As time goes on, fewer people are alive that predate the EU and more people will perceive it as a lasting institution.
Additionally, we've now seen the EU survive the departure of a major economic power (the UK). More people are certainly willing to believe in the stability of the EU now.
Another major currency is the Yuan, and some countries may be as willing to trade in Yuan to improve relations with China, so perhaps we won't see one single reserve currency but two spheres of influence with most countries maintaining reserves of multiple currencies.
Interestingly, there seems to be more good will and amiable vibes between EU nationalities than within the US even. Even being enemies for a thousand years, I don't doubt that Swedish and Danish men would go to war for one another, or French and German. It's complicated yes, but the continent is more unified in spirit than it may seem to an outsider.
German here: I'd go to war (and likely will, with how it's looking currently) for any country that shares our values and is an ally or friend, that's being attacked by an evil force such as russia. And that of course includes my french brothers to the west.
80 years ago we were the bad guys, and far more brave people than me, from other countries, stepped up to curb the evil. This time us Germans need to be on the right side.
Thanks German brother :) I think our main issue in Europe is the lack of a common language. It makes it harder to build strong ties and realize how close our values are.
Agreed, there is always this little story to remind us of our unity - at least from the perspective of the draftees/workers back in ww1, where everyone was basically forced to fight each other by the elites
I think you’ll find that threats of violence (which is what your comment is) need to be much more unhinged to be effective deterrents. Remember you’re warning off barbarians (eg us Americans or the Russians), not civilized folk.
If he is, it won't be for very long. The most visible merc was a retired US colonel, he ran off home within weeks, got drunk on the War on The Rocks podcast and revealed the corruption and depravity of the "good guys."
Freedom of speech, democratically elected representatives, protection of minorities, religious freedom, to name a few.
I can already hear people storming out of the woods, ready to write how the EU itself is undemocratic, or how free speech isn't real in western European countries. I disagree with you.
Well, indeed, freedom of speech in the EU isn't freedom of speech as only a certain type of speech is allowed. Conveniently weakly defined "hate speech laws" (even in private conversations!) allow easy political suppression. Or just lawfare through defamation, which is happening in Germany at the moment (4,400 defamation cases by politicians, last year).
Regarding the EU, the only elected representatives don't have the right to choose which laws they will vote for. If it was in a soviet country no one would call it a democracy.
I know both people from Kiev, and people who fled russia in late 2022. I don't care for your pro-russian worldview. And I know you do it on purpose, but it's "Ukraine", and not "the Ukraine". It's a sovereign state, not a russian oblast like you have been taught by the Kremlin.
Kremlin mouth-peaces can express their bullshit worldview outside of the EU, and they do that quite liberally. It's up to society to ignore them, ultimately it's everybodys own decision. But if you come somewhere, spread propaganda while being paid by adversaries, then you aren't welcome. I applaud the EUs sanctioning of these individuals, and I don't really care to hear from pro-russian folks why that's a bad thing in their eyes.
I don't like "Kremlin influencers", that said the Streisand effect is real, and the slope is very slippery from here to include other people along the ride.
Will we also sanction Elon Musk and other pro-MAGA individuals after the current rift between the EU and the US? Why not include Chinese ones, too, who are actually quite active? Also, far-right influencers? Far-left? They are nazis/communists after all!
Or, if you are German, consider that saying something offensive about a politician is "attacking democracy" and sentence people to prison because of untasteful memes.[0]
Of course, all of this can be justified and most undemocratic/less democratic countries get along with those rules, but at least let's stop pandering to "values" that have become pious words without any real meaning.
I find the hate speech laws good. They enforce a certain decency in communication, something that MAGAs lack.
>Will we also sanction Elon Musk and other pro-MAGA individuals after the current rift between the EU and the US? Why not include Chinese ones, too, who are actually quite active? Also, far-right influencers? Far-left? They are nazis/communists after all!
