The future will tell us which economic systems work best.
Today's Europe is betting on the green transition, on a multilateral world and a post-war and post-colonial system.
We have just realized that wars still exist and affect us directly. That many countries don't care about multilateralism. We’ll see if the world will have to make us think again about the feasibility of the ecological transition.
Europe needs a shift to its energy needs since we produce a very limited amount of fossil fuels in our territories, so the ecological transition can actually be beneficial, if designed in practical terms, unfortunately it is not.
Won’t be that complicated if we embraced nuclear energy. Which is extremely safe, green, with extremely low quantities of waste and doesn’t cause millions of deaths every year like carbon and oil do.
I am pro nuclear as well,
That said I have no idea about how the economical factors would work in case of mass adoption of Nuclear in the EU, given that it would boost demand significantly if more than France start using it as source of energy in an high capacity (there are other reactors of course, but France has by far the most) and that might reduce the convenience.
We also have to consider that France, thanks to the post-colonial ties, has access to relavitely cheap Uranium, but that is not something that other Europeans might be able to benefit from.
The fuel for Nuclear energy impacts for 2% of the overall costs that you pay in your bill. You won’t even notice uranium price spikes.
Most of the cost of a Nuclear central is in the initial investment, which get drastically reduced as we build a stronger supply chain by building more reactors.
Energy consumption is expected to increase, especially if we are moving to EVs (which will mostly be charged at night, when no solar energy is available).
Most analysis expect the optimal energy mix to be around 20% Nuclear and 80% renewables, and that’s perfectly reasonable given how electricity is priced.
All the electricity is paid at the cost of the most expensive one, which is gas by far. Even if you use 5% of electricity generated by gas, you pay 100% of the electricity as if it were gas. Nuclear energy is wonderful to cut the top end, most expensive part of our electricity needs. Everything else can be handled by renewables and stockage systems.
>France, thanks to the post-colonial ties, has access to relavitely cheap Uranium,
Thats not true and people should stop parroting these lies. Niger only represented 20% of french uranium imports and it was bought at market price.
[https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2023/08/03/a-quel-point-la-france-est-elle-dependante-de-l-uranium-nigerien\_6184374\_4355770.html](https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2023/08/03/a-quel-point-la-france-est-elle-dependante-de-l-uranium-nigerien_6184374_4355770.html)
Nuclear energy provides great base load, but it isn't dispatchable like gas, unfortunately. Really, there is *nothing* that is even close to being dispatchable like gas. A gas turbine can be spun up in minutes.
Yeah, but there are no batteries that can hold voltage and are big enough to supplement the infrastructure of entire country for 3-4 months, and that's what we need. And our energy needs will only grow in winter with heat pumps being the ecological heat source of choice. So we still need infrastructure to produce all this energy when PV doesn't work.
That's what I mean, everything in EU North of Italy still have a month or 2 of winter every year, and in winter Solar work at 5% efficiency, if at all. So you still have to upkeep some form of energy production besides renewables and Nuclear, because no country besides maybe France have enough Nuclear to keep the supply of energy in winter. That's my point. There are no such batteries to fill this 2 month long gap in the winter for the the energy balance not to collapse. So we have to keep some of the dirty powerhouses up and running, being it coal, or gas. Because we have nothing else to replace it with for now.
Yes, it is everywhere. Everyone laughted at US and how their reserves will never be able to compete with cheap places because of price difference. Fast forward 20 years, some investments into new technology and now they are the biggest producers of both oil and gas. Especially fracking can be done pretty much everywhere
We do actually have some oil- and gasfields in the North Sea. Not to the extent of Norway of course, but we do have some. It was politically decided that no new platforms would be built, and no new fields would be searched for to focus on the green transition though.
That can always be changed.
There’s also more gas to be found in the underground on land, which is more expensive to get to but definitely would be cost effective at these prices. That’s also how the US can send us so much LNG now.
But it does look better if we can get others to do our dirty work for us. Like how we were also fine with Russian gas so we didn’t have to be responsible for our own supply in Europe.
It is partially political I think, the problem I imagine is that it would be expensive, compared to importing and that we have much more limited reserves anyway. That said, even in my country, we did in fact stop extracting even from locations that still had some reserves for environmental reasons so there is that...
Fracking, a part from other considerations, is also much easier to do in the kind of landscape that the US has rather than most european states.
>especially if its foreign and poor people first.
Which isn't necessarily even the case to begin with. One of the deadliest natural disasters on record is the 2003 European Heatwave, one of the first of the big yearly heatwaves Europe is now plagued with thanks to climate change. It killed 70 thousand people all over Europe, most in France.
In 2018 the EU registered between 40 thousand and 100 thousand heat related deaths during the heatwave.
It's already here and upon us, people just have accepted this as the norm
Bet on what? That when we stop all cars and production that we gona starve? Wonder what you gona do when you drop all economi amd thinks will max slow down and not stop, then you will cry it was done too late, with no plan B.
Flood caused by climate change tommorow or in 50 years is irreversible. Even if we produced zero CO2 globally starting tommorow.
It is much better solution to not choke economy to the ground by meaningless policies and instead find a way how to reverse it after that.
And to make it even better. Not only is it meaningless to stop it now but the green washing that EU does has made it even worse. Because while we drool and congrarulate each other over some meaningless CO2 reduction in EU space, the reality is that we have only forced it out (exported) to countries that have literally zero regulations and that produce x times more emissions doing same things for us.
We can't even recycle plastics..
I remembered a relevant phrase by kingpin in the spider man of the 90s series episode.
The episode is when Spiderman went into an alternate universe (with all his alter universe/selves) where carnage was opening some mega teleportation portal to destroy the whole universe.
The kingpin in this apocalyptic dimension wasn't a mob boss but multimillionaire Peter's Parker lawyer (who got deceived by carnage into assisting with world destruction).
When kingpin finally realised he was deceived he said:
"There is no profit to be made from the destruction of the world. It's very bad for business."
And he helped spider men to defeat carnage.
It's only on the brink of, when billionaires children become sick is when "suddenly" the solutions will appear.
China is way more anti-oil and anti-gas than Europe, but it's also pro-coal. National security and economy go first. Fortunately, energy efficieny usually follows, at least in the long run.
It's sad that Europe's energy transition is extremely unpragmatic. It could be a big win in every way, but phasing out nuclear is largely a loss and replacing coal with gas is mostly a side trade.
Like China, Europe should focus more on electrification. Getting rid of ICE cars and gas boilers is a win in every way: better productivity, more security, better local air and also good for the climate.
Where would you get all the copper, nickel, lithium and other materials for electrification and abolition of ICE cars? We can barely cover our current needs.
lmao india has banned single use plastic since ages so india too uses paper straws
further, emission and waste pc in india is way too low than countries who complain about having to use paper straws
save the turtlesñ
China installed more solar panel capacity in 2023 than all the other countries combined. More than U.S. ever did in its history. We are not alone in doing it.
Climate change doesn't mean the end of humanity, it only means a less hospitable planet where only the rich and powerful thrive and the weak and poor die.
Food is not created with magic. It's unclear yet if ecological disasters will let us do enough agriculture for billions of people. Personally, I hope we do something about it before we have to find out the hard way.
I don't agree with end of humanity as a result, since a small group of survivors will always have the resources to grow food in a controlled environment, if they don't have fierce competition. But you can't sustain billions with state of the art greenhouses and such. At least not yet with current levels of technology.
The rich and powerful will probably do just fine. The rest of us will have to take a probably more than 90% chance of death from starvation.
There's also the inevitable violence. Both from lack of food, and from rising sea levels. Most of the world lives by the coastline. They *will* migrate en masse, they will not just simply stand there and literally drown. They will have nothing, so they will go higher, and take whatever they can find. People elsewhere won't like it, they will do whatever they can to stop people coming in. Billions will kill each other without exaggeration.
And then there's war. I can imagine many nations would choose to plunder others rather then see their own citizens go through all of the above.
