change in that culture. Shocking these types of systems with any sort of migration is a recipient for instability. Please keep in mind that this isn't any sort…

> You can't have short-term, mass migration without having something happen or change. I am generally confused by the claim of "mass migration". As this chart shows, EU migration of 2013 is below the rate of 2002 and is only now recovering from the 2008 economic crisis. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/... If there is some problem that mass migration causes, why didn't it happen back in 200…

Then why is Europe experiencing such a huge problem now and not then?

That's an oversimplified chart that doesn't mean anything for this discussion.

Re: Is Europe Disintegrating?

#85
post #42

Interesting article. I do believe that the EU will collapse, and that it is only a matter of time. First of all, there is not a single instance in History where a common currency, such as the Euro, succeeded. It always has collapsed. Different people in France have developed about this exact subject. I believe that more and more people are in favor of existing the EU. In the case of France, the first thing that peopl…

Your house/building analogy is flawed because there are extremely significant rules/regulations about what your house can look like and what materials you can use to build it leveed by all sorts of levels of government as well as HOAs. Doubly so if you live in a historical neighborhood. And somehow people do manage to live in skyscrapers without flooding the first floor. I'm not sure if anyone ever attempted a curren…

OK. I could start debating about HOAs and skyscrapers but I won't. I think people who read that metaphor understood what lays under it... Which is, the idea that you cannot take 28 countries who have a different History, different values, different interests, different language, different way of thinking, and ask them to all obey to the same rules and put them under the same constraints.

Re: Is Europe Disintegrating?

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about primary, but I think a big one is the EU forcing countries to meet a quota of "refugee" immigration. Poland for example is refusing to accept these immigrants and paying a pretty big fine for each one they turn away [1]. Other countries like France and Germany are buckling to the pressure from the EU and accepting them, and we've all seen how well that has worked out for them. So I think not having…

The interesting thing here that it's not "EU vs EU member countries" - members do come up with, and vote on ideas. It's not like evil EU parliament said that everyone has to take immigrants, so everyone now has to and that's it. The move came about because of the flood of immigrants coming to Italy and Greece, mostly - and serious concern that neither one of those two countries can deal with the problem on their own.…

> Yet in some media(particularly in the UK) it's portrayed as EU telling member countries what to do, without any notion that those countries also voted on this issue and agreed to it.

this is true, but the EU institution used its power to force through a proposal which several countries were extremely upset with.

this was the first real example of Qualified Majority Voting being used in a controversial way, resulting in a lot of people becoming upset... suddenly the EU could no longer be seen as an institution that works almost entirely on consensus

it certainly modified my views on whether or not I wanted the EU institutions gaining more power, or even retaining the ones they have at the moment

Re: Is Europe Disintegrating?

#87
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US takes in about a million legal immigrants per year [1], the EU took in 1.6 million immigrants from non EU countries in 2014 [2]. The US has a population of 320 million, and the EU has 508 million. So the immigration is about the same per capita. So I think it should be possible to deal with that. [1] https://www.dhs.gov/immigration-statistics/yearbook/2015/tab... [2[ http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-exp…

Where did those immigrants come from? What is their socio-economic background? Are they refugees, or perhaps tech workers? What about those coming to Europe?

Perfect questions.. and also Europe consists of many countries.. Are the immigrants evenly distributed between them? I doubt it.

Re: Is Europe Disintegrating?

#88
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not many, of the original EU founders only Sweden hasn't adopted euro. The other 6 out of 25 that are not using the euro are all ex communist countries. and other two (Monte negro and Kosovo) adopted euro without being part of EU.

what? Sweden joined in 1995. Denmark and the UK are examples of other EU states that were not communist that do not use the Euro

UK has never been EU. Sweden was among the founder states when Euro was born, not the original states forming EEC in 1957. Denmark is in ERM-II and its Krone has a EU controlled exchange rate against euro. It is possible to be outside euro, but not advisable, the main market for the east non-euro countries is the EU zone, if euro falls down, their fragile economies will follow.

Re: Is Europe Disintegrating?

#89
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're talking "what would work best for everyone in the world", then I kind of agree that many small "states" (or whatever) would perhaps be for the best, but that opportunity has passed with the existence of superstates like the US, China, India and Russia. In the world we currently exist, the only rational[1] thing to do is to amass as much power[2] as possible. There are upsides, though, e.g. the ability to div…

Germany alone has GDP larger than Russia. Other than the number of nuclear devices in unknown condition, what makes Russia a superstate?

> Other than the number of nuclear devices in unknown condition

Exactly that + Putin, I think.

(Plus they control a number of very important pipelines, etc. etc.)

Re: Is Europe Disintegrating?

#90
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not many, of the original EU founders only Sweden hasn't adopted euro. The other 6 out of 25 that are not using the euro are all ex communist countries. and other two (Monte negro and Kosovo) adopted euro without being part of EU.

So you agree that it is by no means mandatory? Also, Denmark?

No, I don't. All the non euro countries are working to be admitted, because going forward is the only way.

Brits and Dansk are crazy people, who cares what they do.

edit: all the non euro countries from the eastern block signed to adopt euro in the future.

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