Why many Republicans hate Europe and lie about the situation there?

reply to post by EarthCitizen07


Where it currently is. Links already provided.

reply to post by Cabin


Provide us with some proof of your assertions. Links, facts etc.

reply to post by MsAphrodite


The problems with euro started with the bank collapse in US in the first-place... It brought a recession here too. None of the problems started with the welfare. That is BS...

Greece overlived their powers. They were spending extreme amount on public sector. When building infrastructure, like roads, they were paying six times the average of EU, while the country is relatively cheap to live at. The corruption was too much.

Spain went to crisis because of bank collapse. When the 2008 recession began, many lost their jobs there, as the country is dependent on tourism. Recession=less tourism & less construction. Many lost their jobs and could not pay loans. Thats when the Bankia bubble bursted.

Because of these countries Euro went weaker that is affecting the whole economy. Imagine if US was so dependent on Mexico for example, if Mexico had also US dollar as currency. US is doing things well, their system works. Yet Mexico f***s up. That also brings US economy into crisis, as their currency is weaker...

Italy´s economy is weaker because of Euro weakening, Spain housing bubble crash and Greece´s corruption. Their economy was quite stable, although as euro weakened investors invest less. Due to that, the country might not be able to pay back their old debt. Also corruption is a problem there.

No problems have come from the "welfare state", but banks mostly... The problems started with the 2008 recession, which led to some other regulation problems coming out in Greece and Spain, which lead to euro weakening, which affects every euro-country. Welfare states Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland are economically very stable currently. Their banks are among the strongest in the world, their budgets are under control. Their economies are more competitive than US one.

EU was every bit as caught up in the market schemes as the US. Follow the markets and you will learn. Do you know anything about the Libor scandal?

Libor scandal

Originally posted by MsAphrodite
European markets down as France slips into recession

Markets are down across Europe

Please do tell us more about how great things are in Europe.

So what? Unrestrained globalism has brought recession to all the developed countries. That is why we need overbloated welfare complex. If people had jobs only the invalids would get government payments. I am not putting these folks down from contempt, I am simply saying it how it is.

reply to post by MsAphrodite


We are not talking about market schemes, but the picture Republicans have painted of EU...

The Libor scandal happened in England, but it involved also US banks, not only local ones.

Markets are rigged everywhere. In some places, more. In some places, less. There are some greedy people everywhere.

Originally posted by Cabin
reply to post by MsAphrodite

 

Please look at the economic model, not social one...

Nordic model works well economically, the social safety network is very strong.

Economically the welfare-state there works well. Last year the budget was in positive balance. There was money left over... The economy is also more competitive than in US.

Think about the same system, but with strong immigration laws.

Scandinavia is now seeing what happens to it's model now that it has let every political "refugee" into it's system. Those immigrants are turning those countries into textbook cases of immigration and assimilation not working out. We will see how that grand experiment plays out in those countries. I fear the "good old days" are long past for Sweden, Denmark, Norway ect....

Originally posted by Cabin
reply to post by MsAphrodite

 

Why would one want to immigrate to such countries then? The reason why the immigration is happening in the first-place is the fact that a country is doing well... Poorer countries in EU (especially post-soviet ones) have nearly zero-immigration.

Ex communist countries have low immigration BUT they have lots of multinational corps flocking there to take advatage of relaxed laws and cheap labor. People leave those nations not because they got tired of communism, which collapsed anyway, but because they don't make enough money there and decide to move.

But they are now finding out it might be wise to say there and ride the corporate bandwagon.

I agree with a lot of your posts but you got it wrong here.

reply to post by pavil


I´m originally from Finland, although lived also in other Nordic countries and Baltics.

Leaving out the immigration laws, which is a social issue, not an economical one, the system is working very well and is likely to also in the future. They just need to strengthen their immigration policies.

These are countries are not perfect, but the direction taken is very good, especially in the current economically unstable world, where they have managed to stay out of the crisis and keep the economy stable.

The governments are overally more transparent and less corrupt. The decision taken have created a strong economical environment with strongly educated and healthy people. Their focus on environment, innovation, technology and sustainability has lead to taking the right direction towards future.

Their debts are under control and lower than in other Western Nations. Debt-to-gdp: Finland 53,5%, Denmark 45,3%, Sweden 38,6%, Norway 30,3%. Lots of wealth in Europe is going towards that direction currently due to safe and stable economy.

I would not say this model has lived its time. Currently it is doing better than any other European nation and US economically.

Recent Economist article on the matter:
The Nordic countries- The next supermodel

That is partly because the four main Nordics—Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland—are doing rather well. If you had to be reborn anywhere in the world as a person with average talents and income, you would want to be a Viking. The Nordics cluster at the top of league tables of everything from economic competitiveness to social health to happiness. They have avoided both southern Europe’s economic sclerosis and America’s extreme inequality. Development theorists have taken to calling successful modernisation “getting to Denmark”. Meanwhile a region that was once synonymous with do-it-yourself furniture and Abba has even become a cultural haven, home to “The Killing”, Noma and “Angry Birds”.