Fantastic idea, unironically. But IMHO the far left is way less of a threat to humanity than the far right is right now. But extreme political fringes are never good.
>I don't like "Kremlin influencers", that said the Streisand effect is real, and the slope is very slippery from here to include other people along the ride.
The rules for not being sanctioned are easy to follow. Don't be a russian asset - that's basically it. Shouldn't be so hard.
So you defend freedom of speech, but not for the people and the ideas you don't like. That's not freedom of speech, and you have a lot in common with Putinists on that matter.
They also sanction who they perceive as western assets, by the way. And see nothing wrong sending dissidents to jail with similar vague hate speech laws that we have in the EU [0]. In fact, they even eradicated their far-right! [1] Navalny was prosecuted because he was "extremist", for instance.
So how do you feel being in such ideological proximity with Putin's Russia? Just like others, you enjoy gloating about feel-good "values" but don't believe at all in them, which would require some discomfort and radicality.
Wake me up when we jail people for holding up blank signs [0] or for demonstrating for gay rights. You try so hard to paint the EU in the same unhinged way as the Kremlin, but all your comparisons don't survive scrutiny. I can go and stand in front of the Bundestag saying "I hate Friedrich Merz" and nothing will happen, in fact people will probably want selfies with me and the sign. Try that in Russia and see how fast you have OMON splintering your kneecaps.
As for your other points: Democracy must not fall to the Paradox of tolerance.
You are just arguing that Russia is applying censorship in a more harsher way than the EU, but the underlying negation of your self-proclaimed "values" is the same.
You cherry-pick an example: posting online or holding a sign with "Merz is a liar" would expose you to a lawsuit and jail. Just like saying the N word in private in France. You get jailed for crimes without a victim.
Each territory has forbidden speech: in many countries, for instance holocaust revisionism is forbidden and punished with jail sentences. It's tolerated to justify the murder of Palestinians, including in national media, of Jews, it isn't.
It's funny that you mention protests: French military police commonly kills or cripples protesters with semi-lethal weapons, and the government uses similar tactics as the Russian one to justify crackdowns (forbidding problematic protests).
The issue with such thinking is that, just as the frog in the kettle, the water will heat up and heat up as politicians increase their use of this very convenient tool, just like Putin did. Singapore is an advanced version of this, where problematic criticism of the government action is met with diffamation lawfare.
You can see this happening in Germany, with the drastic increase in lawsuits against the AFD, or diffamation against politicians. Same with the UK, which before was good example of spotless freedom of speech.
By the way, I hate to mention this but since you are German, I'd like to remind you that the Weimar republic had stringent hate speech laws and censorship. It didn't work at all. When will you start to learn?
I have many moral problems with that scenario. I used to live in the US a long time ago. The US is sick; there's a mad king at the top who doesn't have the well being of the nation in his interest, and he is driving the world towards war with every passing day while dividing his own people. War with the US isn't a clear cut "good vs evil" situation as the EU vs russia would be, it would be a utter tragedy, not wanted by neither the populace of the EU, nor the US.
That said, yes, I would defend Europe against the US, even though I think that fight would be short, deadly and decisive if it really came down to it.
What a fucked up world we live in, just because idiots voted for a convicted felon.
> War with the US isn't a clear cut "good vs evil" situation as the EU vs russia would be
I don't think EU vs Russia would be a "good vs evil" situation. Russia/US seem pretty similar to me, dictatorship/propaganda with a majority of the population being regular people not in favor of any war, and 30% of indoctrinated people.
You seem to have very little contact to Russians living in Russia or Germany. Their version of "not in favor of any war" is a very strange one – it's more a stance of indifference than disfavor.
I don't know why you believe that a decades-long strict dictatorship like Russia has more democratic support for its "evil" government than a country whose leader was elected just 1 year ago with approximately 50% of the vote.
Russians are lining up to go to war under the promise of money, around 30k a month last time I checked. Americans not so much, in particular not against Europeans. It's different in my view.