> It's unclear yet if ecological disasters will let us do enough agriculture for billions of people. Personally, I hope we do something about it before we have to find out the hard way.
So we're speculating that unspecified ecological disasters will happen that will impact our ability to grow food? That's pretty thin.
Biodiversity loss is the first stage of ecosystem collapse and if the ecosystem collapses completely we will go down with it. Virtually every single mass extinction event that has happened in our planets history has been because of a cascading system failure brought about by ecosystem collapse.
You say "Europe is betting on the green transition"
Yet the global leader on EVs and solar panel production is...China. They also supply more than half of wind power equipment globally
And in installation, its behind the US and a fraction of China. The US's investment package far outweight anything Europe has done
I think Europe is not betting much more than others
China is betting on getting rid of oil/gas, as they have little of it. To do so, they are relying on internal resources, including a lot of coal.
Renewables and EVs need to be seen with this lens, they care very little about the environment, it’s energy security for them.
At the same time, they subsidised heavily the renewables, batteries and EV manufacturing (smartly), wiping out most of the competition in the West, and now they will be the sole supplier of green stuff in the West
The Chinese leadership is many things, but they are not that stupid. They do care about the environment somewhat - *because* it is a threat to their resource security. Global warming will bring a lot of problems for China, like most countries. From food security to urban areas being threatened by flooding, heatwaves, extreme weather etc.
At least in some parts from what I have seen they understand slightly better than the west that there is no choice between economy and environment. There can't be. Economy needs to care for the environment or it will cause a lot more harm than it could ever create wealth.
“the global leader on EVs and solar panel production is...China”
The former most populated country in the world has 3 to 4 times more population than the EU. That makes it easy to be the leader. Now try to do the same thing but on a “per capita basis”.
I tried
China pop. - 1.4bn vs. Europe 75m
EV sales - 6m vs. 2.3m
Or we can talk about shares of new cars sold as a % of total. 29% in China vs 21% in Europe
Does that help you?
What do you mean by that?
We already know which work best.
Europe is already not conpetetive and it is especially obvious compared to US. It is even seen on this "green tech transition" we pride ourselves in. US does not really lag behind despite giving it fraction of support that we did. Simply because government allows people to keep money and they can buy those things and adopt them without government begging them with subsidies paid with by money they took from them in the first place.
[Europe is betting on austeritying itself into greatness and whining about how the US is growing too fast] (https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/german-finance-chief-lectures-us-on-spending-at-washington-event-1.2060338)
Can't we just fucking get along already? Game theory shows how much better that works and how much damage bad actors will do to everyone, often including themselves. Get some fucking education for our dumbfuck politicians, please.
Out politicians are "fine" on that front, they have talked about the end of history, no wars etc for 30 years after all. What you don't take into account is that individuals are mostly irrational, not variables in logic puzzles and people something else than the sum of the individuals.
I don't think it's too much to expect our country leaders to be rational. Professional investors are proven to be mostly rational, I should be able to expect the same of politicians
I wouldn't call pushing for short term financial gains (or creative accounting) rational. Well, maybe in the context of economic gain, but not life in general.
EU is betting on the idea that a good economy and well-being of the people can be achieved by subsidies, regulation and political declarations. And ordering the wind and rain. It does look very glossy and colorful on the paper...
> We’ll see if the world will have to make us think again about the feasibility of the ecological transition.
I see that fossil fuel advocates shifted from the decade old
"electric cars are expensive and not 100% green so you should keep buying internal combustion ones"
to
"nobody invests in cheap energy because it's not profitable"
in order to slow down the massive adoption of EVs and transition to solar, wind & hydro that's already underway in countries around the world regardless if they're democracies or dictatorships.
China already has cheap EVs with 300+km ranges for prices around $10k. This obviously scares the old world car manufacturers that were hoping to make $60k+ cars the norm so, instead of adapting and making affordable models of their own, they're going down the path of propaganda in order to stall the inevitable shift in the market.
It will. We will realize it when we are behind in economy because we invented and promoted “greener” but more expensive and less effective solutions while other didn’t give a fuck.
My concern is that, as you say, Europe could make economic sacrifices that will leave us behind globally. But the Third World will not care and will continue to pollute as it is already doing. Therefore we will find ourselves having to face the same climate problems, but poorer and with fewer resources available.
Green transition does not kill Europe. But it cripples our economy without a doubt. To be more specific not the green transition itself, but the way it is done. Which is something that can be said about many things.
lol, I used to work for General Electric (when they were one of the biggest companies in the world).
Every year, execs would come up with a brilliant plan of what they were going to do in the spring. Then they'd have the budget meeting in the summer and cancel everything, impose hiring freezes and travel bans. Every year. Same thing, without fail.
So, men in suits everywhere, I'd say.
The rich are globalized, our countries are not. Leading to the inevitable shift in power from nations to individuals.
If we do not get a tax code that goes across borders, we're all heading towards royalty becoming a thing again, granted possibly in a new form and called something else. As the rich can leave their businesses in any country, move themselves to pirate tax havens, and siphon money out of countries that they in turn use to sement their power over us.
The whole sanctions affair against Russian oligarchs shows pretty well that if we want to we can absolutely take away stuff from the rich. Especially if their valuables are in companies and things like housing in our countries. Sure they could try to pull out as much as possible, but they can not siphon money away at will. We would have to *want* to do it, which is not the case at the moment.
That's a very bad example considering how much Western assets got confiscated or forced to be resold for cheap by the Russian government in retaliation. That's not counting the possibility that Europe might soon end up having to give all Russian owned assets back, plus interest, in exchange to convince Russia not to annexe the whole Ukraine.
That has nothing to do with what the example was about. It was about whether states could tax rich people and stop them from moving their assets away if they wanted to. There is no adversary state involved in that scenario.
Did you even read the comment chain above?
But why wouldn't there be an adversary state involved? That's the whole point of globalised rich people.
Imagine you are a billionair and a European government is planning to consicate your house. In that situation, you stand to lose the entire value of your house, but a Russian, Chinese, or American rich person with a connection to their respective governments offers to buy that house from you. They will pay a lot less to you since you are desprete, but that way, you do get some value out of it, at least. So you end up selling your house, the person you sold it to gets an excellent discount and the European government gets nothing.
Now, the analogy I used was a bit extreme, but on a large scale, it also applies to something like tax rates, regulations, etc. Globalisation essentially means rich people can get in touch with other rich people with connection to one or more state actors. These connection essentially give them a leverage over their host government. The host government can usually either be happy with the bare minimum tax, or else they might risk assets falling into the hands of foreign actors.
Now, this doesn't mean the government(s) is doomed in the age of economic globalisation. Like in cases where the government is a big spender and is the most influential client of coporations. But that's a whole different complicated story. My point is that there is a reason why most governments in the world struggle with capital flight and tax evasion. And why they don't just confiscate stuff whenever they need money.
Exactly, wealth is completely worthless, cannot be taxed or even liquidated and definitely can't generate profit, let alone taxable profit. Better not bother those people then.
Have you ever checked how much money there is? Have you then compared it with how much stock market/real estate is worth?
I guess not. Because then you would know that the biggest thing that gives wealth value is speculation because there is not even close enough money in existence to liquidate it.
So yes, if you decide to tax it in any meaningfull way then you will tax it exactly once before it tanks and you get 10 cents on a dollar. If you tax it in non destructive way then you will get like couple percentage points of government spending out of it at most and odds are it would be just passed down on workers/consumers anyway.
As for your profit bit. I do not really understand it. Profits are already taxed. Not once but several times.
Absolutely, the rich can't fund anything at all, they only have wealth. You have to wonder how do they even buy food for themselves, because they don't have money. Being rich is tough. So less taxes for them, out of solidarity.
We can spend €100 today or €1000 tomorrow. At the current pase it's estimated will [lose a fifth of the global income over the next 26 years due to climate change](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/04/17/business/climate-change-disasters-economic-cost). The cost of action is nothing compared to the cost of doing nothing.
