41–50 of 154 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wasn't the problem of countries like Greece and Italy corruption?
Italy and Greece have always had corruption. But they didn't always have recession.
I thought it was going to be about Britain. They have been drivning towards the abyss in the last decades. I used to live in London. The difference in public infrastructure and company facilities between the UK and Northern Europe is quite staggering. Now, add the “Ever shrinking Britain” (Scotland leaving after Brexit…, Northern Ireland more part of EU/Ireland than Britain in the future?) to the events and it makes…
The solution should be to improve the competitiveness of Italian exports on the global market, which will serve as the foundation for economic growth. The article states this fairly plainly, and I agree. However, I don't think a government-led technological push, which the article advocates, is the solution to this.
Instead, the government should increase its spending on public infrastructure, while continuing to make structural reforms that allow businesses to organically diversify into more profitable areas. For all this article's talk about Italian labor deregulation, it's still very expensive to both grow and reduce labor in Italy. This is worsened by high corporate and individual taxes, which both depress demand and discourage business expansion. A middle class tax-cut, which worked well in Germany's "economic miracle," would help alleviate this.
And finally, Italy has major regional differences in wealth and productivity. The south of Italy is much poorer and much less productive, the result of years of subsidies that have prevented industry from sustaining private growth. Infrastructure improvements there, along with a reduction of crime, and the ever-present bogeyman of political corruption, would help tremendously, along with an overhaul of the redistributive system to encourage productivity and economic growth.
The Eurozone was never intended to do the damage it has done to PIGS economies but it has. What is worse, is that it has unquestionably been of benefit to Germany, which has one of the strongest hands in shaping the future of the EU. If a macroeconomist had sat down to devise a currency that suffocated Italy, Portugal, Greece and Spain - export driven economies (remember that tourism is an export as you have to buy t…
The logical conclusion of most of these arguments seems to be that the US should have floating currencies between the states, to stop unfairly benefiting the few net productive export states?
Including investment in education, transport of all kinds, 'going green' (maybe even large new-generation clean-nukes), and also dangling carrots in front of RnD / upgrades likely to produce positive economic impacts.
Not mentioned, since the focus on European governments probably means universal healthcare, is universal healthcare as public infrastructure. That too would be a useful structural improvement and serve to reduce economic friction while improving worker productivity.
The Eurozone was never intended to do the damage it has done to PIGS economies but it has. What is worse, is that it has unquestionably been of benefit to Germany, which has one of the strongest hands in shaping the future of the EU. If a macroeconomist had sat down to devise a currency that suffocated Italy, Portugal, Greece and Spain - export driven economies (remember that tourism is an export as you have to buy t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my opinion the long term goal is to transition the EU (over the course of multiple human generations) into a single nation, similar to the way the United States operates. In that case, the conditions you described are an expected part of the process. In the US the states and local municipalities have different economic situations, different taxes, etc. And if our states broke off into 50 currencies, some would ben…
Your thoughts are on point imo. One must never forget the context of how the EU and it’s main political objective came to be: the culmination of centuries of small scale wars and two world wars within 30 years of each other. Juncker - who is the only European politician who signed the Maastricht treaty in ‘92 still active today - reiterated at a 20 year commemoration mid January this year that for him, the European F…
The Eurozone was never intended to do the damage it has done to PIGS economies but it has. What is worse, is that it has unquestionably been of benefit to Germany, which has one of the strongest hands in shaping the future of the EU. If a macroeconomist had sat down to devise a currency that suffocated Italy, Portugal, Greece and Spain - export driven economies (remember that tourism is an export as you have to buy t…
- Economic homogeneity across an entire nation state can only reasonably expected with small countries
Well, that is not true and probably not an issue. Every country has automatic mechanisms of wealth redistribution across its regions: California feeds most of the central US states. But the EU is a monetary unit without a proper redistribution mechanism between its regions: it's hard to convince the Germans that their tax money should subsidize Italy because it's part of a national unity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wasn't the problem of countries like Greece and Italy corruption?
Austerity didn't help. The R&R paper that they based the austerity on turned out to not be properly peer reviewed, and surprise, had a some arthmetic errors that when fixed contradict the original result.
That seems to be very stupid "mistake" from some very important economists.
The Eurozone was never intended to do the damage it has done to PIGS economies but it has. What is worse, is that it has unquestionably been of benefit to Germany, which has one of the strongest hands in shaping the future of the EU. If a macroeconomist had sat down to devise a currency that suffocated Italy, Portugal, Greece and Spain - export driven economies (remember that tourism is an export as you have to buy t…
Wasn't the problem of countries like Greece and Italy corruption?
Wow, what a relief! I thought we Italian were the problem!
I mean, we voted Democrazia Cristiana for decades, just because it had Cristiana in the name, and which party will do any effort to be re-elected when they know in advance they will be re-elected anyway?
I mean, I always heard bad things about corruption, but the corrupted politicians were elected by us, and corrupted by us as well!
I heard about "voto di scambio" (litteraly: exchange vote) many many times, but I never got it completely: you are granted anonimity in the voting booth, and you vote for a mafioso because you made a promise to him... You have the possibility to counter mafia's power and you vote for him! Are you an idiot or what?
And heroic judges payed with their life the effort to grant us a better country, and in the end they got to subvert that corrupted mess that the First Repubblica was, and we did end up voting for Berlusconi?!? A disgusting divorced guy, mingling with young prostitutes, and calling himself "Anointed of the Lord"?
It's true that the rest of the political class didn't make any effort to attract votes from non extremists. The few times Berlusconi was not governing, the only top priority was about homosexual rights. Nothing personally against it, but in such a catholic nation like Italy you cannot expect it to pass smoothly, and don't you think the whole nation would need some thought about economy and legality?
I don't like the two current top clowns, but I understand they are the "least worse".
And you want to blame Euro?