>>In June, the European Central Bank announced that it had exchanged €500 million ($611 million) worth of US dollar reserves into yuan securities. This was a small shift—the ECB has €44 billion in foreign exchange reserves
Before declaring fall of USA, blaming Trump for apocalypse and anointing Xi as the new Emperor, lets take step and really see the numbers.
$611 million is a marginal amount when we are talking about foreign reserves, its sure not nothing, the Germans are basically telling Americans hey look what we can do here. Its a passive aggressive move but mostly symbolic.
If they buy more Yuan, and Yuan to Dollar exchange rate gets effected. Walmart needs to shop somewhere else because Chinese goods are not cheap any more.
This is kind of ridiculous. The purpose of reserves is not to send political messages. It's to provide a mechanism to manage monetary policy and it does that through buying back its liabilities.
To do this effectively you must hold a strong currency as your reserve- there's no point holding Zimbabwe dollars. So any reasonable reserves for a European country today will be part Dollar, Pound, Yen and Yuan. How much of each should be proportional to how stable that currency is and how highly correlated it is to your own currency.
This is not a political message, the ECB is just neutrally moving more towards Yuan as the Chinese economy gains importance relative to the US economy. That's all. It's not a good sign for the US, but the ECB has better ways to send political messages than buying $X00m dollars or Yuan.
Ideally the rest of the developing world grows far richer than they are today, which gives the US (and everybody else) more lucrative trading partners. Countries like: Vietnam, Indonesia, Brazil, Colombia, India, Nigeria. Even present mid-tier nations like Estonia, Czech, Slovakia, etc you want to see them go on to become the next Austrias and Denmarks. It's all very beneficial to the US and everybody else.
Well, if wealth is spread more evenly around the globe, this will indeed be good. Less unrest, less war, less refugees. Not sure if it's beneficial for the US as well though - the money flowing to Vietnam/Slovakia/Nigeria, etc has to come from someone...
No, otherwise the world would have the same aggregate welfare as it did in the 18th century (or some arbitrary time in the past). The idea of this being some zero-sum game is not only naive but dangerous.
It is hard to say much of substance on macro economic stuff - because all knowledge in this area is not within the realm of personal experience of any person. I therefore find it hard to trust anybody on such issues.
Exports of what? iPhones? These are all made in China, and with the dollar dropping against the Yuan, anything the US imports from China (and also from Europe) will be getting more expensive. And with the dollar dropping, bonds in dollars will be less interesting for investors.
Basically, the article suggests that where Trump is aiming to MAGA, the entire opposite seems to happen: the rest of the world accellerates where Trump hits the breaks. Take the example of solar panels: what good will this do to the US? It will make solar-companies doing less research as the Chinese competition is gone. It will impact consumers, and the environment. But it will hardly impact the Chinese - their export will be used internally and in Europe.
Edit: yeah - the Europeans make cars... Volkswagen is the second largest in the world, after Toyota. Daimler (Mercedes) is fourth. Apparently, the top-16 based on revenue includes only 3 American companies...
There are plenty of brands common on European roads that are American brands. Opel and Ford being the non-luxury examples.
Oh and if you take the "but designed and built in ..." standard, then there simply is no European car anymore. Most components are Chinese, Indian, or at the very least Eastern European (outside of EU)
b) That's simply not true. Automotive supply chains indeed are quite global nowadays, in this regard you could say there's simply no <insert nation here> car anymore, for any given country/region.
But - in contrast to other sectors - the automotive industry (including parts industry) is HUGE in the EU, including actual manufacturing.
"lots" would need to be quantified. Mentally scanning the garage at work, I do not think I saw one American car (France, very large company).
I casually glanced through a few Google images matches for "traffic in Paris". I do not know much about cars but all seemed to be European or Japanese.
I shared some links with the other guy, but anyway about 8% of Europe's market is Ford and 4% GM. FCA (sort of a joint Italo-American venture) is another 7% if you want to count them. So that's almost a fifth of the market if you add all those up.
For instance, Ford still makes up something like 8% of Europe's market (http://shareholder.ford.com/~/media/Files/F/Ford-IR/events-a...) -- maybe not the unstoppable juggernaut of the continent, but a lot of vehicles. And there are a number of European Ford models not even available for sale in the US (mostly hatchbacks). That's just one maker.
Perhaps they sell better in the UK than continental Europe or something, I don't know, but tens of thousands of cars sold per month is not nothing.
Europe can buy all the yuan in the world and it won’t have any effect.
The exchange rate between the dollar and the yuan is set by the rate at which China is buying US debt not by the global markets.
China prints money to buy US debt it allows China to devalue its own currency without devaluing its assets and this deal allowed the US to pretty much generate as much currency as they want through cheap debt without devaluing it.
The only thing that would affect Walmart is a tariff war with China, Europe can huff and puff all it wants but it isn’t a relevant player in this specific scenario.
You could make the claim that China was devaluing its currency in 1995 but since then the Yuan has been gaining in value relative to the dollar.[1] I think that became a talking point back when it was true and people have just been repeating it ever since without reexamining.
Those aren't mutually exclusive, this isn't as bad as the "currency wars" of the mid 90's where the US wen't crying all the time to the WTO about China at least publicly.
But China very much still controls the exchange rate of the Yuan to the dollar and still devalues it's currency in order to boost exports.
How can you say China is devaluing its currency to boost when the price of the currency is increasing in dollar terms? And generally speaking you can't keep exports inflated for long by currency devaluation any more than you can use inflation to keep unemployment low. In the end the trade balance will revert to what you'd expect from the savings rates of the two countries, and in this case China's higher savings rate means it exports a lot more to the US than vice versa.
Clearly GP means that the price would be increasing more quickly without the hypothesized devaluation. Like most economic questions, this isn't binary.
> Europe can buy all the yuan in the world and it won’t have any effect.
That is entirely wrong.
There is only a limited amount of Yuan, so by definition the supply of Yuan is affected, no matter in which currency it is bought. Therefore, the price is affected as well.
Will wheat in USD get more expensive if I buy all your wheat with Ruble? You bet it will.
The supply of the Yuan is controlled by China, but In this case the limit isn't the available supply of the Yuan at all.
For Europe to buy Yuan it needs to exchange something for it, usually another currency likely in this case the dollar rather than EUR.
The hard limit is more on how much EUR does China wants to hold and how much USD Europe is willing to spend on buying Yuan.
Beyond that you also go into the realm of would China allow Europe to hold large amounts of Yuan, countries tend to be protective of their currency and restrict any single entity from holding amounts large enough to do substantial damage if dumped.
Basically they would allow you to buy enough currency for them to benefit but not enough for you to hold it over their head.
The amount of Yuan isn't literally infinite but China can print new Yuan a lot faster than Europe can buy it up and, in practice, would absolutely need to in response to extra European demand so as to not suffer from a deflation induced depression.
Not to mention which the post-world-war-II international order is falling apart politically which suggests there will be a monetary realignment in the not too distant future.
This isn't a big deal because of the relative size of the flow; it's a big deal in the way that a dam suddenly spouting water around the edges is a big deal.
> China prints money to buy US debt it allows China to devalue its own currency without devaluing its assets and this deal allowed the US to pretty much generate as much currency as they want through cheap debt without devaluing it.
So China is printing money to buy up the debt generated by the US printing money? I'm not an economist, but that does not sound like a reasonable way for a world economy to run on.
Things are much more complicated than this, but essentially China as a primary exporter wants to keep the value of it's currency as low as possible since the exporters then benefit on exchange rates.
