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The leech of Europe
What on earth is the point? We don’t use the same currency, we don’t really get involved with them much, we have feuds with half the countries and we’re not even physically linked! (Well, other than the channel tunnel, anyway. Not naturally.)
N.B.:- this is another one of those “ideas” posts which aren’t in any way sourced any are based only upon my general impression of things. AKA:- likely to be rather naïve, unrealistic and just plain wrong!
Apparently the big reason for us being in the EU was (note “was”, not “is”) that it was apparently far easier to do stock market trading if we were all part of one “thing”. Now, of course, it’s not quite like that any more. Today, truly international trade is commonplace and really, it’s pretty easy. Money, shares, etc. are all done digitally these days and it’s not a big deal to do trade across to the other side of the world.
Additionally, other than the odd couple of countries which are doing fine, the majority of Europe are crashing and dying. Their economies are collapsing and the countries who aren’t doing too badly (Germany and us) are pumping huge, crazy, ridiculous amounts of money into them, trying to restabilise them. Unfortunately, they’re run by complete idiots who then go and bankrupt them again almost immediately.
My opinion? Well, I think we should just ditch them. We aren’t going to lose our trading links - they can be redone in a matter of days (very, very big assumption, but I’m pretty sure). We finally won’t be connected in any way with the French (hehe. I don’t actually mind them too much, but love the stereotypes). Our economy (I think) would probably be more stable if we haven’t got “the leech of Europe” on us all the time.
Another one of my 0.02 USDs. As per usual, please put your thoughts over to me via the below comments box, Twitter, email or submit/ask.
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So, uh. What are you meant to do with these web log things again?
Turns out you’re meant to post to these things more than once per year. And no, sharing stuff from other people without even changing anything does not count!
My friend Rhys and I were discussing the world’s economy today. I summarise my general thoughts below:- (please pardon my highly opinionated views on things…)
- Greece is actually still a country? Seriously though, their PM is a bit of a joke.
- I think China’s economy is entirely fake and that it will one day collapse in a way reminiscent of the dot-com bubble. (I may be entirely wrong here, feel free to submit and make corrections.)
- The US are going to go back into recession again, right? (Probably along with the rest of us.)
- Since the US relies a lot on China for all their goods and China rely on the US to buy all their goods… when (& if) the US goes into recession, I guess China’s bubble will pop then, right?
- The EU is not looking all that great currently either. Italy & Spain are teetering over the edge of what happened to Greece and France isn’t doing all that well either. The UK are okaaay, but not great and we are slowly falling. If Greece defaults, presumably they’ll pull Italy and Spain with them, with a lot of the rest not far behind.
- Africa is clearly already, to put it in a word, fucked. So oh well. The Russians don’t appear to do all that much though, so I guess they’re relatively stable economically…?
So I’ve got this plan. (All based around my most probably wrong thoughts.)
Since the US and China are going to go into the pits, most (if not all, eventually) of the EU will go with them and Africa is already there, maybe the UK should cut all its ties, wait for everyone to fail, then restart the British Empire.
I’m not patriotic or anything, I just think it might be funny. It’d also be nice to be able to travel to or live in places like America without having to have tonnes of silly rules, etc.
It’d also be an opportunity to manage the world globally. Personally, I’d implement the following:-
- All education is free. No matter what level it is, nursery through Ph.D. A human right.
- Free, uncensored and unrestricted internet access for all. Another human right.
- Healthcare is free. For everyone, no matter what they need. Added to the list of human rights.
- The entire world would be democracy based. People may not like this initially, but it will be forced upon everybody nonetheless. It will then be split into continents, then countries, then regions, then towns/cities.
- With this, all media would be strictly free and entirely uncontrolled by the government. (Obviously you do need some guidelines for making sure that appropriate things are seen by appropriate ages, but that’d be done in a sensible way.)
- All government jobs in the entire hierarchy would be vacated, to be re-elected fairly and democratically for every level.
But then you get to the abuse of the system, etc… which is where it starts to get difficult. I was thinking about how to deal with unemployment. Thoughts:-
- Initially, I reckoned they were provided, not with money, but with the physical things which they require, but people could still be lazy if they really wanted to.
- Maybe all these things would be provided for six months, then cut off. But what if the person genuinely couldn’t get a job? & what if they just got a job for a day, then became unemployed again?
- The solution I worked out eventually was that since the government is effectively running all these human rights based things, they could just employ everyone that can’t find a job. Maybe this wouldn’t work. I like to think it would.
So that’s some of the things I was thinking about on the ten minute walk I have from the college bus to home. Probably almost all utter bollocks, but I do try my best.
If you feel you just wasted half your life reading my utter bollocks, there is a blog about economics which my friend writes which I, so far, have found to be very good reading, the 60 Second Economist.
Sorry for probably wasting a fair bit of your time. xx