Americans don't need money to fight. I was paid $0 with the YPG and had to bankroll my own time. Lots of Americans there. I met a lot of them that didn't even really give a shit about the sides of the war, they just needed to fight something. We're a savage people.
Which historically has worked more for us, than against us.
French here: If we can send French soldiers to fight and die in Mali for years, only to end up with a military junta that prefers the Russian Africakorps, I think we're ready to send our soldiers to die defending a European ally.
Plus, with global warming, this may be the last chance for the Alpine hunters to shine.
I think the people on this continent have a lot more in common than they might first realize. We certainly have our own cultures and language but beyond that I think we all share a certain European heritage, core culture and values.
There's a certain stigma especially in Germany caused by the WW2 and the the leadership has been complacent to rely on Bretton Woods agreement. But as we're seeing now the geopolitics are doing a 180 degree turnaround and given these circumstances I expect sooner or later Europe will collectively understand the utmost importance to com together and to regrow and redevelop the military to support independence and not having to bow down to any master in the East or int he West.
The great minds that - after WWII - built the new Europe had in mind that there should never be war again, which is best realized when former enemies become friends and closer bonds are established at multiple levels: politically, economically, culturally (unions, trading exchanges, visits/open borders/teaching common European values in schools).
There is a strong political and cultural foundation in geographic Europe for the political EU:
some exemplary giants/EU co-architects:
Integrated Italy into Western Europe
Advocated supranational institutions
Paul-Henri Spaak
institutional designer, key role in the Treaties of Rome (1957)
helped design the European Economic Community (EEC)
Advocated supranational institutions
Walter Hallstein
1st President, European Commission.
Built EC into powerful, independent institution
Championed the supremacy of European law
Altiero Spinelli
Wrote the Ventotene Manifesto (while imprisoned by Fascists)
Advocated a federal Europe
Winston Churchill
A paradoxical but crucial figure: called for a “United States of Europe” (1946 speech)
Influenced Europe’s post-war direction despite UK distance
François Mitterrand
Drove Maastricht Treaty with Helmut Kohl
Pushed for the €
Symbolized Franco-German partnership
Helmut Kohl
Franco-German friendship exemplified by Mitterand-Kohl personal friendship
"Architect of modern Europe"
German reunification
Key figure behind the EU and monetary union
It's ironic that the name "U.S.E." (United States of Europe) was first proposed by a Brit, alas a smart one, and I'm sure Sir Winston Churchill would have had the oratory abilities to convince his countrymen that his idea had merit, but he did not live to see it. The Federation of Europe or United States of Europe is the logical end-point of the joint vision of all these foundational leaders.
>Franco-German friendship exemplified by Mitterand-Kohl personal friendship
Ironic to call this a "friendship", when Mitterand along with Thatcher were working behind the scenes with the soviets to sabotage and stop Kohl's reunification of Germany. It was anything but a friendship, but more of a concession.
Politics is full of such examples that look friendly to the public, but hide a lot of sabotage and back stabbings in the background. In fact, the later is the norm in politics.
Not when the competition is a zero sum game over critical resources. This isn't a game of table tennis, it's about competition over dominance.
Friendships are just the media facing image. In reality, if a country can gain an advantage over the other they see as an economic adversary, and has the means to enforce it without repercussions, they'll do it. Then they'll meet up in front of the media, shake hands and gaslight the peasants on how this benefits everyone.
The true friendships in between countries are made over decades/centuries over shared blood, heritage and culture because humans are tribalistic and have own group preference. Forcing friendships via political declarations doesn't work.
Let me explain with examples. If Portugal would get attacked a lot of Spaniards would go fight for Portugal voluntarily because of shared history and culture. But if Bulgaria would get attacked, most Spaniards wouldn't volunteer to go die for Bulgaria, even though they're both EU members.