It also wants stability so it basically pegs the Yuan to the dollar, historically directly and more recently in directly (the Chinese central bank sets more or less of a fixed exchange rate but it does allow it to deviate somewhat these days).
Now to prevent the Chinese economy from being effectively run on and by foreign currency China heavily restricts the ownership and settlement in foreign currency internally. It basically forces the exporters/manufactures to exchange the foreign currency they paid in (usually USD) back to Yuan for any internal use (or alternatively if you want to do business in china you basically have to exchange your currency in Yuan it's the same thing).
It then uses that surplus of foreign currency to buy other assets, primarily dollar bonds such as US treasury bonds which basically brings back all those dollars that came from the US and everywhere else in the world back to the US.
And even this is like very very basic overview of things.
On some level the US economy or at least the dollar economy is basically based on the fact that the dollars used in international trade have to come back to the US.
Basically you buy dollars from the US, you use those dollars to buy something e.g. goods from China then those dollars go straight back to the US in exchange usually for "cheaper" dollar bonds.
The debt economy a side the scheme is when viewed on a global scale is almost like you never actually own a dollar you simply rent it out.
The GDP of Europe is irrelevant for this scenario the monetary relationship between the dolllar and the yuan isn’t like most currencies. Until 2005 it was pegged to the dollar completely since then it’s effectively pegged to the rate at which China buys dollar bonds.
However I haven't read them thoroughly, so I suggest you invest some time in doing some research.
P.S. I really hate this source/citation discourse that is effectively taken over every debate on the internet opinions can be constructed out of vast amounts of information and experience and even casual observations tend to be the product of much more information that can be distilled into bit size pieces.
Just do research and learn, stay away from wikipedia and go for academic and sources and don't shy from even biased opinion pieces as those tend to be some of the most valuable as they expose you to concrete positions and being wrong or right does not change their value.
I think a lot of the problem is I can't trust your reputation unless I know you or you have some other proven characteristics to help create that trust. There are a few people on HN like that, but it's rare. In real life if you present an opinion I know what you do for a living and potentially how educated that opinion is. On the internet I don't.
That means that if you're an econ PhD and you tell me a basic statement, I'll trust it in real life. On the internet you'd have to prove you're a PhD first. It really does limit the conversation we can have. A lot of the time I find myself talking to someone (or arguing with them) and realizing they don't have the framework to hold the conversation - they'd need to read a half dozen books and do some intensive study because they want to work through problems that have already been solved.
No one said anything about trusting an opinion or a presented fact, you should always do your own research that's the point.
On a more anecdotal side the people I tend to "trust" the least at least on the internet are those who often come out with citations for everything and dump a huge wall of text.
The problem with the internet is that you can find a citation for everything, I can find that enough citations that lizard aliens are actually the ones who control the exchange rate of the Yuan to the Dollar using a weather machine.
The credibility of sources is also extremely hard to determine these days especially in subjects which are not your primary proficiency it's too easy to publish anything you want these days even in reputable sources.
So, you object to people asking for citations because citations suck? The problem then comes back to how to know which to trust, which usually requires a reasonable degree of proficiency in and knowledge of the subject.
My point was partially that if I encounter you in another environment, I can quickly and easily assess whether you have the required proficiency, even if I don't possess it. It's much harder to do that online, at least at the moment.
I can't always do my own research, as I don't have the time to build a framework of knowledge that would allow me to do it efficiently, much less brute force it. All I can do is ask people I know who are very well educated in a field or read an abstract.
Unfortunately, what you suggest is a circular set of actions.
Why would I read comment sections if I'd already had the time and been able to find high quality sources to learned about the topic?
If you don't feel like citing sources, or don't have any good ones handy, saying so is fine. But even providing the right terms to search can be helpful!
The search terms I've used were "Yuan dollar relationship" I'm not entirely sure if these are the best terms to use in this case but these were the ones with the least amount of confirmation bias, so you'll only have to deal with the usual search engine bias.
I don't see anything passive aggressive in this. America's foreign policy is being criticized openly and showing that other countries don't necessarily only need the US-Dollar is an extension of that.
According to this same article, 1% of Europe's current reserves are in yuan, and $611 million is about 1% of that 1%. Or, in other words, 0.01% of the total 6.9 Trillion. Actually a bit less than that.
This is bad reporting. The amounts are too small to be meaningful in the currency markets.
In addition, China has enormous interest in maintaining the dollar as the reserve currency. Keeping the USD as reserve currency allows the US to borrow at very low rates, and borrowing at low rates is a pillar of its debt-driven economy. The US debt-driven economy is what makes a market for Chinese exports. And China's economy is basically exports plus infrastructure investments by state-owned enterprises. Take away the US for the exports and China has a huge problem. That's why it buys so many Treasuries.
There's also an argument to be made that the yuan is over-valued. It took a nose-dive when China briefly removed currency controls (last year?) because a lot of people wanted to move their money out.
A few years ago I couldn’t tell you the name of a Chinese company off the top of my head, now I can not only rattle of a list, they’re companies I’ve worked with or have significant investments in companies in the US. I also have a roster of WeChat contacts.
I also work with multiple ex-pats that fled fearing for their life due to persecution based on their religion (Falung Gong), and laugh at how freaked people are about an insignificant Trump compared to a truly vicious government.
It’s pretty easy to argue that the CIA is the antithesis of American idealism - unelected bureaucrats doing jobs that the public has no power to hold them accountable for.
> It’s pretty easy to argue that the CIA is the antithesis of American idealism - unelected bureaucrats doing jobs that the public has no power to hold them accountable for.
I think I got that one, Alex: "What is Congressional oversight?"
It's not that it's an antithesis of the ideal; it's just that things get real messy when the idealism meets reality. Elected officials are supposed to represent the public and carefully vet before appointment, and then hold the unelected bureaucrats accountable.
Alternative interpretation: the system is working exactly as designed, and "American Interests" trump any idealism.
> Fixed that for you. Do I need to get the CIA and various wars lists from Wikipedia?
Please, do tell me of the CIA's murderous and oppressive domestic activities since 1950 [1], and how they have been of a comparable magnitude to China's.
[1] The PRC was founded in 1949, so this time period is to make it comparable.
oh FFS, compare that to the cultural revolution, which ended in 1976. the whataboutism here is annoying; while we were debating and agonizing over the impact of the vietnam war, China was busy imprisoning, torturing, and relocating its own citizens over ideology. It created a culture of children informing on their own parents.
I wish people would realize how much they have dodged a bullet by growing up in western nations.
The US has done this to plenty of its own citizens too, typically the non-white ones. And it didn't stop in the 70s when civil rights were supposedly won.
Do I have you right here, what you seen to be saying is that the well-known images of rows of USA police/soldiers protecting citizens from racists is false? That there was no rule of law, and that the USA government was the force behind racially directed violence? And that still, the government ignored the rule of law and exacts widescale violent action against its citizens motivated by politics/race?
Or is China actually different, and you're talking crap?
>what you seen to be saying is that the well-known images of rows of USA police/soldiers protecting citizens from racists is false
China is of course different --apples to oranges--, but the images you mention are cherry picked. The images that were hidden from the front pages were of the secret police agencies subverting, blackmailing, and assassinating leaders of the civil rights movement.
"We've got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you don't fight racism with racism. We're gonna fight racism with solidarity" -Fred Hampton
A quick look through their reports frames this whole issue in a bit of a different light [0]. Mainly in the context of a Chinese shift from socialism to capitalism and the need for hospitals to fund themselves and run as for profits.
The numbers are big, which looks scary at first glance but ain't really that surprising considering it's the most populated country on the planet. Sadly the report does not seem trying to account for that, by comparing transplants per capita with other countries, instead, it just cites big numbers going "Look how many!".