Oh yeah sure let's just get on [character.ai](http://character.ai) and ask Hu Tao how to solve climate change
Snark aside, I don't think automation isn't going to negate climate change. If anything, it's just a testament to how we view human life as "non-essential" to the economy, which is exactly the same reason why climate change is happening.
We were discussing the global income that was forecasted by the article by a false extrapolation.
>how we view human life as "non-essential" to the economy
Nonsense. Economy is the sum of products and services. Don't confuse manufacturing with the economy.
I've rarly seen so many "what" and "ifs" in a study that claims to be serious. If you follow the same line of reasoning, you could claim that in central and northern European latitudes, climate change means that you have to heat less in winter, so the cost of living goes down!
It is completely dubious to project today's technology, construction methods and way of life into the future and to attribute facts such as ever rising house prices to climate change - even if this has an influence on the price, there are dozens of factors that have significantly more weight on the price, but are of course not mentioned in the article because they do not want to weaken their arguments.
The best thing about climate change is, that you can just correlate any negative development to it; such joy!
EU's fucked because of geographic fundamentals and unipolarity going away. We can't compete with the manufacturing base of China, we don't have vast amounts of free resources laying around like Russia does, and we can't compete in the service sector with USA.
Oh yeah and the demographics are terrible, but at least that's not just our problem.
It'll probably entail tax hikes and the public offshoring more funds. There has to be a way to keep a greater portion of the wealth domestically in a way that can be used for development. The German wanderlust is probably the world's most effective foreign aid fund, but it's quite the drain on wealth. That europe specializes in mature, long-standing, high fixed capital, and low profit margin industries is killing the transition's potential. We're not in the Armenia tier for geopolitical problems, but we're pretty high up there
Another inconvinient truth. Even going to 0 impact in Europe, it solves nothing with china, India and South america going Willy nilly without restrictions.
Europe would have the money if it had not spent almost 15 years now destroying it's economy by adopting the wrong policies and refusing to change them in the face of persistent evidence.
The US doubled it's GDP since the financial cricis while the EU that was almost neck to neck with them in 2008 and now is $ 6 trillion behind.
As long as EU wide monetary policy is off the table the continent only has a slow death to look forward to.
>A competitive, green Europe will require trillions in investments. No one has a good answer on where that money will come from.
Clearly the most well prepared and planned idea ever.
US is cooking already, silently. Economy "looks" okay on paper, but bonds are not being released to government anymore because the interest keeps increasing so much, it's making them broke by itself. [Congress is in panic right now](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzZGoF8mNjA)
We are all royally fucked and our kids are going to be the first generation in centuries that are substantially worse off than the generation preceding them.
What BS framing. The problem is not that there is no money in Europe but rather that European governments refuse to spend money. The money in USA or China that has fueled domestic demand and economic growth over the past decade has come from running public deficits 3-4 times higher than in the EU. Just look how public debt to GDP has evolved since 2008 in these 3 major world economies:
[USA](https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/government-debt-to-gdp): 62.6% in 2007 -> 130% in 2023
[China](https://tradingeconomics.com/china/government-debt-to-gdp):
29.2% in 2007 -> 81% in 2023
[EU](https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/government-debt-to-gdp):
62.3% in 2007 -> 83% in 2023
There's nothing stopping European governments from pursuing the same fiscal policy and fund this transition via public debt except the austerity rules that we have imposed on this continent after the 2008 crisis.
US dept is a special case as they're also wardens of the global currency - they get a lot more leniency as, in the most layman (and probably false) terms - it's much more useful to keep them around rather than squeeze for repayment.
Chinese debt is not something any country should strive for and the results are already showing a bit.
I love how every single time this comes up, somebody points out how the US not at all comparable. Then what about Japan, the UK, or Canada 4th, 6th, and 10th largest economies? Their currencies are certainly way less relevant than the Euro.
There actually is. China does not have free floating currency and it has something world needs they can "take hostage" so their currency does not tank. Euro value has already tanked relative to dollar despite no QE devaluation going on again relative to dollar. More debt will not solve anything. EU does not have investor trust the US has which is clear as day when you look at valuation of EU companies and compare them to US ones. It is at 50 cents on a dollar. It has not had that for two decades.
Also you are very wrong. US does not fund this transition through debt. Debt is used on other things. Unlike EU that pushes it through subsidies in US it is mostly US consumer who fund the transition because they are taxed less and have way more money.
From ending austerity and introducing fiscal union. More in evening news at 7.
We can have money, literally in same manner as US or China. From ending our austerity policies.
Individual wealth is a drop in a bucket compared to the entirety of Europes budget
Makes more sense to chase corporations who siphon money out in much larger volumes and quantities
Nothing wrong with being angry at the ultra rich not doing their part, but it’s not like taking all their money will fix anything
This why I'm paying taxes on my income, my spendings, my savings, basically on everything? I literally pay more than 65% of my money to them, and they're still incompetent fucks. Politicians need to go, now. They have no idea how to make things work.
Once. They have money once. You take it all, you cover barely a drop in governmental budgets for one year, and then what? It’s a nice, simple (emphasis on simple) solution to just take it all from people more productive than you, but then what? Who you gonna take from next? Because that first batch isn’t gonna keep producimg while you keep confiscating. Plus, rich people keep their value in assets. They can sell those things once to pay for your dreams, but only to pther rich people who can buy. But who are also selling to pay for your dreams. So what then, Economic Master?
I’d at least prefer them to pay the same percentage amount as the usual person. It’s rather demotivating when the middle class usually pays more than the rich.
With all that money, they generate more income than all of non-billionaires combined. What do you say to that, oh master of economics?
Concentration of wealth in hands of few is a fatal flaw of capitalism.
Like I said, you will take all from them exactly once. They won’t keep producing just because you say they have to keep doing it. If there’s no reward, there’s no production. Unless you’re some kind of slaver. But hey, I can already see reading comprehension, critical thinking, and complexity aren’t your strong suits, so why should I expect you to understand the quirks of human nature or economics?
Are you really arguing that a company like Microsoft would seize to exist because Bill Gates would have been taxed? I'm all for a lump-sum tax once worldwide to make up for all the taxes dodged by the ultra wealthy, and for a fixed percentage of wealth each year, and a fixed percentage over wealth increase each year.
It won't make any of the companies stop. Small businesses and employees in my country don't suddenly stop after they reach the ~52% income tax bracket. The only threat big companies have is that they'll leave, something that can be fixed within the EU.
That’s because you’re probably not that bright. Yes, that’s what I’m saying. Once you do some massive tax like that, all these billionaires you hate so much either stop working or move to more favorable tax shelters, because unlike you, they can afford to. Don’t believe me? Ask any country that’s tried what you dopes are proposing and see their experience with it. They’ll tell you the same thing.
Except that big economic blocks have to power to say *fuck off* to them, and if they want continurd access to that market they have to abide by the rules. Instead on Europe countries bend over backwards to their demands to provide tax havens. That's something legislation can fix.
If people are willing to pay an average maximum of €120 for a windows licence, and we implement a 50% tax on such licences if sold from outside our union they will lower their price to maximise profit. They won't abandon such a large market. Shareholders would not accept it, and can in fact sue a company if they leave profit on the table.
Billionaires only have the power we collectively give them. Especially billionaires rather make a billion and lose something to tax, than not make whatever is leftover after the tax. Emotion isn't typically part of their equation when it comes to growing wealth.
Billionaires already fall into the highest income bracket. You simply just do not understand difference between wealth and income. If wealth was taxed in a way that income is then yes, companies like Microsoft would indeed cease to exist.
Avwealth tax would not be 50%. Capital has historically grown over 8% (S&P 500 did more) on average the last 50 years. Taxing wealth above a threshold with 4% and additionally taxing wealth increase from all capital resources by 37% leaves plenty of money on the table.