Austria kept torpedoing Romania's Schengen entry just to extract some monetary concession, not exactly something friends do. So if Austria were to hypothetically get attacked tomorrow, a lot of Romanians would cheer rather than want to go help since karma is a bitch. These kinds of petty squabbles are the norm in the EU.
People aren't gonna want to die or sacrifice themselves for the EU flag since it's an artificial construct, kind of like the corporation they work for, not something they feel a sense of belonging and allegiance to like a specific group of people.
The lowest common denominator, racial ("shared blood", "tribal", and also "culture" in this context) perspective is exceeded time and again, and the ones that do exceed it are the most free, most prosperous, and most powerful - NATO being a clear example, but also all the Pacific alliances around China. The poorest and least safe are the ones that follow your advice, places like Somalia. Or look at the US and NATO ten years ago compared to today.
Most countries can be subdivided seemingly infinitely into groups that could find reasons to fight each other. But humans have other common 'denominators', much higher than that. Spain, the UK, the US, France, China, and many others are unions of subcultures.
You can see so much better in the world. Instead of insisting that evil is inevitable - making you a victim of it - you can work for good. Our ancestors have had great success and made it easy for us to follow.
>the ones that do exceed it are the most free, most prosperous, and most powerful - NATO being a clear example
You're beating it around the bush. Tell me how many Spaniard would voluntarily sign up to die to defend Bulgaria if shit were to hit the fan.
THat's how you measure if strength of alliances stand the test of time, or if they're just worthless pieces of paper from a bygone era of peace and prosperity wrapped up in fake nationalism under a made up flag.
> Or look at the US and NATO ten years ago compared to today.
10 years ago a lot more people in US and NATO countries could more easily afford a house and get a decent paying job with a higher purchasing power. What were you trying to prove with this?
> Tell me how many Spaniard would voluntarily sign up to die to defend Bulgaria if shit were to hit the fan.
A lot and the evidence is overwhelming. Look at wars all over the world. Russians even sign up to defend Syria, for example. Americans sign up for wars all over the world, which have always been fought with allies - WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Iraq again, Afghanistan. Georgia helped the US in Iraq, along with many others. NATO fought alongside the US in Afghanistan.
> What were you trying to prove with this?
It's evidence of my claim; see the GP.
What's amazing is, despite being handed these wonderful things that made peace and prosperity, and being born and raised in them, people are programmed to say it can't work. Those people are the problem. Instead of opposing them or quitting, get to work - it almost couldn't be easier; someone else has already solved the problem. Compare the people who had to develop the Enlightenment, human rights, the post-WWII international order.
> bygone era of peace and prosperity
The era is what you make it - you are responsible for it. What are you making it, including with these words? Why aren't you solving the problems? The people who built the post-WWII international order, based on human rights, had just been through WWI and were fighting WWII - hardly an era of peace and prosperity - and look what they did.
The major benefit of the US Dollar is that you can do things with it. Between export controls, currency controls, laws on foreign ownership, etc, china can pay me all the RMB in the world. I still can’t do a whole lot with it.
This is part of the same reason many people don't use Bitcoin- you can't actually do much with it because retailers don't accept it. But China is definitely thinking about how to fix that problem, and soon they will make it possible to pay directly in CNY in other countries. Once you can buy things with it, the CNY is attractive from a practical perspective. A lot of your stuff is already manufactured in China, once/if using CNY makes your purchase easier then it's going to gain ground on the USD.
Retailers don't accept crypto not because of the technology so much as the fact it is a capital gains event every time you transfer crypto, which means both the buyer and seller are now forced to keep a log of their gains/losses against the dollar everytime they buy a pack of gum.
Obviously that's extremely impractical and at best you're hiring a 3rd party to streamline that for you. It's a clusterfuck at tax time (edit: stable coin doesn't help here -- you must still report gains on stable coins as it is still a $0 capital gain which is different than no capital gain).
Retailers already dealing with capital gains and with high chargeback rates love it though. For instance, it's usually the cheapest same-day clearing way to buy precious metals online since credit card rates are high (chargeback), ACH takes days, and wires tend to cost $15+ with many banks.