Without wanting to sound too cynical, this looks more like an example of extreme capitalism, without any regards to ethics, and not for "Communist China being oh so evil", which this often is framed as. Which overall is a rather difficult topic as these are the very same dynamics that make China a world leader in human cloning research and one of the most important manufacturing hubs in the world.
Because as much as people love to hate on the West and its faults, it is also the most tolerant system and allows for the most freedom in every category.
The Chinese do not value things like freedom or tolerance very much, especially if they conflict with order. The value of the individual is also extremely low, whereas the West held the individual as the most valuable thing until just recently when group identities became incredibly important for the sake of skin-deep diversity. It will be interesting to see how that continues to creep into Western culture.
Let me know when they start black-bagging dissidents for speaking up a bit too much.
There are festering problems regarding surveillance in the West, and the prison system is a bit much here in the US, but "freedom on paper" is a load of BS.
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum....”
You can only truly believe this if you have never been an open and active supporter of non-conforming (and threatening to status quo) beliefs or are not black/brown. McCarthyism and antiblackness are still very much built into the functioning system of western nation states.
> You can only truly believe this if you have never been an open and active supporter of non-conforming (and threatening to status quo) beliefs or are not black/brown.
I've been rail-roaded by vindictive government officials who abused their power. Been arrested for it, even. I know what it means to have my first amendment rights violated at a fundamental level.
> McCarthyism and antiblackness are still very much built into the functioning system of western nation states.
That's, like, your opinion man.
Highlighting select abuses of power doesn't negate the fact that I can openly criticize our government, advocate for change, run for office, and store enough small arms to organize an insurrection without fear of reprisal. We may not have absolute freedom, but no one does and no one ever will. In the context of the conversation, we have a helluva lot of freedom. Much more than the comment I responded to appeared to suggest - that we're no better than China.
Again, if you're white. Any time black people have organised and advocated for change and especially if they tried to "store enough small arms to organize an insurrection" they were murdered or locked up for life. Look up the MOVE bombing, black panthers, and basically any radical black nationalist group.
So it's not really just my opinion, man. It's demonstrable historical fact. It's just swept under the rug and shouted over with jingoism and other propaganda about how much freedom we enjoy.
> they were murdered or locked up for life. Look up the MOVE bombing, black panthers, and basically any radical black nationalist group.
Well, that's what happens when you engage in crime, violently resist, and engage in the actual act of insurrection ;)
As it were, the Blacks are not the only ethnicity that have ethnic separatist movements that have been violently squashed, or did you forget the militia movements and subsequent Federal suppressions of the 90s? I suppose that might hurt your narrative, however.
1. Like many countries, China has long been relevant. Like many countries, China has long been gaining relevance.
2. Because they shouldn't
If instead of treating global economy as a zero-sum game, and if we backed off from the fear mongering and admitted that China's economic growth has largely (and unsurprisingly) been to most people's benefits, then we'd welcome the competition and innovation and productivity that China has and will continue to provide.
Religious persecution doesn’t disappear just because of economic growth. Neither does discrimination against sexual preferences (+). That’s the fear expressed above.
(+) unless you limit your knowledge of sexual preferences to just gay/straight — human sexuality is much more complicated than that.
>Religious persecution doesn’t disappear just because of economic growth. Neither does discrimination against sexual preferences (+). That’s the fear expressed above.
The hypocrisy of a country that props constant wars all around the globe, has bombed/invaded 3-4 countries in the last 20 years alone, and constant meddling and manipulations of other governments for its "interests", that had segregation up to the 70s, the worlds largest prison populations by a huge margin, with routine police shootings in the 10x of any other country, pointing the finger to another country for "religious persecution" and "discrimination against sexual preferences" (which itself until 2000 or so had laws declaring "illegal" in many states, and even now has a good 40% or more of the population considering them immoral and believing in all kinds of Bible crap), never ceases to amaze...
I agree that the United States' run as the world's biggest superpower has been far from perfect. I criticise the US a lot. And I actually consider China to be one of the few countries that is not governed by amateurs. China gets a lot of things right.
The one big problem, though, is that China does not believe in freedom. At all. Censorship, no free press, no freedoms of opinion, expression, religion, etc. And they see nothing wrong with that. Whenever the US hurts these freedoms, they get criticised, even by their own people, and they eventually back down.
The fact that the US promises freedom but constantly breaks that promise makes them hypocrites, but it also always has the option that they will get back to their promise. China does not see the point of freedom at all, and considers it dangerous. And that's terrifying.
If we're going to have a superpower, I would love a China that respects freedom in that role. They would be better at it than the US. But current China is not that China.
As flawed as the US is, they at least have that going for them (pre-Trump US, at least). Though ideally, the EU would step up. They don't seem to want to, though.
>If we're going to have a superpower, I would love a China that respects freedom in that role. They would be better at it than the US. But current China is not that China.
Where I disagree is that as a superpower China has been benign. They might have their territorial issues with their neighbors (like every other country, much more an ancient one in a much changed region), but they don't impose their (internal) non-freedom or whatever on the rest of the world with any kind of crusades.
>The one big problem, though, is that China does not believe in freedom. At all. Censorship, no free press, no freedoms of opinion, expression, religion, etc. And they see nothing wrong with that.
That's for themselves to fix/decide, as it is a matter of internal politics. Heck, their majority of their people might very well be fine with it, as they have a totally different political tradition than democracy, going back to taoism and on. Are there dissenters? Sure, but the kind of Chinese people westerners tend to fraternize with are exactly those that would adopt various western values or want some regime change, but that doesn't mean they represent anywhere near a majority -- it's a selection bias.
The one big problem, though, is that China does not believe in freedom
I feel it is not that china doesn’t believe in freedom...it is just that they don’t practice freedom for the time being...but their government always promises future freedom to their people — although that promise may never become true...but the good thing about promising without a specific time is that the promise can always appear to be credible even when one is pushing the day of its realization to the infinity...
No government is capable of friendship with a private person, any more than a human can be friends with a single white blood cell. What they are, governments in general and the EU in particular, is a useful ally.
There is indeed a lot wrong with the EU, as there is with the US and China. But of the three, the EU seems to care the most about protecting regular people from abuse and oppression. They're not perfect about it, and there's a lot of different forces at play in the EU, but on the whole, I tend to like their approach more than those of the US and China.
Likewise, although it has only been recently that my opinion of human rights in the USA has declined — America takes its constitutional rights very seriously, or it seemed to until Snowden.
They went wrong way before Snowden. Guantanamo at least. Patriot Act, arguably. And then there's a rather disgusting way the Vietnam War was waged. Or the systemic racism that goes way back, regularly with deadly consequences.
The US has lofty goals and noble promises, but has always fallen far short.
Actually it does - history is full of examples of just that. As the middle class grows in economic terms, it grows in political influence and the overall values of the society changes to accommodate that class. Introduction of democracy and women’s rights in Europe are good examples.
China may be different. Their planned social credit reputation system, coupled with ubiquitous surveillance, may make it impossible for public opinion in China to force the Chinese government to liberalise.
In the past, the West has had a massive advantage because: (1) their econpomic system was better than everyone else's, and (2) in order to modernise, other cultures have had to adopt some of the West's characteristics, including a greater level of freedom of speech/thought than in other societies. The combination meant that the West had few serious ideological competitors.
But if China becomes the world's biggest economy, if it continues to increase its economy so its per capita GDP is the same as in the USA and western Europe, and it does this while still being an autocracy, things will get very very serious.