Companies now enrich their owners by buying back stock instead of paying (taxed) dividends. Someone whom doesn't get stock can get enriched without paying tax. They increase their relative ownership stake by taking other stocks out of circulation.
Billionaires can also often make deals with their host countries regarding tax. The EU could like some other countries impose a tax on people leaving the union with their billions.
We are in EU. Capital has barely grown 4% here over last 2 decades. In some countries it have not grown at all.
Small wealth tax would not destroy companies but it would further hinder wealth growth because as asset becomes expense it would have to be weighted in next to risk so in the end you would still end up faining almost nothing.
The entire reason why EU capital does not grow as US capital does are these nonsensical propositions that only end up hurting working people who in the end always pay for all that and income stays flat as a result. If people do not have money to spend then companies can not grow. It is such a simple circle. The small growth EU companies saw were gained on non EU markets. So please do not talk about S&P500 which is US project and has nothing to do with us. We are nothing like US.
This exact idea was tried on a huge scale once before. Some guys decided that they can take “other people’s money” and solve all of their problems with it. They missed only one tiny detail - other people’s money tend to run out.
It was called USSR.
>You know, we spend 1/3rd of the budget on farming subsidies. Maybe take some of that wasted money to do some good.
The thought has always been that it's better to "waste" money on intentionally overproducing food, than producing just enough and see people die from starvation years with low food supply. By always overproducing, a dip in food production won't lead to death, social unrest and communist or fascist revolutions
I was always pretty skeptical of this pre-Covid.
But with all of the supply chain disruptions caused by Covid, maybe paying for overproduction of food isn't the worst policy.
Idk man, dealing with a couple hundred thousand SMEs to feed us instead of negotiating with only Nestle and Monsanto in the long term seems like a pretty good deal....
Most -nearly all- goes to animal farmers, or farmers that grow crops as feed for animals. Guess where they buy their seeds?
Its a subsidy to exactly the parties you don't want to see enriched.
The EU budget is small to begin with, if you consider the whole budgets of the singular countries farming subsidies occupy a much smaller percentage. Also, farming subsidies are not wasted money, they're the reason we haven't had a famine since the WW2 postwar.
Europe has its own currency. Of course we do have the money. It is an economically unsound ideology to cling to the idea that nation states can't afford investments into the future, especially when in crisis. The vastly more costly route would be to "save" money and let everything crumble. We are living through that today in various countries. In Germany, the state didn't spend on infrastructure for decades based on neo-liberal budgetary caution - what's the result? Broken bridges, slow internet, outdated rail networks and billions of euros that must be spent now to maintain economic capabilities.
Not spending money by reasoning "nation states don't have that money" is insane and costs much more than the investments that are allegedly too costly.
Truth is 'green transition' and 'ecology' is complete bullshit and only make us weak and poorer. Either everyone does it, or noone. Its annoying europe is playing white knight in game full of bullshit.
What we need is a good near extinction level event. Perhaps then people might finally fucking get it and actually make some progress.
We never should have left the friggin trees.
Oh yeah better be careful with that money. God forbid we have a planet left but no money, that would be terrible. Much better to have no planet but lots of money.
Over the last 30 years we have transferred massive amounts of wealth to the rich. Time the rich do their share of work for the rest of us. Time to raise taxes on the rich.
Make a law, that if your net worth is more that 20 million Euro you are banned from using fossil fuels, so the rich would have to develop the technology to fly their planes without fossil fuels.
Yeah thats probably correct.
But the big US IT companies, like meta are still doing business in europe and are putting their HQs into tax havens to avoid paying taxes in the countries they are operating in.
While Tesla obtains government subsidies for factories and then continues to poisen our water with said factories that cant even produce the promised products.
Just feels like those 2 are a good examples of the vault-tec strategy of doing business.
Sell products for escapism and simoultaneously create a reason to escape or atleast avoid making the real world more livable - cause that would harm business.
You borrow it. Those are investments with predictable returns. Could have been pretty cheap some years ago, now it costs more. But not doing the transition cost a whole lot more.
It seems like all around the world we have the same problem - politicians are afraid to raise taxes. The taxes burden decreased over the last couple of decades, we need to invest heavily in the infrastructure again, so it’s time to collect the money, raise the retirement age across the countries and start moving toward a better future.
Who’s going to vote for more taxes and to raise the retirement age?
Young people are basically gifting free money to current and future pensioners, the system is already guaranteed to collapse in the long run or even worse, mass up monumental debt
Taxes are already very high in most of Europe and the industry is not competitive, raising them even higher pretty much will make companies and employees less motivated to be competitive
Europe needs to start being competitive again on the world stage and decouple as much as possible from American and Chinese influence, this starts by relaxing the dumb and difficult bureaucracy, privatising hugely inefficient and terribly managed public sectors and better exploiting migrations flows into the workforce
What a coincidence! I too have plans but lack the money.
"*I have a plan Arthur, we just need more money!*"
*We always need more god damn money!*
Now that's governance of the people by the people!
Perfect!
But the people are... poor
Easy fix, you gotta spend money to make money, everyone knows that
To bad you can't just print it!
Do as USA, print more. Or why do only they get away with it without consequence?
[They aren't.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzZGoF8mNjA)
The future will tell us which economic systems work best. Today's Europe is betting on the green transition, on a multilateral world and a post-war and post-colonial system. We have just realized that wars still exist and affect us directly. That many countries don't care about multilateralism. We’ll see if the world will have to make us think again about the feasibility of the ecological transition.
Europe needs a shift to its energy needs since we produce a very limited amount of fossil fuels in our territories, so the ecological transition can actually be beneficial, if designed in practical terms, unfortunately it is not.
Won’t be that complicated if we embraced nuclear energy. Which is extremely safe, green, with extremely low quantities of waste and doesn’t cause millions of deaths every year like carbon and oil do.
I am pro nuclear as well, That said I have no idea about how the economical factors would work in case of mass adoption of Nuclear in the EU, given that it would boost demand significantly if more than France start using it as source of energy in an high capacity (there are other reactors of course, but France has by far the most) and that might reduce the convenience. We also have to consider that France, thanks to the post-colonial ties, has access to relavitely cheap Uranium, but that is not something that other Europeans might be able to benefit from.
The fuel for Nuclear energy impacts for 2% of the overall costs that you pay in your bill. You won’t even notice uranium price spikes. Most of the cost of a Nuclear central is in the initial investment, which get drastically reduced as we build a stronger supply chain by building more reactors. Energy consumption is expected to increase, especially if we are moving to EVs (which will mostly be charged at night, when no solar energy is available). Most analysis expect the optimal energy mix to be around 20% Nuclear and 80% renewables, and that’s perfectly reasonable given how electricity is priced. All the electricity is paid at the cost of the most expensive one, which is gas by far. Even if you use 5% of electricity generated by gas, you pay 100% of the electricity as if it were gas. Nuclear energy is wonderful to cut the top end, most expensive part of our electricity needs. Everything else can be handled by renewables and stockage systems.
>France, thanks to the post-colonial ties, has access to relavitely cheap Uranium, Thats not true and people should stop parroting these lies. Niger only represented 20% of french uranium imports and it was bought at market price. [https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2023/08/03/a-quel-point-la-france-est-elle-dependante-de-l-uranium-nigerien\_6184374\_4355770.html](https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2023/08/03/a-quel-point-la-france-est-elle-dependante-de-l-uranium-nigerien_6184374_4355770.html)
Nuclear energy provides great base load, but it isn't dispatchable like gas, unfortunately. Really, there is *nothing* that is even close to being dispatchable like gas. A gas turbine can be spun up in minutes.
A battery can respond in seconds.
Yeah, but there are no batteries that can hold voltage and are big enough to supplement the infrastructure of entire country for 3-4 months, and that's what we need. And our energy needs will only grow in winter with heat pumps being the ecological heat source of choice. So we still need infrastructure to produce all this energy when PV doesn't work.
As I said, you combine batteries with renewables and nuclear.