Reticence among retailers predates the capital gains policy of the IRS. The volatility of Bitcoin's value induces excessive exchange risk. However, we don't see capital gains nor exchange risk with stablecoins. I assume that network effects are insufficient to drive retail demand for stablecoin support.
> Reticence among retailers predates the capital gains policy of the IRS. The volatility of Bitcoin's value induces excessive
The IRS policy is irrelevant, the law always required payment of capital gains. It's consistently been the hardest thing about accepting Bitcoin for payment.
The volatility of bitcoin is why there is capital gains on every trade, it has nothing to do with the IRS's new crypto policy.
If a bitcoin rises or falls by a calculable amount between when you received it vs when you spent a portion of it, you have gains/losses. That has always been required by the IRS to be reported, whether that is a BTC or chicken feathers.
You do not need to report a $0 capital gain when using stablecoins. Sure crypto can seem like the wild West with CPAs having different opinions on what little official guidance is out there but that one is simply absurd.
Funnily enough you can use Bitcoin at most merchants that use a Square PoS device, which is like 25% of merchants in the US. It just takes time for folks to change their behaviors. And why would they, if they're getting X% cashback on all purchases using their credit cards?
We've witness deflationary forces in computer hw for decades and no one is holding off their purchases. Time is scarce and it ultimately forces consumption because otherwise, what would you be saving for?
Don't need Econ 101 to understand this basic reality.
Well there is a difference between people not buying anything at all and being significantly less than they are now. Consumer goods and services is only the tip of the iceberg.
How much do you think debt would cost and how easy would it be for businesses to get credit?
Combining a deflationary currency with a growing (or at least non static) economy is bad a everyone who has a basic understanding of history prior to the 1930s can see that. Something like bitcoin would be even much worse than the gold standard.
You're forcing business to produce something valuable in real terms instead of nominal terms and you're making that calculation easier to do for economic actors because the measuring stick is now controlled by an algorithm as opposed to charlatans.
Having less of that garbage fiat short-termism is a good thing for society.
Yet having more of endless boom and bust cycles with major economic depressions lasting for years (outcomes of the gold standard was a good idea).
> You're forcing business to produce something valuable in real terms instead of nominal terms
I don't quite understand what does that mean. Pricing goods in oil or grain? (coincidentally either of which would function better as a currency than bitcoin).
Computer hardware isn't trying to be currency. Bitcoin was supposed to be, but hardly anyone who uses Bitcoin these days is using it to buy things--it's used as a store of value or a speculative asset, not a means of transaction.
Paying Chinese companies in RMB isn’t the issue. If I sell something and a Chinese company pays me in RMB, I can’t really do anything with a billion yuan. Can’t buy a company (limitations on foreign ownership), can’t buy property (99-year lease that can be canceled on the whims of the government at any time), can’t buy Chinese debt (terrible yields, very small foreign market access, incredibly opaque laws and accounting), and nobody else in the world wants it so I have no choice but to sell it back to China in exchange for a real currency at whatever horseshit exchange rate they’ve concocted.
It’s worthless money and I don’t see anything out of china that would cause that to change.
Because if I am running a business I just want to be paid in money that I can pay my bills in. I don't want to have the additional task of managing rare earths and electronics inventory. That's not "a bit more work." It's running an entirely different business that I don't know how to run.
I think OP's point is that a "99 year lease" isn't worth very much without a firm guarantee that the least in fact lasts that long. I don't really have an opinion on land leases in the PRC, but it doesn't seem facially unreasonable to suspect that a foreign lease holder's land value wouldn't be a priority for China's leadership during an economic crisis.
This is on full display with the US's Venezuela problem: no one believes the US will hold it, so oil companies don't want to invest because last time exactly this happened - they had everything seized.