The future may well be a jackboot stamping on a human face forever.
Maybe. But china’s overall path is towards more democracy and civil liberty. Compare tianamen square 30 years ago with the handling of the Hong Kong protests.
After both Chicago '68 and the Kent State shooting, there was immediate, extensive blowback in the American press and public. Quite the opposite happened in China after Tiananmen Square.
(Of course, all of the above were decades ago, so we need to keep an open mind about the condition today in the respective countries.)
>After both Chicago '68 and the Kent State shooting, there was immediate, extensive blowback in the American press and public. Quite the opposite happened in China after Tiananmen Square.
I'd say after those it was business and usual, and those involved didn't get even a slap on the wrist. If anything, venting through the press merely let people get steam out and forget more easily....
> If anything, venting through the press merely let people get steam out and forget more easily....
But we didn't get a repeat of either episode. That raises the possibility that people learned lessons, albeit imperfectly, from those experiences of others, which is something for which humankind (not uniquely among the species) has at least some talent.
That's a benefit of a free press. It can be aggravating to see some of the shadier so-called journalists go shamelessly whoring after eyeballs. Still, journalists' collective, competitive desire for attention helps to bring "training cases" (in NN terms) to a broader societal audience. That seems to influence at least some people's behavior. Over the long term — and not without exceptions, some catastrophic — that influence, on balance, is usually for the good.
Why? These things are not even remotely on the same scale. How are you going to reconcile an event that caused ~20k some odd deaths (recent foreign consul leaks during the time) that was nearly 100% covered up by the government vs. Kent State? That's a bit ridiculous imo.
Well, one event threatened a whole regime (and the country's stability) the other was some hippie students protesting at their university.
And still, "twenty-eight guardsmen fired approximately 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds" -- killing 4 and injuring many more.
Which begs the question, if there was major potentially elite affecting / government toppling issue instead of a small scale anti-war protest at a local university, what would be the response?
Interesting question. I do think you are trying to take Kent State out of context though - it wasn't a single event. It was the culmination of anti-war protests in the US, and caused massive and very quick social change once it happened.
These what-ifs of history are certainly interesting though!
Many of the rights we consider intrinsic to modern society, due process, etc., didn’t arise in Europe in respond to the rise of a middle class. In the Anglo tradition, they date back 800 years to the Magna Carta.
> Introduction of democracy and women’s rights in Europe are good examples.
Which is why I said “religious” and “sexual preference”.
Jews were widely discriminated against even a few years after WW2; Muslims are a current whipping-boy; I’m not sure if Catholic-vs-Protestant is as big a divide in Northern Ireland as it looks from the outside, but it does look big; In the USA, Atheists are almost as disliked as Muslims.
Then there’s sexual preference. You’re fine if you’re gay (finally!), but not so much if you’re into BDSM or have any fetishes more complicated than underwear. Also, I have a friend whose sexuality was previously legal, but which was outlawed in half of Europe and half of the USA this century. I invite you to guess what that might be.
5-10% of the population are “into” BDSM, although sex surveys are notorious for underestimating things. Atheism is a curious thing to call a “bizarro religion”; likwise for different reasons Islam, given the latter has ~1.8 billion followers worldwide.
I seriously doubt that. 5-10% of what? the _US population_? I'm pretty certain that 5%-10% of the population have more serious and pressing matters than worrying about their sexual preferences.
USA survey, though I would be surprised if it varied by nation.
People have rioted over the legality of their sex lives, and people have gone to prison because consenting to certain acts was deemed to be conspiracy to some form of serious assault (against themselves) — so I’m inclined to think it’s both significant concern and a major part of personal identity.
And as far as "enjoying life" goes, it's an ever sadder view to place it anywhere aside from luxuries on a society were people are homeless, without healthcare, without steady jobs, working 2-3 jobs, and so on. Not to mention the huge loneliness and depression epidemic, with actual tangible effects on mental and physical health, and wether one can openly smack their partner and electrocute their body parts is quite far from a priority.
It's closer to the "right" to enjoy champagne and oysters than anything fundamental...
> Not to mention the huge loneliness and depression epidemic, with actual tangible effects on mental and physical health, and wether one can openly smack their partner and electrocute their body parts is quite far from a priority.
I don’t claim to understand BDSM, but I do know a fulfilling sex life helps with depression, and that being outcast for your sexuality can cause depression and loneliness.
Sex can be one of the few things left for the homeless and the dispossessed, and has been part of human culture since before the invention of medicine and money, never mind health insurance. Dismissing it as a luxury makes you sound like a French aristocrat (ironically, given where the ‘S’ comes from).
There is a world of a difference between spilling out state secrets, a crime in any Western democracy and simply voicing your displeasure with the government. False equivalence much?
Ah yes, a topic about China and the top comment is some American spreading the usual fud about how China is the pure evil, like it has been engrained into their brains from the day they were born. Sad to see hn is no better than reddit these days.
You should actually go to China, go to Taiwan too to compare, and talk to people who had to leave and were granted refuge status in Canada. You might have a more nuanced understanding than “American
fud”.
Especially since throughout the 20th and 21st century, it wasn't China who was a constant global cop/aggressor, invading countries, spreading "democracy", meddling in Latin America, Asia, Middle East AND Europe, and so on...
China did not have the power before. Who knows how it will act when it does? It's treatment of Tibet, invaded in 1948 and still occupied, is not encouraging.
It used to have this power and it turned all the countries in its neighborhood into tributary states. Which, all things considered, was not that bad, since it was overall a peaceful and stable relationship.
Hard to say how Communist China as a superpower will differ from Imperial China, though...
> Especially since throughout the 20th and 21st century, it wasn't China who was a constant global cop/aggressor, invading countries, spreading "democracy", meddling in Latin America, Asia, Middle East AND Europe, and so on...
I think people have to understand the origin of the dollar reserves before imagining the implication. In the cases of Chinese and Japan (and most other export-oriented economies), the accumulations of dollar reserves are the by-product of the exchange rate manipulations, which are to make their currencies undervalued to maintain the export competitiveness.
The US dollar has been the 'target' of such exchange rate manipulation is mostly because of its role as the largest import economy. As a result, if China becomes the next big importer, other export-oriented countries will probably do the same trick like it has been doing to the US.
It’s not really a trick. If you’re an exporting country and you sell a lot to the US, you’re going to end up with a lot of Dollars. Either that or you’re doing something very wrong.
In any case, China hasn’t been significantly manipulating its currency at least for the last decade. Such charges had some validity in the early 2000s, but that’s old news. Since then China has largely diversified its currency holdings and it’s not really an issue, see link below, but there are stil votes in China bashing.
The article below from 2 years ago on this also sheds some useful light. At the time the dollar had recently rapidly appreciated against most other currencies, but the Yuan was at that point fairly strong and then stayed stable rejecting an opportunity to depreciate along with everyone else. In hindsight the articles analysis has proved to be remarkably prescient. The European banks accumulation of Yuan is testament to the increasing credibility of the Yuan, as it predicted.
I like Japan --I think for a mid-sized country they have done well for themselves... but their representation in foreign reserves is a bit outsized.
The Yuan, given China's economic strength, has nowhere to go but up. We'll have to see how European Central banks like that in 10-20 years when they exert more influence on policy.
The yuan is not convertible, like the yen, dollar, and euro are. It doesn’t float, it’s exchange rate is set by fiat.
When the yuan is actually traded in the wild, then it will move a few steps closer. I don’t think the government will ever let it get stronger than 6 rmb/usd, it would absolutely ruin their exports.