...

The Nordics can do so with more justification than most. The performance of all schools and hospitals is measured. Governments are forced to operate in the harsh light of day: Sweden gives everyone access to official records. Politicians are vilified if they get off their bicycles and into official limousines. The home of Skype and Spotify is also a leader in e-government: you can pay your taxes with an SMS message.

...

All the same, ever more countries should look to the Nordics. Western countries will hit the limits of big government, as Sweden did. When Angela Merkel worries that the European Union has 7% of the world’s population but half of its social spending, the Nordics are part of the answer. They also show that EU countries can be genuine economic successes. And as the Asians introduce welfare states they too will look to the Nordics: Norway is a particular focus of the Chinese.

...

The main lesson to learn from the Nordics is not ideological but practical. The state is popular not because it is big but because it works. A Swede pays tax more willingly than a Californian because he gets decent schools and free health care. The Nordics have pushed far-reaching reforms past unions and business lobbies. The proof is there. You can inject market mechanisms into the welfare state to sharpen its performance. You can put entitlement programmes on sound foundations to avoid beggaring future generations. But you need to be willing to root out corruption and vested interests. And you must be ready to abandon tired orthodoxies of the left and right and forage for good ideas across the political spectrum. The world will be studying the Nordic model for years to come.

reply to post by Cabin


Scandinavian countries are the classic liberal *tax and spend* type. Lots of taxes and lots of social welfare. Their economies are doing ok but nothing fantastic. They simply tax the hell out of everyone and recirculate the wealth.

America is low taxes and high spending. Southern europe the same thing.

Asian countries are thriving though because of relaxed laws, cheap labor and low taxation. Asian countries are more conservative than all the other western countries combined. free trade does miracles to job opportunity but it comes at a price of enviromental pollution and below average pay(despite the fact cost of living is lower as well). You need to work more to make a respectable living.

In america and europe jobs are fewer between but they are higher paying with more benefits. End result more people on unemployment and eventually on state welfare.

Global unrestrained and unballanced capitalism is the problem everywhere. Business decides everything and governments are pawns. Tariffs are a dirty word for the bilderbergers and stock market speculators. ECB, Federal Reserve and all the other central banks promote such globalism.

Originally posted by EarthCitizen07

Ex communist countries have low immigration BUT they have lots of multinational corps flocking there to take advatage of relaxed laws and cheap labor. People leave those nations not because they got tired of communism, which collapsed anyway, but because they don't make enough money there and decide to move.

But they are now finding out it might be wise to say there and ride the corporate bandwagon.

I agree with a lot of your posts but you got it wrong here.

I have lived in Estonia last 3 years and also some years when I was younger. My citizenship is Finnish though.

Multinational corps are not a problem yet. Only 20% of people work in companies with over 250 workers... The start-ups are very popular, many very promising ones thanks to success of Skype and Creative Mobile. These have inspired youth to start more businesses. Most well-known companies are local ones, except Swedish Banks and couple of other corps, but not many.

Laws are too relaxed though, letting take the profits out.

The salaries are much lower than in Western Europe, although mostly due to being a small nation, smaller market and having developed only 20 years after need to build everything up after soviets. And overally this country is doing better than other post-soviet nations

Immigration laws are quite tough.

The corporates are not problem for foreigners, but low salaries mostly + not easy to get licence to live here. This is also why many locals are leaving for other countries. Many-many people go to Finland to work due to very high salaries.

reply to post by Cabin


Immigration, markets, economic and social models are all tied together. You cannot separate them out from each other.

reply to post by Cabin


Romney was right! Obama is trying to turn us into a European socialist style Marxist banana republic. Even Obama's former classmate agrees

Barack Obama is my college classmate (Columbia University, class of '83). As Glenn Beck correctly predicted from day one, Obama is following the plan of Cloward & Piven, two professors at Columbia University. They outlined a plan to socialize America by overwhelming the system with government spending and entitlement demands. Add up the clues below. Taken individually they're alarming. Taken as a whole, it is a brilliant, Machiavellian game plan to turn the United States into a socialist/Marxist state with a permanent majority that desperately needs government for survival

www.reviewjournal.com...

I also have seen Richard Trumka hobknobbing with European Socialists pushing the global financial transaction fee/tax. They seem to have scrubbed it from the Net though.

Never mind, well good to know what's censored here. And majorly obscure too.

ok well Republicans don't hate Europe, but why does anyone have to endorse a socialist system? Greece anybody? Sounds like so much fun having riots in the streets and your money evaporate from your bank account.

Originally posted by ThirdEyeofHorus

ok well Republicans don't hate Europe, but why does anyone have to endorse a socialist system? Greece anybody? Sounds like so much fun having riots in the streets and your money evaporate from your bank account.