Imagine if you'd invested in lithium mining in Afghanistan 15 years ago: you'd likely have paid a lot, made little money, lost employees and then lost it to the Taliban.
I guess this is naive, but can't you use it to buy (or sell it to people who want to buy) Chinese products? It's not like China doesn't have an enormous amount and range of products on offer.
This is actually an interesting point. Wouldn't it be bad for China if the US isn't the reserve currency/the RMB gains a lot more in value relative to the USD? It would proportionally, negatively, affect their export profits, no?
Germany did relatively fine though? Despite the German mark being the second largest reserve currency and their economy being heavily reliant on exports.
Mostly it’s just what I’ve read, I don’t know if it’s true, which is why I asked. If you get less yuan-people-hours per dollar (and materials cost increase for the same reason), you would get less per dollar than previously, I think?
Eventually you hit an inflection point where it’s cheaper to manufacture elsewhere. Which is why China is working Africa, huh?
I mean, you can buy goods and services within china, and you can sell those goods and services. The “horseshit” exchange rate can’t deviate too far from the real value or it incentivises laundering too much. The exchange rate isn’t _that_ bad as a result.
It's more of a payment processor issue than a device issue.
If you are in a country or area with a large Chinese population, you can usually pay easily in RMB with Alipay.
If you use Visa and Mastercard, you are subject to US regulations, sanctions, and embargoes. Many alternative payment processor exist, PIX in Brazil, UPI in India, etc.
There are several systems in the EU: Wero, Bizum, BLIK
It is urgent that Europeans coordinate to ensure the interoperability of these systems and reduce the influence of Visa and Mastercard.
In the event of conflict, this will be the first service to be cut in order to disrupt European countries.
An integrated European payments system should be very high up on the priorities list of the European Commision. I believe every EU country already has its own version of a QR code payment, I don't know why can't they connect "easily" connect them.
It's complicated, there are two types of applications and networks.
1) Direct payment systems via mobile phone, generally designed initially for payments between friends and family. They have been set up in several countries by neobanks, generally based on the Mastercard network (very common among neobanks). A Latvian neobank may expand into the Baltic countries, but is unlikely to succeed in Portugal. These systems are not interoperable with each other.
2) Systems promoted by banking networks, such as Bizum in Spain, which has expanded to the Iberian Peninsula, and Wero, which is supported by BNP Paribas (France, Belgium, Germany). These networks are independent of Mastercard, Visa, etc., but they seek to favor their members and do not seek to become widespread.
Discussions have been ongoing for years to achieve interoperability. The idea for the moment was to let the market structure itself naturally without too much intervention, other than to say “we must move towards interoperability at the European level.” This approach has worked very well for bank transfers, which have become simple, fast, and relatively secure, but it has taken a long time (Europe, consensus, etc.).
You can buy with RMB in a lot of countries outside the West, if they have integrated UnionPay or AliPay into their payment processors.
But more importantly, you can buy a lot of stuff from the factory of the world. Which is why a lot of countries don't mind holding the RMB. Just not enough for it to become a reserve currency, and certainly no one wants it to become the petroyuan.
The euro has been gaining ground ever since the financial crisis in terms of share of currencies held in global foreign exchange reserves. Less than a third of the US dollar, but still a distant second. Nevertheless, I'm still concerned about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and how intertwined the EU economy is to countries which it has shaky relations with at best.
the yuan has major currency controls. there is a real threat of capital flight destabilization if policies change which is why nobody sane would peg tp the yuan as it is now. that said, countries definitely make bad choices.
I'm afraid you may have misunderstood. The SDR is a time-varying basket of USD, EUR, RMB, GBP, and JPY. At time of writing Afghanis are not part of SDR, even though Afghanistan owns some SDR.
Thanks for the clarification. The hyperlink you gave was to the general IMF website and did not contain an in-page search hit for "RMB," "Renminbi," or "China". Where can one find the size of the RMB allocation?
Presumably the IMF is not bound by the typical RMB capital controls that limit its utility for commercial entities and individuals.