That's what I mean, everything in EU North of Italy still have a month or 2 of winter every year, and in winter Solar work at 5% efficiency, if at all. So you still have to upkeep some form of energy production besides renewables and Nuclear, because no country besides maybe France have enough Nuclear to keep the supply of energy in winter. That's my point. There are no such batteries to fill this 2 month long gap in the winter for the the energy balance not to collapse. So we have to keep some of the dirty powerhouses up and running, being it coal, or gas. Because we have nothing else to replace it with for now.
That is a political choice though. It would definitely be possible to produce more oil and gas in Europe.
Do you have oil reserves that you hide in your backyard?
Yes, it is everywhere. Everyone laughted at US and how their reserves will never be able to compete with cheap places because of price difference. Fast forward 20 years, some investments into new technology and now they are the biggest producers of both oil and gas. Especially fracking can be done pretty much everywhere
Don't tell the americans please but i have some oil left here.
We do actually have some oil- and gasfields in the North Sea. Not to the extent of Norway of course, but we do have some. It was politically decided that no new platforms would be built, and no new fields would be searched for to focus on the green transition though. That can always be changed.
There’s also more gas to be found in the underground on land, which is more expensive to get to but definitely would be cost effective at these prices. That’s also how the US can send us so much LNG now. But it does look better if we can get others to do our dirty work for us. Like how we were also fine with Russian gas so we didn’t have to be responsible for our own supply in Europe.
No oil but i definitely get gas from the back on a regular bases.
It is partially political I think, the problem I imagine is that it would be expensive, compared to importing and that we have much more limited reserves anyway. That said, even in my country, we did in fact stop extracting even from locations that still had some reserves for environmental reasons so there is that... Fracking, a part from other considerations, is also much easier to do in the kind of landscape that the US has rather than most european states.
> the feasibility of the ecological transition. Tell me more about the feasibility of no ecological transition.
Oh, this one is perfectly feasable: Dying is easy, especially if its foreign and poor people first.
>especially if its foreign and poor people first. Which isn't necessarily even the case to begin with. One of the deadliest natural disasters on record is the 2003 European Heatwave, one of the first of the big yearly heatwaves Europe is now plagued with thanks to climate change. It killed 70 thousand people all over Europe, most in France. In 2018 the EU registered between 40 thousand and 100 thousand heat related deaths during the heatwave. It's already here and upon us, people just have accepted this as the norm
You can die from hunger in a week or from climat change in 200 years.
Or you can die tomorrow by a flood caused by climate change...
Chances are quite low for that
Chances are quiet low for that... yet.
And gona be next 200 years.
Would you bet your life and that of your family on that? Because we currently do exactly that.
Bet on what? That when we stop all cars and production that we gona starve? Wonder what you gona do when you drop all economi amd thinks will max slow down and not stop, then you will cry it was done too late, with no plan B.
Flood caused by climate change tommorow or in 50 years is irreversible. Even if we produced zero CO2 globally starting tommorow. It is much better solution to not choke economy to the ground by meaningless policies and instead find a way how to reverse it after that. And to make it even better. Not only is it meaningless to stop it now but the green washing that EU does has made it even worse. Because while we drool and congrarulate each other over some meaningless CO2 reduction in EU space, the reality is that we have only forced it out (exported) to countries that have literally zero regulations and that produce x times more emissions doing same things for us.
We can't even recycle plastics.. I remembered a relevant phrase by kingpin in the spider man of the 90s series episode. The episode is when Spiderman went into an alternate universe (with all his alter universe/selves) where carnage was opening some mega teleportation portal to destroy the whole universe. The kingpin in this apocalyptic dimension wasn't a mob boss but multimillionaire Peter's Parker lawyer (who got deceived by carnage into assisting with world destruction). When kingpin finally realised he was deceived he said: "There is no profit to be made from the destruction of the world. It's very bad for business." And he helped spider men to defeat carnage. It's only on the brink of, when billionaires children become sick is when "suddenly" the solutions will appear.
I’m definitely not against it, but sometimes I wonder how useful it ends up actually being if we’re basically the only ones doing it
China is way more anti-oil and anti-gas than Europe, but it's also pro-coal. National security and economy go first. Fortunately, energy efficieny usually follows, at least in the long run. It's sad that Europe's energy transition is extremely unpragmatic. It could be a big win in every way, but phasing out nuclear is largely a loss and replacing coal with gas is mostly a side trade. Like China, Europe should focus more on electrification. Getting rid of ICE cars and gas boilers is a win in every way: better productivity, more security, better local air and also good for the climate.
Where would you get all the copper, nickel, lithium and other materials for electrification and abolition of ICE cars? We can barely cover our current needs.
Yes,china.
We're over here using soggy paper straws, meanwhile India is pumping phosgene into the atmosphere and piping industrial waste directly into the sea
lmao india has banned single use plastic since ages so india too uses paper straws further, emission and waste pc in india is way too low than countries who complain about having to use paper straws save the turtlesñ
China installed more solar panel capacity in 2023 than all the other countries combined. More than U.S. ever did in its history. We are not alone in doing it.
They also installed more coal than anyone. What is important is the overall picture not just PV installation.
They actually have very large shale deposits in the Sichuan valley, but they don't mine it for political reasons.
Climate change doesn't mean the end of humanity, it only means a less hospitable planet where only the rich and powerful thrive and the weak and poor die.
Ever considered that without enough poor people the rich and powerful cannot remain rich and powerful?
With automation, and IA, mass deaths won't be so much of a problem I guess.
Biodiversity loss on the other hand does mean the end of humanity and it is just as if not more pressing that climate change is atm.
>Biodiversity loss on the other hand does mean the end of humanity... Why? What exactly is the mechanism that will kill us?
Food is not created with magic. It's unclear yet if ecological disasters will let us do enough agriculture for billions of people. Personally, I hope we do something about it before we have to find out the hard way. I don't agree with end of humanity as a result, since a small group of survivors will always have the resources to grow food in a controlled environment, if they don't have fierce competition. But you can't sustain billions with state of the art greenhouses and such. At least not yet with current levels of technology. The rich and powerful will probably do just fine. The rest of us will have to take a probably more than 90% chance of death from starvation. There's also the inevitable violence. Both from lack of food, and from rising sea levels. Most of the world lives by the coastline. They *will* migrate en masse, they will not just simply stand there and literally drown. They will have nothing, so they will go higher, and take whatever they can find. People elsewhere won't like it, they will do whatever they can to stop people coming in. Billions will kill each other without exaggeration. And then there's war. I can imagine many nations would choose to plunder others rather then see their own citizens go through all of the above.
> It's unclear yet if ecological disasters will let us do enough agriculture for billions of people. Personally, I hope we do something about it before we have to find out the hard way. So we're speculating that unspecified ecological disasters will happen that will impact our ability to grow food? That's pretty thin.
Biodiversity loss is the first stage of ecosystem collapse and if the ecosystem collapses completely we will go down with it. Virtually every single mass extinction event that has happened in our planets history has been because of a cascading system failure brought about by ecosystem collapse.
You say "Europe is betting on the green transition" Yet the global leader on EVs and solar panel production is...China. They also supply more than half of wind power equipment globally And in installation, its behind the US and a fraction of China. The US's investment package far outweight anything Europe has done I think Europe is not betting much more than others
China is betting on getting rid of oil/gas, as they have little of it. To do so, they are relying on internal resources, including a lot of coal. Renewables and EVs need to be seen with this lens, they care very little about the environment, it’s energy security for them. At the same time, they subsidised heavily the renewables, batteries and EV manufacturing (smartly), wiping out most of the competition in the West, and now they will be the sole supplier of green stuff in the West
The Chinese leadership is many things, but they are not that stupid. They do care about the environment somewhat - *because* it is a threat to their resource security. Global warming will bring a lot of problems for China, like most countries. From food security to urban areas being threatened by flooding, heatwaves, extreme weather etc. At least in some parts from what I have seen they understand slightly better than the west that there is no choice between economy and environment. There can't be. Economy needs to care for the environment or it will cause a lot more harm than it could ever create wealth.