They directly adjust the exchange rate each day, it is not set by the market. There is a market based rate in Hong Kong for RMB (referred to as CNH), but it necessarily closely follows the government rate.
China also imposes heavy capital controls on the ability to move yuan into and out of the country and exchange it for other currencies, which makes it seem like an interesting choice here.
To put it in context, Russian Federation has only 15% larger population. Japan's population is 39% of US. Japan is pretty big, even if only 61th by area.
Another, maybe more significant statistic, China has equaled or surpassed US, in terms the size of retail market, as the first country ever did that in the past 100 years.
That is a more relevant data point of its buying power right now, and potential impact it would have on other economies, if China decides to use its market as a weapon.
Some people would say China is _already_ using its market as a weapon. It's just that China at the moment seems to be a bit more subtle in applying leverage than the US is. Even ignoring Trump, I'd say subtlety is not exactly a big feature of US international policy.
This is not based on GDP. A big part of the USD's stability has been based on an indirect oil backing. Going back to the 70s the US in which we offered substantial benefits to oil producing nations in exchange for little more than them only selling their oil in USD, and then investing excess revenues in US securities. The petrodollar in another word. This has numerous positive effects other than what I'm mentioning here, but I want to keep this brief.
Haven't you ever wondered how it is that the US is going deeper and deeper into debt, how we increased the US Monetary Base 400% since 2008 [1] with no economic consequences, how we 'printed' (not really) trillions of dollars in quantitative easing, or more generally how now we're only paying off old debts by taking on even greater levels of new debt with no reversal anywhere in sight? If a private organization was doing that, it'd be called a Ponzi Scheme. Yet we engage in all of this with minimal to no economic consequences.
But none of this matters because the USD represents access to oil. Oil is the most in demand resource in the world. And when the price of oil is pegged to the dollar, it makes USD the most in demand currency in the world. But China recently has been making huge strides in getting nations to swap to the yuan for oil. Rather than give any links go search for 'china oil yuan' and you'll get countless articles all within the past couple of months about what China has been doing. In particular China is attempting to even get Saudi Arabia to start pegging their oil to the Yuan, which would be an enormous blow to the US. If they succeed here, it may mean that the USD will need to stand on its own weight. And at that point, we may have to answer for our own economic decisions.
I not convinced oil is that big a deal these days. The US kind of owns huge swathes of the world economy - tech - facebook, google apple etc, fast food and drink - coke, pepsi, McD, places to stay - Hilton, Sheraton, airbnb and so on. Typed in Bangkok on an Apple while drinking coffee paid for on MasterCard while waiting to fly on a Boeing.
So people will lend to the US as it had a lot of income, assets and a reputation for paying. Compare that to the country with the world largest oil reserves, Venezuela.
Oddly enough in society the relevance of a resource and its cost are often quite detached. Imagine Facebook/Google/Apple/Coke/etc all shut their doors, never to open again, tomorrow. There'd be no particularly dramatic change in society.
By contrast, imagine all oil producing nations suddenly stopped exporting any oil tomorrow.
Once domestic reserves of countries ran out the entire world would grind to an incredibly rapid halt. Electricity, transportation, shipping, and everything would stutter and then come to a near complete stop. And society itself would likely break down in very short order. It's not about the dollar value of oil, but about its relevance to society. You'd think those two would be strongly correlated, but they're not.
This is why oil and the petro-dollar have so much inherent value. Without oil society collapses, and USD is the gateway to oil. That 'is' may be changing to 'was.'
You may be correct on all the other points but increasing the monetary base by 400% happened at the same time all broader metrics of money (M2, M3, etc.) would have have rapidly fallen and collapsed.
The entire world economy was deleveraging at an enormous rate and essentially destroying tons of money in the process. Fractional reserve banking essentially lets banks create money; when everyone is busy running for the exits of course the Fed can increase the base by 400% and we would merely be treading water.
I have been wondering this myself and oil seems like a good explanation.
What is the explanation for Japan? They don't have oil and they have greater debt than the us (relatively), yet they haven't been met with anything worse than stagnation.
One major difference there is that Japanese debt is mostly held by Japanese institutions. By contrast countries like Greece (and the US) have most of their debt in foreign hands. This dramatically changes the calculus there. Greece could not 'print' euros to pay off its debt, even if it wanted to. Japan can. And as a consequence of their 'nationalization' of debt, they also pay much lower interest - comparable to what we do, in fact.
Even then, I think you have keep things in perspective. 'Just stagnation' understates the situation here. In the late 80s many thought Japan was literally going to take over the world economically. Their GDP today is now lower than it was 2 decades ago. And ultimately there is still no clear path for them out of this decline.
>But China recently has been making huge strides in getting nations to swap to the yuan for oil. Rather than give any links go search for 'china oil yuan' and you'll get countless articles all within the past couple of months about what China has been doing.
Until people around the world can speculate freely on the yuan, and yuan denominated futures like people can with QA and CL, I don't see this having much impact.
Speculators will make up most of the daily volumes, and most never want to take physical delivery of the "gold convertibility" yuan denominated oil futures on expiry, and most certainly want to be able to take their profits out of the yuan to whatever asset of their choosing. Without the the yuan floating, this will be a relatively non liquid market.
>In particular China is attempting to even get Saudi Arabia to start pegging their oil to the Yuan, which would be an enormous blow to the US.
Yeah, I don't see the Saudi's buying Chinese weapons and US weapons without the US giving it's approval [0], because they certainly don't have the same capacity as the US for their citizens buying Chinese goods.
If the EU was actually serious about more trade with China, they should drop a lot of the anti dumping restrictions they have now on trade ;)
I've been watching petro$ developments closely, as they're likely to presage certain world events, and there's definitely been some rumblings. The yuan recently received inclusion into the IMF SDR basket, and I wonder if that's given it some more cachet as a reserve currency.
One of the big benefits, indirectly already mentioned, is inflationary controls. Imagine the USD becomes worth less due to an influx of USD into the economy through some economic decision or another. The nice thing about this is that that means it requires more USD to purchase oil. And so countries and end up spending a greater percent of their reserves for the same amount of oil, and also end up taking on even greater amounts of USD to maintain balance.
Currency inflates due to inflated supply -> foreign countries take more of the currency out of supply -> inflation decreases. And it doesn't end there. The additional revenues from the oil producing nations are then invested into US securities and taken completely out of circulation. The vast majority of money is not brought into circulation through printing, but leaving the specifics of creation aside, this -in part- helps buffer any harm caused by the excessive 'printing' of money.
this is also an effect of US isolationism and America first rhetoric which also means abandoning other states, eg. Ukraine, when the US loses its influence/importance so does the dollar, meaning you can't print like crazy and export your inflation in the world.
It's only a shame that it has to be a country like China that rises up at US' expense, rather than say Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, etc. What happens to global human rights when it's China that has an oversized influence on world politics and when countries start easily accepting extraditions to China (say for criticizing the Chinese leader, which could be a crime there), and many other outcomes like that?
US' track record isn't stellar, especially over the past 2 decades, and in the past decade the US has also taken a backseat in terms of actually protecting humans rights, even during Obama's time, but at least if you discount US' human rights violations in the Middle East, the US has been rather neutral on human rights (read: not positive) elsewhere. China may actually turn things to a negative trend for human rights everywhere else.
The UK under David Cameron had already started to use China as a role model for domestic censorship and surveillance. If China's influence grows, I imagine many other countries will follow UK's lead.
> but at least if you discount US' human rights violations in the Middle East
Can we not just discount the issues with china then as well?
I think the one big difference here is that nobody expects china to invade their country, violate human rights within their own country or put pressure on their local politics for various reasons (other than random trade agreements maybe).