I found that information at the top of the linked page, which I just checked again was indeed the page about SDRs. Maybe they're doing some stupid redirection that's browser dependent.
I partially agree. But the EU is in a pretty unstable state as incomplete government structure over a collection of peers. "Unstable" does not mean it's going to fall apart. It means it's going to fall apart or coalesce into a single thing (a new country). Or maybe a little of both (a new country with some fringe members leaving).
It might not be in 5 or 10 years but it's inevitable. It's not going to operate like this for 50, 100 years.
Just run a mental simulation of WW2 playing out except Europe had the EU.
So while I agree the EU is becoming more an more normal and important to the average citizen, there will come a time when it has to either solidify further or break apart, and I think it's basically a crapshoot to predict how that will go now when we have basically zero info.
I wouldn't describe integrating further to the point of becoming more like the US as "unstable". And that's the most likely outcome, which should make the EU more trustworthy as a partner, not less.
I would argue that not only is it not the most likely outcome, but that it's practically impossible. When the colonies united they all spoke the same language and shared the same culture as the descendants of recent British colonists. Furthermore, they had just fought and won a war of independence together. The first presidential election was unanimous with every single electoral vote backing George Washington. Do you think an EU presidential election would play out like that?
Also, when the colonies united, the government they agreed on was by today's standards extremely small and decentralized and there was absolutely no welfare state. Revenue was mostly from tariffs on imports with zero income tax. Merging modern European governments would be a massive undertaking in comparison. And the wealth levels between countries are so lopsided that any such merger would mean massive transfer payments out of the rich countries to the poor. And what about tax rates? Low tax countries will not like this one bit. When the US colonies merged under the constitution, you could very truthfully go to the average citizen of any colony and say "basically you won't even notice any changes." Whereas for the EU, you have to say to the voters "your taxes will go up and we will now be sending $100 billion Euros per year to people in other countries."
Sure the contexts are different, and you can also look at the federalization of German states as yet another example with a different context, but not all of the factors are unfavorable. For example, the countries of the EU are already more integrated than the colonies were. Plus it's a very different time now, we've had the UN for a long time already, etc.
Also, I was surprised to learn how heterogenous the different regions of the US were from the very beginning, in origin, character and motivations. The Puritans, Quakers, Cavaliers, French nobles and traders etc.
Just re taxes: why would anything need to change on that front in the event of federalization of the EU? There already is a union, it already has money, money already flows from richer countries to poorer countries—what would federalization change?
And until the first entitlement programs during the New Deal it made no difference because it was entirely the poor state's problem. Only after the country had been a political union for over 150 years did they have any sort of welfare transfer program. If New Yorkers had been told in the late 1700s that joining the union would mean taxes coming out of their paycheck to send money to people in Georgia, they never would have joined.
I meet a lot of people do enjoy their nation's sovereignty especially as a shield from EU's poor and unpopular decisions that they don't get a vote in, and see the common currency and freedom of movement as just the right amount of integration. Making english an official language would be even better IMHO, but that's about it. I enjoy different countries having different politics and takes on topics, as it would be shit if all EU was a just a homogenous groupthink.
And I've never met anyone who thought the likes of Ursula and Kaja should be trusted with even more power and control over nations.
>I wouldn't describe integrating further to the point of becoming more like the US as "unstable".
More like the US, as-in a country? So also more like Germany, China, South Africa, etc. You are making a false equivalence - being like the US in one extremely non-US specific way does not mean you must be like the US in every other way.
I'm not sure you even understand what I'm saying - this has nothing to do with the US vs. the EU or if the US is reliable.
I was referring to the possibility of the EU becoming a federal union which acts like a country. Yes, like the US and Germany, but unlike China and of South Africa I don't know enough to say.
It doesnt have to be a federal union. Probably a logical step but I didn't prescribe it. Regardless, I dont see how it could persist in its current form through lots of conflict.