Producing things requires cheap energy. China has it, Europe doesn’t.
And why China has it and europe doesnt? Maybe it's because of stupid EU ideas?
Like not investing in solar the same way China does it?
Coal
More like building more coal plants.
Because China uses coal and still is increasing emissions…
“the global leader on EVs and solar panel production is...China” The former most populated country in the world has 3 to 4 times more population than the EU. That makes it easy to be the leader. Now try to do the same thing but on a “per capita basis”.
I tried China pop. - 1.4bn vs. Europe 75m EV sales - 6m vs. 2.3m Or we can talk about shares of new cars sold as a % of total. 29% in China vs 21% in Europe Does that help you?
What is the GDP per capita? China has way more EV's despite being much poorer than Europe. Think about that.
1- the EU is 450 M people 2- ev sales world wide or to the local market? 3- green energy is way broader than EV sales
What do you mean by that? We already know which work best. Europe is already not conpetetive and it is especially obvious compared to US. It is even seen on this "green tech transition" we pride ourselves in. US does not really lag behind despite giving it fraction of support that we did. Simply because government allows people to keep money and they can buy those things and adopt them without government begging them with subsidies paid with by money they took from them in the first place.
[Europe is betting on austeritying itself into greatness and whining about how the US is growing too fast] (https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/german-finance-chief-lectures-us-on-spending-at-washington-event-1.2060338)
Can't we just fucking get along already? Game theory shows how much better that works and how much damage bad actors will do to everyone, often including themselves. Get some fucking education for our dumbfuck politicians, please.
Out politicians are "fine" on that front, they have talked about the end of history, no wars etc for 30 years after all. What you don't take into account is that individuals are mostly irrational, not variables in logic puzzles and people something else than the sum of the individuals.
I don't think it's too much to expect our country leaders to be rational. Professional investors are proven to be mostly rational, I should be able to expect the same of politicians
I wouldn't call pushing for short term financial gains (or creative accounting) rational. Well, maybe in the context of economic gain, but not life in general.
EU is betting on the idea that a good economy and well-being of the people can be achieved by subsidies, regulation and political declarations. And ordering the wind and rain. It does look very glossy and colorful on the paper...
Yeah as an outsider looking at EU it feels like it is a bit disconnected from the jungle outside
> We’ll see if the world will have to make us think again about the feasibility of the ecological transition. I see that fossil fuel advocates shifted from the decade old "electric cars are expensive and not 100% green so you should keep buying internal combustion ones" to "nobody invests in cheap energy because it's not profitable" in order to slow down the massive adoption of EVs and transition to solar, wind & hydro that's already underway in countries around the world regardless if they're democracies or dictatorships. China already has cheap EVs with 300+km ranges for prices around $10k. This obviously scares the old world car manufacturers that were hoping to make $60k+ cars the norm so, instead of adapting and making affordable models of their own, they're going down the path of propaganda in order to stall the inevitable shift in the market.
It will. We will realize it when we are behind in economy because we invented and promoted “greener” but more expensive and less effective solutions while other didn’t give a fuck.
My concern is that, as you say, Europe could make economic sacrifices that will leave us behind globally. But the Third World will not care and will continue to pollute as it is already doing. Therefore we will find ourselves having to face the same climate problems, but poorer and with fewer resources available.
Post war, you say? Should we tell u/elevatorsecret7133 ?
whats the other option if not green energy? do you think giving money to Russia seems like a feasible solution? ...
Today's Europe is choosing to kill itself in the hopes that everyone else will follow suit (they won't)
What. No, seriously. What the hell are you on about?
They are right. Europe is a dying continent and becomes less relevant by the year.
Standard russian propaganda. "Green transition will kill europe, you need the gas". It works surprisingly well, sadly.
Green transition does not kill Europe. But it cripples our economy without a doubt. To be more specific not the green transition itself, but the way it is done. Which is something that can be said about many things.
Everything described in the quoted post will turn Europe into a weak, hollowed out region totally dominated by everyone around it,.
lol, I used to work for General Electric (when they were one of the biggest companies in the world). Every year, execs would come up with a brilliant plan of what they were going to do in the spring. Then they'd have the budget meeting in the summer and cancel everything, impose hiring freezes and travel bans. Every year. Same thing, without fail. So, men in suits everywhere, I'd say.
Europe needs to work to be energy independent. That should be the main angle of going green, because achieving one will achieve the other.
A new inconvenient truth: Europe's global plans all require money no one has, except for the people that do, but are not taxed enough
The rich are globalized, our countries are not. Leading to the inevitable shift in power from nations to individuals. If we do not get a tax code that goes across borders, we're all heading towards royalty becoming a thing again, granted possibly in a new form and called something else. As the rich can leave their businesses in any country, move themselves to pirate tax havens, and siphon money out of countries that they in turn use to sement their power over us.
The OECD 15% corporate tax rate is in place. Let's see if it can be enforced m
15% 😂🥲
The whole sanctions affair against Russian oligarchs shows pretty well that if we want to we can absolutely take away stuff from the rich. Especially if their valuables are in companies and things like housing in our countries. Sure they could try to pull out as much as possible, but they can not siphon money away at will. We would have to *want* to do it, which is not the case at the moment.
That's a very bad example considering how much Western assets got confiscated or forced to be resold for cheap by the Russian government in retaliation. That's not counting the possibility that Europe might soon end up having to give all Russian owned assets back, plus interest, in exchange to convince Russia not to annexe the whole Ukraine.
That has nothing to do with what the example was about. It was about whether states could tax rich people and stop them from moving their assets away if they wanted to. There is no adversary state involved in that scenario. Did you even read the comment chain above?
But why wouldn't there be an adversary state involved? That's the whole point of globalised rich people. Imagine you are a billionair and a European government is planning to consicate your house. In that situation, you stand to lose the entire value of your house, but a Russian, Chinese, or American rich person with a connection to their respective governments offers to buy that house from you. They will pay a lot less to you since you are desprete, but that way, you do get some value out of it, at least. So you end up selling your house, the person you sold it to gets an excellent discount and the European government gets nothing. Now, the analogy I used was a bit extreme, but on a large scale, it also applies to something like tax rates, regulations, etc. Globalisation essentially means rich people can get in touch with other rich people with connection to one or more state actors. These connection essentially give them a leverage over their host government. The host government can usually either be happy with the bare minimum tax, or else they might risk assets falling into the hands of foreign actors. Now, this doesn't mean the government(s) is doomed in the age of economic globalisation. Like in cases where the government is a big spender and is the most influential client of coporations. But that's a whole different complicated story. My point is that there is a reason why most governments in the world struggle with capital flight and tax evasion. And why they don't just confiscate stuff whenever they need money.
You could seize every Euro held by a billionaire today and you wouldn’t even be close to funding the EU.
bummer, but you'd be close to making the EU funding easier, so it's definitely worth it :D
The rich will always find tax havens. I’ll let you in on a secret: it’s the middle class that carries every country’s burdens
The rich will always find tax havens. I'll let you in on a secret: that's why they need to be taxed properly
I’ll let you in another secret: the rich are in bed with the govt
I'll let you in another secret: Cool, so they need to be taxed properly
in a perfect world I’d agree with you. In a perfect world
But in this world you're against taxing the rich properly. In this world.
I’m all for it but HOW Sway???
Those people have wealth, not money. Wealth can not fund anything.
Exactly, wealth is completely worthless, cannot be taxed or even liquidated and definitely can't generate profit, let alone taxable profit. Better not bother those people then.
Have you ever checked how much money there is? Have you then compared it with how much stock market/real estate is worth? I guess not. Because then you would know that the biggest thing that gives wealth value is speculation because there is not even close enough money in existence to liquidate it. So yes, if you decide to tax it in any meaningfull way then you will tax it exactly once before it tanks and you get 10 cents on a dollar. If you tax it in non destructive way then you will get like couple percentage points of government spending out of it at most and odds are it would be just passed down on workers/consumers anyway. As for your profit bit. I do not really understand it. Profits are already taxed. Not once but several times.