All things nearly everyone pretty much expects from the U.S. at this point.
China has figured out that economic invasion is a lot cheaper and more effective than bombing. Sadly the US still seems to be a long way from learning this lesson.
But if you think China doesn't exert pressure in other countries' politics you haven't spent much time in Asia, particularly SE Asia.
The favorite method of centrist leadership in the recent past has been exporting neoliberalization economic policies and the neoliberalizm of trade deals (think NAFTA).
That's one of the component that's given the US a lot of influence and power dealing with the world. This was aided by how inward the competing powers were.
There's been a backlash against those ideas as foreign policy both inside and outside the US. As evidenced by the current president.
It's my hunch that in the long run the US will miss the privilege and benefits that have come from that asymmetric relationship. 4 or 8 years can be a long time and a lot can happen when were standing still.
Just look at England, they've never fully come to grips that the sun has set on the English empire.
Probably not long enough, but long enough to know that the chinese are most buying and building things other than invading (even less killing) for new wealth in other countries. At least in the last ~10 years or so.
You cannot just "create" a federal Europe. This naive view is why the Middle East is in a constant state of looming (civil) war. British and French colonists drew state lines without considering tribes and cultures and now those tribes are fighting over control in countries they don't even want to be a part of.
To be fair, and without denying all the crimes and exploitation made by European countries in their colonies, we don't have to forget that a lot of those places had tribes/clans/countries that were waging wars again each others and the European countries profited of this by allying first with one side to defeat the other. When the colonies were disbanded, the tribes/clans/countries often resumed fights what were interrupted. When a country was really united, it had its chances to oppose an invader : look at Ethiopia who won against Italy in 1895/1896 and would have won again in 1935/1936 if Germany hadn't come to win for them.
So yes, the British and French mostly drew lines based on french/english negociation, sometimes based on the geography, sometimes just for geometrical and area reasons, and that played its part in the later wars once colonies were over, but that is hardly the only reason, and it is not even the main reason I think.
At the moment, in the Middle-East, the fight between people is either for religious reasons (Sunni vs Shia mostly), for clans supremacy and oil (look at the Qatar situation now), or for "I was there first"/"God is on my side" reasons (Israel vs Palestine). The borders created by the colonists played their part, but the mix of population in my opinion is such that those points above would have triggered wars wherever borders had been drawn.
So in the end, I agree with you: one cannot "create" a federal state. It is incredibly difficult with countries in peace and having strong relations (like Europe), and the other successful examples are based on war : the first emperor of China united through war by defeating the warring states (and China, even if an authoritarian state centralized for politics is quite federal regarding other aspects), the US created themselves by invading the native tribes state by state. Had Napoleon succeeded, maybe Europe would have been a federative state, at the cost of many wars and deaths also.
The Balkan wars were fought over such small details. It could easiliy go badly in Europe at large (again...) and then China would gain from that situation too. Do you think they would be too shy to help some warring faction or other? They tried in Yugoslavia and that was back in the 90s!
Start with informing the public, until a ballot would succeed?
Most of the people being against the EU are against it because they only ever hear the bad sides? They never realize that most of the bad things "the EU" did were actually things the council did. Which actually just means that the heads of states of all EU nations agreed on it. If you end the EU, all power goes to these negotiations, and you'll only see that bullshit.
In turn, almost all the advances in civil rights that the EU courts and parliament have given us is attributed by the media to the national governments.
Start off with replacing this propaganda, and you'll have broad support for the EU very soon.
> So first you'd need to turn the clock back 40 years and explain why anything deeper than a market is necessary.
I think that’s pretty obvious, when you’re trying to compete with China or the US head-on, isn’t it?
Do you really think "just a market" of european nations will ever be able to stand alone on the world stage, being able to negotiate on eye level with another superpower?
Do you think we will be able to get our own Silicon Valley ever, when startups have to deal with 28 tax laws, 28 consumer laws, 28 different languages, 28 different regulations for everything? No European startup has ever actually managed that. They always first expand in their home country, and then to the US or China – the largest unified markets with unified laws and unified languages, where they can grow better. And companies starting in those markets always have an advantage.
Do you think in "just a market", our legislatives and executives would ever have been able to regulate companies as large as Google? Companies so large that if you ban them from your country, half your country’s productivity is lost over night? If you try to regulate them when you’re just Denmark, Google will just stop running in your country. No European country alone would be powerful enough to regulate such large multinationals anymore. Only together are we large enough that these multinationals have to cave.
Do you think negotiating a separate treaty for each of the things we currently do via EU law would be better? Treaties take years to negotiate, and will run for decades. You can’t just replace them, or change them. On the other hand, every 4 years we can just replace all EU institutions, and the parliamentarians, and change policy. This allows a much more democratic decision process.
Telling facts is not "another set of propaganda", so we can start with that part first. Then we can go to the points which are more opinion-based and present multiple sides. The first part alone should be enough to ease many fears.
That aside: It isn't undemocratic to not do a ballot. In a parliamentary democracy parliaments can decide most things themselves (even all, depending on the country). That's what they get elected for in the first place.
If you're talking about the Irish referendum's on Lisbon, it wasn't a vote until you said yes. The Irish initially voted no for many reasons but I can tell you that my parents voted no on the first one because they felt they didn't understand why it was needed and weren't sure what the implications of it were.
After the No vote, the government made a much larger effort to explain to the public what Lisbon did and they got guarantees from the EU as to interpretation of wording.
I think you could kuschku's suggestion that you need to get the population of each state on board before progressing. The turnout for the 2nd vote on Lisbon (which was a yes) went up to 59% from 53%. Looking at the vote from outside, it definitely seemed like people were much more engaged in the second vote than they were in the first.
I don't know why repeated votes would be undemocratic. There is absolutely no suggestion that the second vote was fraudulent. You're allowed to ask the same question of the population again once more information is available.
So you'd rather be subject to an autocratic Chinese world order than participate in a federalist Europe? Now that's an interesting view...
If you really object to a federal Europe that much, I suggest you offer a better solution for how Europe can compete on the world stage with China and the US in the future, and do so successfully.
Which country has the US exported its inflation to? Venezuela? Apologies for the tongue-in-cheek but even an economist would not be able to reconcile why there isn't really any inflation amongst the major economies.
Actually economists do believe the US gains leverage to print money from the dollar's status as the world reserve currency. The key phrase is "exorbitant privilege", from a phrase coined by Valery Giscard D'Estaing in the 1960s, and there is a book of the same name by Barry Eichengreen. It's true that this hasn't been used because independent central banks have been restrained since the 1980s. But in general it's still true that US monetary policy has a huge effect on the rest of the world. For example, the Latin American debt crisis of 1980s was linked to the tight monetary policy of Paul Volcker.
When you print money you devalue existing money, if the holders of the existing money keep holding it, keep trusting it, the devaluation is much smaller.
The inflation if visible in asset prices, eg. a painting would sell for half a billion dollar, all these companies being evaluated at billions of dollars, now holding billions of $ as state reserve doesn't look so big anymore.
Unless those billions in asset price increases buy less consumables than they did before QE, there isn't any inflation in the US yet, it just means Americans are richer.
You are reading what you want into this article, without thinking critically.
The article states that 1% of Europe's reserves are in yuan, and they increased it by $611 million, which is about 1% of that 1%. Meaning 0.01% of the total 6.9 Trillion.
And furthermore, the US has not really been printing money. It has been going into debt, to similar effect, but not to such an extent that the overall price levels are being affected. The price of a loaf of bread is still about the same from year to year.