There are a few ways Governments steal money from its People.
I wonder how Useful that 800 Billion our Gov GAVE to the Bankers could have Helped Mr Joe Main Street.

Originally posted by EarthCitizen07
Europe WAS socialist and has transitioned into a liberal stronghold after privatising all state assets.

Europe has never been socialist, no country has.

Europe is just more liberal than America.

"Liberalism is not socialism and never will be" - Winston Churchill

Socialism is not social programs, welfare, government social safety net. That is liberalism.

Socialism is the workers ownership, and self control, of the means of production.

"A kind of spurious socialism has arisen…that…declares all state ownership…to be socialistic. Certainly, if the taking over by the state of the tobacco industry is socialistic, then Napoleon…must be numbered among the founders of socialism. The transformation…into state ownership, does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalistic machine, the state of the capitalists…The more it proceeds to take over productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The capitalist relation is not done away with, it is rather brought to a head." Frederik Engels, co-author of the Communist Manifesto, talking about liberalism masquerading as socialism.

"Socialism is the self-emancipation of the working class" Karl Marx

When the world's two great propaganda systems agree on some doctrine, it requires some intellectual effort to escape its shackles. One such doctrine is that the society created by Lenin and Trotsky and molded further by Stalin and his successors has some relation to socialism in some meaningful or historically accurate sense of this concept. In fact, if there is a relation, it is the relation of contradiction...

...Since its origins, socialism has meant the liberation of working people from exploitation. As the Marxist theoretician Anton Pannekoek observed, "this goal is not reached and cannot be reached by a new directing and governing class substituting itself for the bourgeoisie," but can only be "realized by the workers themselves being master over production." Mastery over production by the producers is the essence of socialism, and means to achieve this end have regularly been devised in periods of revolutionary struggle, against the bitter opposition of the traditional ruling classes and the 'revolutionary intellectuals' guided by the common principles of Leninism and Western managerialism, as adapted to changing circumstances. But the essential element of the socialist ideal remains: to convert the means of production into the property of freely associated producers* and thus the social property of people who have liberated themselves from exploitation by their master, as a fundamental step towards a broader realm of human freedom.

The Soviet Union Versus Socialism Noam Chomsky Our Generation, Spring/Summer, 1986

*

Free association (also called free association of producers or, as Marx often called it, a community of freely associated individuals) is a relationship among individuals where there is no state, social class or authority and private property of means of production. Once private property is abolished, individuals are no longer deprived of access to means of production enabling them to freely associate (without social constraint) to produce and reproduce their own conditions of existence and fulfill their individual and creative needs and desires. The term is used by anarchists and Marxists and is often one considered a defining feature of a fully developed communist society.

Free association (communism and anarchism)

Originally posted by Tw0Sides

Originally posted by ThirdEyeofHorus

ok well Republicans don't hate Europe, but why does anyone have to endorse a socialist system? Greece anybody? Sounds like so much fun having riots in the streets and your money evaporate from your bank account.

There are a few ways Governments steal money from its People.
I wonder how Useful that 800 Billion our Gov GAVE to the Bankers could have Helped Mr Joe Main Street.

Oh absolutely! The current admin gave Stimulus money to bail out AIG which involved Goldman Sachs. I was absolutely not for the bailouts. But of course even though the bailout started in the Bush admin, the current admin used the Stimulus for other things besides, such as the HITECH Act, that is upgrades to IT systems to handle electronic medical health records(as a preliminary for the Obamacare database), Common Core Standards in the schools, and SIECUS funds to promote sex ed programs in kindergarten.

Other than the socialist aspect of things, Europe can be quite interesting and amazing. I love the buildings and the architecture, art, exotic language, cuisine, etc.
Mediterranean style is wonderful and idyllic. I will give liberals that, that they appreciate this cultural expression. I think however, there may be some romanticization of Europeans in general. But they are people just like everywhere else. I once saw some European tourists try to pass themselves off as hotel guests so they could get the dinner buffet on the house.
On the other hand, a hotel café barista tried to cheat me by giving me the wrong change. He just figured I didn't know how to count the currency.

Originally posted by Cabin
Why many Republicans hate Europe and lie about the situation there?

Ignorance and envy. They're jealous of Europe's freedoms and the benefits of her superior socio-economic policies.

reply to post by Cabin


The social/economic model works well there..... I am not contesting that. But the reason it has worked so well is that everybody there has bought into the system without becoming a bunch of freeloaders waiting for handouts. The recent immigrants there are not of the same mindset, they want free stuff and don't want to contribute to maintaining the system. That's something new, let alone the religion and lack of integration. The Nordic model works well when everyone is working towards making things better. We will see how it works with 6% of the population not buying in to the whole premise.

Originally posted by jonnywhite
Republicans believe that if someone else offers you too much help it will stun your development as an independent minded person. This means that instead of developing the skills necessary to exist on your own, you'll either develop them slower or you'll not develop them at all.

This is hilarious, as being a Republican is the one of the surest ways to stunt your development as an independent minded person.