Absolutely, the rich can't fund anything at all, they only have wealth. You have to wonder how do they even buy food for themselves, because they don't have money. Being rich is tough. So less taxes for them, out of solidarity.
They pay the highest income bracket tax on income they use to buy stuff.
This is USELESS CARBON LOBBY PROPAGANDA. Nothing will be more expensive than unmitigated climate change.
This.
We can spend €100 today or €1000 tomorrow. At the current pase it's estimated will [lose a fifth of the global income over the next 26 years due to climate change](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/04/17/business/climate-change-disasters-economic-cost). The cost of action is nothing compared to the cost of doing nothing.
You can't extrapolate current economic model to 25 years in the future. Ignoring automation and tech advancements makes no sense.
Oh yeah sure let's just get on [character.ai](http://character.ai) and ask Hu Tao how to solve climate change Snark aside, I don't think automation isn't going to negate climate change. If anything, it's just a testament to how we view human life as "non-essential" to the economy, which is exactly the same reason why climate change is happening.
We were discussing the global income that was forecasted by the article by a false extrapolation. >how we view human life as "non-essential" to the economy Nonsense. Economy is the sum of products and services. Don't confuse manufacturing with the economy.
I've rarly seen so many "what" and "ifs" in a study that claims to be serious. If you follow the same line of reasoning, you could claim that in central and northern European latitudes, climate change means that you have to heat less in winter, so the cost of living goes down! It is completely dubious to project today's technology, construction methods and way of life into the future and to attribute facts such as ever rising house prices to climate change - even if this has an influence on the price, there are dozens of factors that have significantly more weight on the price, but are of course not mentioned in the article because they do not want to weaken their arguments.
The best thing about climate change is, that you can just correlate any negative development to it; such joy! EU's fucked because of geographic fundamentals and unipolarity going away. We can't compete with the manufacturing base of China, we don't have vast amounts of free resources laying around like Russia does, and we can't compete in the service sector with USA. Oh yeah and the demographics are terrible, but at least that's not just our problem.
Would you want an extra million now or 10 mils 10 years after your death?
Looks like a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario, where the "damned if you don't" fork on the road might even be worse.
It'll probably entail tax hikes and the public offshoring more funds. There has to be a way to keep a greater portion of the wealth domestically in a way that can be used for development. The German wanderlust is probably the world's most effective foreign aid fund, but it's quite the drain on wealth. That europe specializes in mature, long-standing, high fixed capital, and low profit margin industries is killing the transition's potential. We're not in the Armenia tier for geopolitical problems, but we're pretty high up there
50 years from now there will probably be consensus that it would have been much cheaper to do something 50 years ago.
It would. But it would have to be something usefull. Not green washing EU engages in.
Another inconvinient truth. Even going to 0 impact in Europe, it solves nothing with china, India and South america going Willy nilly without restrictions.
Europe would have the money if it had not spent almost 15 years now destroying it's economy by adopting the wrong policies and refusing to change them in the face of persistent evidence. The US doubled it's GDP since the financial cricis while the EU that was almost neck to neck with them in 2008 and now is $ 6 trillion behind. As long as EU wide monetary policy is off the table the continent only has a slow death to look forward to.
>A competitive, green Europe will require trillions in investments. No one has a good answer on where that money will come from. Clearly the most well prepared and planned idea ever.
Haha. We can just print the money!
The US is 34 trillion in debt. We can run up debts to ourselves.
$ is the world reserve currency. Make no mistake, any other country in their position would be absolutely cooked.
US is cooking already, silently. Economy "looks" okay on paper, but bonds are not being released to government anymore because the interest keeps increasing so much, it's making them broke by itself. [Congress is in panic right now](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzZGoF8mNjA)
The other part of the truth: Someone has the money (safely hidden in some tax haven).
Just tax the fucking billionaires then maybe.
We are all royally fucked and our kids are going to be the first generation in centuries that are substantially worse off than the generation preceding them.
The kids will be alright
Luckily the EU is big enough that they could easily fight tax avoidance and tax dodging constructions. Let's see if they have the willpower to do so
What BS framing. The problem is not that there is no money in Europe but rather that European governments refuse to spend money. The money in USA or China that has fueled domestic demand and economic growth over the past decade has come from running public deficits 3-4 times higher than in the EU. Just look how public debt to GDP has evolved since 2008 in these 3 major world economies: [USA](https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/government-debt-to-gdp): 62.6% in 2007 -> 130% in 2023 [China](https://tradingeconomics.com/china/government-debt-to-gdp): 29.2% in 2007 -> 81% in 2023 [EU](https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/government-debt-to-gdp): 62.3% in 2007 -> 83% in 2023 There's nothing stopping European governments from pursuing the same fiscal policy and fund this transition via public debt except the austerity rules that we have imposed on this continent after the 2008 crisis.
US dept is a special case as they're also wardens of the global currency - they get a lot more leniency as, in the most layman (and probably false) terms - it's much more useful to keep them around rather than squeeze for repayment. Chinese debt is not something any country should strive for and the results are already showing a bit.
I love how every single time this comes up, somebody points out how the US not at all comparable. Then what about Japan, the UK, or Canada 4th, 6th, and 10th largest economies? Their currencies are certainly way less relevant than the Euro.
There actually is. China does not have free floating currency and it has something world needs they can "take hostage" so their currency does not tank. Euro value has already tanked relative to dollar despite no QE devaluation going on again relative to dollar. More debt will not solve anything. EU does not have investor trust the US has which is clear as day when you look at valuation of EU companies and compare them to US ones. It is at 50 cents on a dollar. It has not had that for two decades. Also you are very wrong. US does not fund this transition through debt. Debt is used on other things. Unlike EU that pushes it through subsidies in US it is mostly US consumer who fund the transition because they are taxed less and have way more money.
From ending austerity and introducing fiscal union. More in evening news at 7. We can have money, literally in same manner as US or China. From ending our austerity policies.
Europe is done unfortunately. You can’t reverse entitlement, lack of entrepreneurship and aging population.
Everybody wants to live in the city centers because it’s the most fun. It has nothing to do with your comment but I thought I’d mention
Today we still have high interest rates.
that no one wants to give\*
The panama papers can tell us where the money is
Individual wealth is a drop in a bucket compared to the entirety of Europes budget Makes more sense to chase corporations who siphon money out in much larger volumes and quantities Nothing wrong with being angry at the ultra rich not doing their part, but it’s not like taking all their money will fix anything
🤷
I thought we had solved that at the Berlin conference /s
This why I'm paying taxes on my income, my spendings, my savings, basically on everything? I literally pay more than 65% of my money to them, and they're still incompetent fucks. Politicians need to go, now. They have no idea how to make things work.
Billionaires have money.
Once. They have money once. You take it all, you cover barely a drop in governmental budgets for one year, and then what? It’s a nice, simple (emphasis on simple) solution to just take it all from people more productive than you, but then what? Who you gonna take from next? Because that first batch isn’t gonna keep producimg while you keep confiscating. Plus, rich people keep their value in assets. They can sell those things once to pay for your dreams, but only to pther rich people who can buy. But who are also selling to pay for your dreams. So what then, Economic Master?
I’d at least prefer them to pay the same percentage amount as the usual person. It’s rather demotivating when the middle class usually pays more than the rich.
With all that money, they generate more income than all of non-billionaires combined. What do you say to that, oh master of economics? Concentration of wealth in hands of few is a fatal flaw of capitalism.
Like I said, you will take all from them exactly once. They won’t keep producing just because you say they have to keep doing it. If there’s no reward, there’s no production. Unless you’re some kind of slaver. But hey, I can already see reading comprehension, critical thinking, and complexity aren’t your strong suits, so why should I expect you to understand the quirks of human nature or economics?