There are particular industries that are seeing rising prices, like healthcare, education, and real estate as a result of many factors, none of which involve the money supply.
>this is also an effect of US isolationism and America first rhetoric
This is completely backwards.
>meaning you can't print like crazy and export your inflation in the world.
This is why other countries are moving away from the US dollar as the reserve currency (and the petrodollar as a medium of exchange for oil and other commodities). For decades we have been coercing countries, both kinetically (Iraq, Libya) and through less violent means (economic threats, access to SWIFT, ect) to use the dollar. Much of the rest of the world is tired of being coerced into using the dollar (and by extension, propping up the dollar and the US financial system through artificial demand for dollars) when alternatives (such as the Yaun) are becoming available. Much of our crazy printing and exportation of inflation has come exactly because of the countless trillions we have wasted (in the last 15 years alone) in our fruitless and amoral attempt to control the world at the point of a gun. Ironically, and not coincidentally, our desperate (and costly) attempts to maintain control of the globe are hastening the decline of our influence, both politically and economically.
China's exchange controls limit the external use of yuan. China's leadership and the PBOC go back and forth on this. If the yuan is to be used widely outside China, China will have to relax their exchange controls. But that means more exposure to external financial events like recessions. A few years ago, reduced exchange controls seemed likely, but now, things seem to be tightening up.
>I also work with multiple ex-pats that fled fearing for their life due to persecution based on their religion (Falung Gong)
-----------------------------
Hi，I don`t think so.
I come from China, when "Falung Gong" come out I am at college, after so many years I still believe what the GOV define the movement right, it is "cults and religious extremists".
Why I believe that?
1. The "Falung Gong" is alt kind of "qi gong", I did have seen some people practice "qi gong" to keep healthy, basically, it is unscientific and ignorant.
2. "qi gong", "gong fu", "tai ji" has no leader, but "Falung Gong" has a leader. And the leader can't sacrifice himself but lead some other kind people sacrificed.
3.Now I am a more fan of the old lead "Jiang Ze Min".(Like many others in Chinese social networks, lol). I think He may make the right decision.
At last I don't think the GOV have the ability to stop and kill any movement is a good phenomenon， But there is still a line which clearly divides the cult movement from ordinary movement.
Scientific, liberal and democracy may be the most valuable thing to pursue by China people in the future. But the "Falung Gong" like cult which fool good people did not worth any remembering.
a) You can ask your trading partners to trade with you in your own currency, which eliminates currency risk for your companies. E.g. an American company can just sell their stuff for a fixed USD price, and their trading partners will have to take (or hedge) the risk of their currencies fluctuating against the USD.
b) You will have lower borrowing costs for your government debt. If your currency is a reserve currency, that means that many foreign central banks will hold your currency as currency reserves. And they won't stash cash in their cellars, they will buy your government debt (e.g. Treasuries). More people buying your debt means lower borrowing costs (and thus interest payments) for your government.
c) If you control a currency that is used for international transactions, this gives you extra-terrestial legal leverage over the parties of these transactions. The U.S., for example, uses its "ownership" of the USD to enforce their sanctions regime and other laws: many banks e.g. in Europe will not process your payments to Cuba (particularly not in USD!), even though there are no European sanctions against Cuba, just because they can't afford to lose access to USD clearing in the US and thus don't want to risk antagonizing the US.
d) You can borrow internationally in your own currency. This is not an important thing for China, which has huge reserves, but it will be for other countries. If people don't trust your currency, you will have to borrow in USD or another foreign currency. This means your country can go bankrupt: If you are running out of USD / EUR / etc. you can't service your debt anymore. If you borrow in your own currency, you cannot really go bankrupt: you can always just print more money to service your debt (this will have negative effects such as inflation, of course, but it might be less catastrophic than a default).
I think one of the major benefits is, when china’s currency is accepted by other countries, that means the products (or service) made in china are accepted by other countries. When chinese products are accepted by other countries, those countries are willing to use their own products to trade with those chinese products...
I am not talking about specific products, but those manufacturing in macro sense...
There is no use to hold a certain currency when you are not able to use it for the time being or at some point of time in the future...and the more you hold a certain currency, the longer you are expecting it is useable or the more you expect it to increase its value.
I think that how we perceive/admire? America has greatly declined since Trump.
America has been unable to even talk with America's business, internally in the white house, within Republicans, others (eg. who has the biggest button, NATO, Paris Climate, ...), ... I'm pretty sure he's guilty to everything that is said ( Eg. Russians, money-laundering, paying zero taxes, ...) How do you think such idiocracy is perceived throughout "more serious grown-up" world? There is only one word for it: incompetence.
The continuity with Trump is a lot more significant than a lot of takes would have us believe, though. He's just a symbol of deeper systemic issues which aren't even confined to the US.
Trump is definitely an issue. His talk about abandoning NATO, ridiculing EU to drive his own argument for domestic issues, makes him pretty hard to be likable from EU establishments' perspectives.
On the least insignificant level, the message is pretty clear: US is destabilizing, and Trump might only be the beginning of it. With a isolationist and hostile US government, EU naturally would seek another anchor for safety, which is China, to counter balance it.
Which is a political goal at odds with the population.
Even Macron admitted that if the French were given the same vote as the British, they'd probably leave the EU[1].
Their tactic? Just avoid a vote. A small elite closing ranks and ignoring that EU citizens simply want trade union, not political union.
There's only so many times politicians can say "it's more complicated than you peasants understand, we must federalize!" before they get kicked out. Their hubris is bringing about the rise of the extreme right.
Europeans, as in the general populace, do not as a majority want to federalize. Federalization is one of those open conspiracies driven by a particular type of person who's completely out-of-touch with normal people.
> Asked if the French would vote to leave the EU in the same way, he said: “Yes. Probably, in a similar context. But our context was very different, so I don’t want to take any bets. I would have definitely fought to win.
Which is quite different that what the title implies.
I think you're not understanding what he meant by context, the context is that just before then he'd said it was a mistake to give the UK electorate a leave/stay questions, he meant he'd simply give France a stay/stay question, i.e.:
Would you:
1. like to stay in the EU as is or
2. like to stay in the EU with minor tweaks?
It's too complicated for the peasants to understand apparently.
But if given a leave/stay question, he thought France would vote leave like the UK.
He then went on to have a rant against all the unwashed who'd lost out because of globalization gobbling their livelihoods and how they should damn well be pleased to be screwed, if you're not a university educated elite it's your own fault for sucking, politicians obviously aren't meant to represent you or your views.
The very basis on which the EU is founded is cooperation, It's becoming and hopefully staying a trait that seems normal to europeans. I'd prefer cooperation over isolationist worldpowers any day.
The EU is the world's largest exporter and largest importer [1]. It also the world's largest foreign investor and the world's largest recipient of foreign investment. If it were protectionist, that would hardly be possible.
Eh, that seems to be a pretty big leap in logic. Europe doesn't need a unified nationstate, if it has strong institutions that fullfil nationstate-esque functions. We are at a good level of that on economic, monetary and judicial matters. The fiscal issues of the EU are in the process of shaking themselves out.
What we are lacking is effective military cooperation. Even NATO is not very good at this, unless the US is shouldering the majority of the load. The situation is improving slowly, though the continued struggles of the A400m and other defense projects show that we have a long way to go still. OTOH given our strategic position and Russia's continued weakness there is no real rush.
If you have fiscal cooperation, a single currency, a governmental body that forces regulations and laws to its member states and in the end even a unified army (which I think will happen in the future, especially since the US is taking more and more of an isolationist approach to foreign policy) isn't that closer to a federation than it is to a simple trade union? Not all federations need to be a massive nationstate which in Europe would be impossible by definition since you can't create a new nation out of thin air in a few years when you have nations that have existed since the time the concept of a nation was created.