Yeah, there are already major opposition parties advocating EU exit in many countries already. Try to centralize further and their support will increase. Contrast that with the US when it unified. George Washington won the election 69-0 in the electoral college. And that's not even getting into any of the other massive problems with EU unification.
> Additionally, we've now seen the EU survive the departure of a major economic power (the UK).
I don’t really understand the impact of Brexit on the euro, as Britain wasn’t on it.
But clearly they were a key part of the EU. It’ll be interesting to see which side regrets the move more.
>In June 2025, 56% of people in Great Britain thought it was the wrong decision
It's not so clear when you consider that 48.1% of the original referendum voters wanted to stay in the EU. I'm honestly very surprised by this poll, 8% change is pretty minimal considering the turmoil the country has gone through since 2016.
How much of this can be explained by older voters dying in the intervening 10 years, I recall that demographic skewed much more heavily Leave in 2016
Half the issue is the definition of ‘voter’. Turn-out is abysmal and polling has been crap in major ways. Calling someone eligible to vote a ‘voter’ is probably only right 50-60% of the time.
Agree, that's a good point. Perhaps many who would have voted remain just didn't think it was a chance it would pass so sort of stayed home because of that.
But only 56% in a poll? Is that enough for another referendum and guarantee rejoin? EU politicians have made it clear, ALL UK opt-outs will be gone if UK rejoins, whether it is UK opt-out regarding budget (like paying billions less in annual EU fees like UK did before), to special fishing rights pre-Brexit, to forced to adopt Euro currency and drop Pound sterling.
Rejoining is seen as politically too risky in the short term. As you observe, the UK would not get back its privileged position, there are probably some bargains to be struck but a track to the Euro currency is almost certainly mandatory and that'd be unpopular because people really like our banknotes for some reason and the Euro deliberately just looks like play money, the illustrations deliberately don't show real structures to avoid associations with the nations where those things were built.
But while "Leaving was a bad idea" isn't enough to seriously push for actual re-entry to the EU it's certainly a good sign for the EU and for the Euro. The EU is a massive bureaucracy, and I think we underestimated how much "a massive bureaucracy" might be the thing we wanted in this role..
I don’t know if you can confidently claim that the vote represented the view of the population at the time.
There was a small pro brexit margin, and loads didn’t vote. I don’t dispute the vote result, I just wondering what the result would have been if there had been higher turnout.
And to add on (rather than edit my comment), I think the saving grace that keeps USD around for a while longer is the last section of the article, "Deposit dollarization in emerging markets"
A lot of growing economies don't/can't trust their local currency and they overwhelmingly use USD instead of EUR or CNY. As those economies grow the USD gets a boost that will sustain it for a while over the increasing competition of CNY. But this can't sustain it forever and the US is not doing anything to offset the lost ground in global trade and forex reserves.
The Yuan is not a freely convertible currency, so not really an option here. The Euro isn't terrible, but it has structural issues in that member states all must take out debt in what is for monetary policy purposes a foreign currency. This generated a debt crisis 10 years ago, which has been papered over, but the structural issues remain unresolved. Also, the Euro has been around now for 25 years. That's not long enough to convince anyone of long term stability.
Saudi Arabia was privately discussing de-dollarization way back in summer last year, when the irrational tariffs were imposed, followed by the Israeli-US strikes on Iran. Make of that what you will.
Sweden just haven’t completed the stabilization and alignment criteria to formally switch over, arguing that it is voluntary.
We had a referendum on the euro back 2003 with a clear mandate to not adopt it and the politicians don’t want to poke the sleeping tiger that is the euro question.
Additionally, we've now seen the EU survive the departure of a major economic power (the UK). More people are certainly willing to believe in the stability of the EU now.
Another major currency is the Yuan, and some countries may be as willing to trade in Yuan to improve relations with China, so perhaps we won't see one single reserve currency but two spheres of influence with most countries maintaining reserves of multiple currencies.