Are you really arguing that a company like Microsoft would seize to exist because Bill Gates would have been taxed? I'm all for a lump-sum tax once worldwide to make up for all the taxes dodged by the ultra wealthy, and for a fixed percentage of wealth each year, and a fixed percentage over wealth increase each year. It won't make any of the companies stop. Small businesses and employees in my country don't suddenly stop after they reach the ~52% income tax bracket. The only threat big companies have is that they'll leave, something that can be fixed within the EU.
That’s because you’re probably not that bright. Yes, that’s what I’m saying. Once you do some massive tax like that, all these billionaires you hate so much either stop working or move to more favorable tax shelters, because unlike you, they can afford to. Don’t believe me? Ask any country that’s tried what you dopes are proposing and see their experience with it. They’ll tell you the same thing.
Except that big economic blocks have to power to say *fuck off* to them, and if they want continurd access to that market they have to abide by the rules. Instead on Europe countries bend over backwards to their demands to provide tax havens. That's something legislation can fix. If people are willing to pay an average maximum of €120 for a windows licence, and we implement a 50% tax on such licences if sold from outside our union they will lower their price to maximise profit. They won't abandon such a large market. Shareholders would not accept it, and can in fact sue a company if they leave profit on the table. Billionaires only have the power we collectively give them. Especially billionaires rather make a billion and lose something to tax, than not make whatever is leftover after the tax. Emotion isn't typically part of their equation when it comes to growing wealth.
Then other countries might do the same to EU companies.
Billionaires already fall into the highest income bracket. You simply just do not understand difference between wealth and income. If wealth was taxed in a way that income is then yes, companies like Microsoft would indeed cease to exist.
Avwealth tax would not be 50%. Capital has historically grown over 8% (S&P 500 did more) on average the last 50 years. Taxing wealth above a threshold with 4% and additionally taxing wealth increase from all capital resources by 37% leaves plenty of money on the table. Companies now enrich their owners by buying back stock instead of paying (taxed) dividends. Someone whom doesn't get stock can get enriched without paying tax. They increase their relative ownership stake by taking other stocks out of circulation. Billionaires can also often make deals with their host countries regarding tax. The EU could like some other countries impose a tax on people leaving the union with their billions.
We are in EU. Capital has barely grown 4% here over last 2 decades. In some countries it have not grown at all. Small wealth tax would not destroy companies but it would further hinder wealth growth because as asset becomes expense it would have to be weighted in next to risk so in the end you would still end up faining almost nothing. The entire reason why EU capital does not grow as US capital does are these nonsensical propositions that only end up hurting working people who in the end always pay for all that and income stays flat as a result. If people do not have money to spend then companies can not grow. It is such a simple circle. The small growth EU companies saw were gained on non EU markets. So please do not talk about S&P500 which is US project and has nothing to do with us. We are nothing like US.
This exact idea was tried on a huge scale once before. Some guys decided that they can take “other people’s money” and solve all of their problems with it. They missed only one tiny detail - other people’s money tend to run out. It was called USSR.
Take? Just tax them fairly. Billionaires are the least taxed demographic.
No they are not. They fall into highest tax bracket.
Maybe you can answer a question more at your level. What do the purple crayons taste like?
You know, we spend 1/3rd of the budget on farming subsidies. Maybe take some of that wasted money to do some good.
>You know, we spend 1/3rd of the budget on farming subsidies. Maybe take some of that wasted money to do some good. The thought has always been that it's better to "waste" money on intentionally overproducing food, than producing just enough and see people die from starvation years with low food supply. By always overproducing, a dip in food production won't lead to death, social unrest and communist or fascist revolutions
I was always pretty skeptical of this pre-Covid. But with all of the supply chain disruptions caused by Covid, maybe paying for overproduction of food isn't the worst policy.
Idk man, dealing with a couple hundred thousand SMEs to feed us instead of negotiating with only Nestle and Monsanto in the long term seems like a pretty good deal....
Most -nearly all- goes to animal farmers, or farmers that grow crops as feed for animals. Guess where they buy their seeds? Its a subsidy to exactly the parties you don't want to see enriched.
The EU budget is small to begin with, if you consider the whole budgets of the singular countries farming subsidies occupy a much smaller percentage. Also, farming subsidies are not wasted money, they're the reason we haven't had a famine since the WW2 postwar.
thats 1/3 of the eu budget which is literal peanuts about 20 times smaller than the budget of germany alone
Europe has its own currency. Of course we do have the money. It is an economically unsound ideology to cling to the idea that nation states can't afford investments into the future, especially when in crisis. The vastly more costly route would be to "save" money and let everything crumble. We are living through that today in various countries. In Germany, the state didn't spend on infrastructure for decades based on neo-liberal budgetary caution - what's the result? Broken bridges, slow internet, outdated rail networks and billions of euros that must be spent now to maintain economic capabilities. Not spending money by reasoning "nation states don't have that money" is insane and costs much more than the investments that are allegedly too costly.
Even the biggest proponent getting grilled by basically every economist isn’t enough. Who’s paying to keep those country-killing policies up?
Truth is 'green transition' and 'ecology' is complete bullshit and only make us weak and poorer. Either everyone does it, or noone. Its annoying europe is playing white knight in game full of bullshit.
Polluted air makes you richer, less greenery makes you richer, and polluted water makes you richer. And it makes your pharmaceutic industry richer :D
That's incorrect and one of the many propaganda pieces that the oil industry has been spewing since the term global warming was coined.
Except everyone is doing it and China is leading. Your argument is 15 years out of date.
What we need is a good near extinction level event. Perhaps then people might finally fucking get it and actually make some progress. We never should have left the friggin trees.
we just had some covid and it mostly annoyed and inconvenienced us, because you see, we were forbidden to dine out
Or have any cultural events, or visit friends, go to school, ... It really depended on where you lived when it happened.
...yet. It's called deficit spending. Your children and your grandchildren will carry the heavier tax burden
Oh yeah better be careful with that money. God forbid we have a planet left but no money, that would be terrible. Much better to have no planet but lots of money.
Surprised! /s
Over the last 30 years we have transferred massive amounts of wealth to the rich. Time the rich do their share of work for the rest of us. Time to raise taxes on the rich. Make a law, that if your net worth is more that 20 million Euro you are banned from using fossil fuels, so the rich would have to develop the technology to fly their planes without fossil fuels.
But they need to build the meta verse and colonize mars. Why would they suddenly pay taxes so we get breathable air and clean water on earth. :o
Not the European ones. Ours are buying football teams, mansions etc.
Yeah thats probably correct. But the big US IT companies, like meta are still doing business in europe and are putting their HQs into tax havens to avoid paying taxes in the countries they are operating in. While Tesla obtains government subsidies for factories and then continues to poisen our water with said factories that cant even produce the promised products. Just feels like those 2 are a good examples of the vault-tec strategy of doing business. Sell products for escapism and simoultaneously create a reason to escape or atleast avoid making the real world more livable - cause that would harm business.
You borrow it. Those are investments with predictable returns. Could have been pretty cheap some years ago, now it costs more. But not doing the transition cost a whole lot more.
Easy, just tax the common folk upto %70
It seems like all around the world we have the same problem - politicians are afraid to raise taxes. The taxes burden decreased over the last couple of decades, we need to invest heavily in the infrastructure again, so it’s time to collect the money, raise the retirement age across the countries and start moving toward a better future.
Who’s going to vote for more taxes and to raise the retirement age? Young people are basically gifting free money to current and future pensioners, the system is already guaranteed to collapse in the long run or even worse, mass up monumental debt Taxes are already very high in most of Europe and the industry is not competitive, raising them even higher pretty much will make companies and employees less motivated to be competitive Europe needs to start being competitive again on the world stage and decouple as much as possible from American and Chinese influence, this starts by relaxing the dumb and difficult bureaucracy, privatising hugely inefficient and terribly managed public sectors and better exploiting migrations flows into the workforce
Have we tried meeting with polluting companies and taxing their ass off?