Yes, that is exactly my point. People are pushing for a "federalization" of the EU, when really we have institutions that do the bulk of what a federal state would do already and could put the ones we still need in place without making significant changes to the current framework.
Just a personal opinion from an American who's effectively European, so take it for what it's worth:
I get the impression the USA has been in a slow general decline for a decade or more. A whole bunch of indicators of societal health like life expectancy, poverty, inequality, upward mobility, teen pregnancy, prison population, etc. etc. are at odds with the USA's position as the world's wealthiest nation; as a result, the World Economic Forum (whoever they are?) have announced the US is at risk of losing its status as a developed nation (or something like that).
Whether justified or not, this is shocking news and means there's something systemically wrong. US corporations are discovering it's more profitable to litigate than to innovate, and more effective to buy Congressmen as rubber-stampers of friendly legislation than to do good business.
The USA dropped the ball badly on stem cell research and its multi-billion-dollar health spinoff industries, and again on renewable energy and carbon emission reduction. Since I got my degree, universities have turned into money making industries rather than institutions of scholarship and research... just a few things I've noticed, that in sum can't be good. I think the US will have trouble maintaining its economic position if its middle class is struggling, academics is de-valued and investment is mostly oriented toward short term gains.
We really should up the place of Chinese in our school systems as well. Especially with Brexit in mind. There is really no reason for it to be native > English > German/French > Chinese anymore.
We’re not native English speakers, English is our second/third language.
Chinese is also already available in our schools. It’s just not a high priority. It’s on par with Spanish, Greek, Russian, Japanese and some such. This doesn’t correlate to the importance Chinese has on our society these days though.
English used to be the most important language, these days it’s German and Chinese and I see nothing on the horizon to change that outlook, so it’s kind of silly to weigh it’s importance in our school system as low as Korean or Greek.
I realize it’s harder to learn, but that’s what schools are for. I mean, when I was young we didn’t teach English until the 4th grade, these days we start teaching English by age 6 and everyone learns 3-4 languages.
I’m Danish. I did specify “native > English > ..,” though, so I figured that gave the non-English native thing away.
Our most utilized languages in business and tourism used to be English, German and French.
It’s now German, Chinese and English, in that order.
In everyday usage English is still important and will remain so for years to come. But if you’re looking for languages with professional application Chinese is at the top.
>It’s now German, Chinese and English, in that order.
>business and tourism
A search of the number of tourists from different countries visiting Denmark shows that the number of tourists from the UK and America still dwarf the number of visitors from China. So I'm not sure why you'd say that Chinese is more important than English for tourism.
It also looks like Germans have always been the largest group visiting Denmark--that hasn't changed.
As for business in general, China makes up about 4% of exports and 7% of Danish imports. So I'm not really sure by what metric you're putting Chinese above English.
> But if you’re looking for languages with professional application Chinese is at the top.
If that's true, it's more likely because 86% of Danes speak English so it's not really much of an advantage within Denmark.
China is a growing economy, but English is still the language of world commerce, science, and entertainment.
I think that you're mistaking growth rates with absolute values.
We’ve had 300.000 Chinese tourists since August. I’m not sure how many Americans have been by in the same period, but in a typical year we get maybe 10.000.
Where are you getting these numbers from? The CIA factbook says over 300k Americans visit Denmark every year, and the information I can find on Chinese tourists says Denmark was estimated to get less than 300k Chinese tourists in all of 2017 (it was updated in Nov 2017).
Also Denmark gets close to a million British visitors per year. And then add to that the number of visitors from countries who are very likely to speak English as a second language, and the people from countries like Ireland, Canada, and Australia.
I think the problem here is that you don't notice all of the English speakers because they just don't stick out as much as Chinese tourists do. Sure you can notice the obvious tourists, but there are plenty of them that you wouldn't know were tourists unless you talked them. Chinese culture is also much different, so they are even more likely to stick out.
In addition, I'm going to guess that Chinese tourists are a common topic of conversation and news coverage, at least more so than English speaking tourists are because it's a change from the norm--you have to change if you want to accommodate them. This can lead to you over-representing Chinese tourists in your mental model.
>You're on an American site
No, that isn't really how the internet works. The site is owned by an American company, but HN is an international site with visitors from all around the world
>but HN is an international site with visitors from all around the world
It's site that focuses specifically on the startup culture centered around SV. The site if full of American idioms, cultural norms, and people regularly discuss American politics and the American regulatory environment. There are far more people living in America participating than otherwise. In most cases the default behavior is to speak about American issues without prefacing with "this is about America."
There's clearly nothing wrong with speaking about non-American issues, but if you don't specify, most of us are going to assume you're talking about America.
Chinese is more important than English in Germany, and German is important than English in China? Remember the point the GP was trying to make was that it's hard to imagine a country where both languages are by some measure more important than English.
You can absolutely learn enough Mandarin to be useful in 2 years of weekly classes.
Source: That was my level when I went to China. I felt not at all ready, but then I discovered that my limited knowledge could get me quite far with a little effort.
Useful isn't an objective metric for language competency.
Cramming for a few weeks before visiting a country is useful.
It takes the average fully trained foreign service officer who already speaks multiple languages about 2200 hours to become proficient. And this is 2200 hours at arguably the best language school in the world doing nothing but studying Chinese full time.
2 years of of Weekly classes is about 100 hours of class time.
You were the one who was talking about usefulness. While it may not be an objective metric, it's still what everyone evaluates their language ability on: whether they can use it to talk to people.
The bar for diplomats is much higher, since they need to be fluent enough to avoid a diplomatic incident. Would you trust someone with 2 years of high-school French to speak that well?
That said, I agree that Chinese is more difficult than most other languages; mostly due to the writing system, which even Chinese schools spread over multiple years for good reason. But that is no argument against offering the language anyway.
Too late. Mandarin and Chinese in general requires a slightly different way of thinking that is better and way more easily absorbed when young.
10k ideograms is not that hard compared to say 7k words needed to have basic fluency in English. You would need about twice as much to be considered reasonably fluent. Grammar is relatively easy, proper pronunciation is much more critical than in English.
There's nothing wrong talking about yuan. Renminbi is just a bit more formal (note: not capitalized). Yuan is the denomination and exchange rates are expressed in yuan. The currency code for renminbi is CNY, or "Chinese yuan". Similarly we talk about reserves of "pounds" even though that's not the name of the currency either.
A lot of the Dollars value are due to trade of oil being conducted with US dollars. Thus the Federal reserve has had a special privilege of being to able to print new US dollars through debt which a large commodity oil are being traded in.
However with the rise of electric cars in the future there may be less demand for the Petro dollar. How will a new world currency be formed, will it be a Petro Yuan or will it be a global crypto currency like Bitcoin? Doesnt a new global crypto currency need to have around 2% inflation new coins per year to stop hoarding from occurring?
US produces a lot of IT-services for example Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Uber, Netflix, Arbbnb Dropbox but nowadays less physical goods.
Before declaring fall of USA, blaming Trump for apocalypse and anointing Xi as the new Emperor, lets take step and really see the numbers.
$611 million is a marginal amount when we are talking about foreign reserves, its sure not nothing, the Germans are basically telling Americans hey look what we can do here. Its a passive aggressive move but mostly symbolic.
If they buy more Yuan, and Yuan to Dollar exchange rate gets effected. Walmart needs to shop somewhere else because Chinese goods are not cheap any more.