Quote Originally Posted by Furunculus View Post
But i thought we were all the same, with the same hopes and ambitions, the same goals and ideals, and now you tell me it is not so! *tantrum*
I read that all Eurosceptics are simply biding their time to start a new pan-European conflagration and plunge us all into a new world war. It is only owing to the EU that we again managed this year to prevent renewed industrial warfare, which proves we have been right all along.

In other words, strawman. There's no point in putting up a grossly distorted caricature and then thump one's chest in a celebration of 'we've been correct all along' whenever this caricature of reality is shown - surprise! - to be incorrect.


There is a lot of US criticism about China's export orientated economic policy. Nobody will accuse the US of being communists who are too lazy to work. Nor are the imbalances between the US and China the result of political adn economic integration.
Rather, the world is economically intertwined anyway. What the EU does, is grant power to the people to shape this integration into the form they desire, rather than be powerless onlookers.


The criticism about Germany's economic policy has two origins:
- Envy. Yes.
- Criticism about Germany's policy of stimulating export, and destimulating consumption.
For a fun fact: surprisingly, the purchasing power of a German is only ten percent higher than that of a Greek.
This is what you get when a German rightwing government has a policy that benefits German industry over German consumers by a combination of low wages and high consumption tax to stimulate export surplus.
The criticism is not that Germany should produce less, or less succesfully, but that it should balance this with more internal investment and consumption.