
France's Macron calls for democratic conventions to rebuild EU - anigbrowl
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-07/macron-calls-in-athens-for-democratic-conventions-to-rebuild-eu
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chollida1
Well alot of problems that the EU has had have been related on countries
having fiscal control but not monetary control.

[http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/100314/whats-
differe...](http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/100314/whats-difference-
between-monetary-policy-and-fiscal-policy.asp)

Before the EU and a central currency a country like Greece would print money
to deflate its debts, this would cause the currency fall in relation to its
neighbors, which makes it cheap to visit Greece, which stimulates the economy
and the economy inflates until its time to repeat.

With the Euro currency this option is off the table for Greece. I'm not sure
how they solve this unless they move to a model more like Canada where the
Federal government controls the majority major monetary decisions and lets
individual provinces(EU countries) decide how to spend the money that the main
government gives it, thereby limiting the local governments(EU Countries)
ability to go into debt and preventing a situation like the absurd spending
that went on in Greece.

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anigbrowl
Why not let American states issue their own currencies and have 50 different
flavors of dollar, then? I mean, everyone knew that already but considered the
advantages of a common currency and common market for goods and services a
better option overall. Adopting such exposes various problems (some more
political than others) but that doesn't mean going back to a more familiar
inefficient system is going to give you a better result.

The EU does need some sort of central budgeting/policy mechanism, but
participation needs to be vastly easier and bureaucracies (national and
federal) dismantled. Governance should be an _activity_ not a specific job or
class.

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bitL
As French are getting tired of Macron's "same old", it's time for another
grandiose statement-fest, this time about EU, deeper integration, unity and
whatever.

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squozzer
A true U.S. of E maybe?

I have a hard time envisioning the various Euro heads of state accepting a
subordinate role to a Euro-prez but hey, we did it back in 1787. So it's at
least possible.

~~~
somebodynew
It's amazing that it worked given that it wasn't intentional. The US was
originally envisioned as a system much closer to the EU than the modern day
US. Overreaction to the failures of the Articles of Confederation due to an
overly weak federal government pushed the pendulum the other way and created a
much stronger latent federal government than was intended as it started to
slowly exercise the full extent of the letter of the law over the next
centuries.

~~~
Nomentatus
Not to mention one A. Lincoln changing the rules to accommodate a war.

The first constitution didn't leave much ability to raise taxes, since a
loathing of taxes help start the revolution. The result was so destructive, a
new constitution became inevitable, and Washington spearheaded

The Return of George Washington: Uniting the States, 1783-1789, by Edward
Larson is a good source on these events.

Some learned from this that low taxes aren't such a great thing; others,
obviously, have yet to learn (or admit) that.

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boomboomsubban
I'm not seeing a reference to the UK, which is probably political tact. It
would be tragically funny if this was all leading to "De Gaulle was right,
accepting the United Kingdom was a mistake," but I should stop even thinking
of the tragically funny things at this point.

