3 ms·

Is it me or is this a terrible abuse of a regulation which itself is well intended?

by Fnoord 8y ago

ucarion 8y ago
I sort of fail to see why this is such a terrible abuse. Even in France, it doesn't seem absurd to recognize that St. Denis and Paris aren't really operating in the same economic world. It seems that Budapest, Warsaw, and Vilnius are in a similar boat? Globalization often has a way of dramatically centralizing wealth, and old borders might need updating.
thaumasiotes 8y ago
Hmm. On the fundamentals, do you think it makes sense for poor rural regions to be governed under the same administration as wealthy cities? I hear a lot about how almost all of New York (state) suffers under the rules New York City puts into place. From the other direction, does it make sense for New York City to be technically located in four different states?
- locopati 8y ago
  Or for NYC to be controlled by Albany (the state capital) on many matters (for example, public transit).
sonnyblarney 8y ago
Well - if other nations have already 'split out' their capital regions - then this is really just normalization of regionality, it's kind of the opposite of gerrymandering, i.e. London/Paris are already slit from UK/France data, so maybe the other nations should as well. It wasn't done before because there's no reason to. It does feel a little like gerrymandering, but it's also rational. This is just one of many such tactics these countries are using, most of them deal with the Euro and ECB. In Canada, we have this as well, a complicated distribution agreement based on weird things. If anyone even hints at changing the formula it causes a political war. A example of 'maybe cheating' in Canada: provinces have to pay for other provinces infrastructure spending. In Quebec, they want to subsidize electricity as part of social welfare. If Quebec literally gave a direct subsidy to citizens for electricity, or, a tax rebate ... then the other provinces would not have to contribute to that program. So what Quebec does is gives $500M every year to the nationalized electricity company. That company then sells electricity at a loss to Quebec citizens, i.e. 'losing $500M' every year. But - because the money is given to 'Hydro Quebec' by the government, i.e. 'infrastructure spending' - then the rest o f the provinces have to help pay for it. Even though really it's just a backwards way to do a subsidy. I should admit - it's not an unreasonable way to run the program, it just has the added benefit that Alberta and Ontario have to help pay for it ... which in political terms (by that I mean money terms) is a huge, huge thing. If anyone puts up a fuss about it, it's like political civil war i.e. very, very sensitive. In the news recently, Greece's government has just told Germany they want hundreds of billions of dollars for 'reparations' from WWII. No kidding. World War II reparation requests in 2019! Which is very interesting to say the least, but it gives us some hints at the kind of financial/political warfare going on. One way around this problem might simply to use other forms of measurement. For example, EU can help pay to improve roads, bridges, networking etc. but not for other things. So a measure of the quality of infrastructure overall would be the impetus to invest. It's also more easy to swallow from a populist perspective, and as we see from recent elections ... that's a thing.
bonoboTP 8y ago
Can you explain why? There are poorer regions in Pest County that would be denied resources just because the average is skewed heavily by the richer people in the capital. Is that fair? Budapest really is on quite a different level than any other part of the country, it makes perfect sense to make it its own region. It's about 20% of Hungary's population and there are 8 NUTS-2 regions in Hungary.
nitwit005 8y ago
One also suspects the people who wrote the law knew this could be a problem and just ignored the issue, so there's at least two sets of poorly behaved people.

Is it me or is this a terrible abuse of a regulation which itself is well intended?

by Fnoord 8y ago

Is it me or is this a terrible abuse of a regulation which itself is well intended?

I sort of fail to see why this is such a terrible abuse. Even in France, it doesn't seem absurd to recognize that St. Denis and Paris aren't really operating in the same economic world. It seems that Budapest, Warsaw, and Vilnius are in a similar boat? Globalization often has a way of dramatically centralizing wealth, and old borders might need updating.

thaumasiotes 8y ago

Hmm. On the fundamentals, do you think it makes sense for poor rural regions to be governed under the same administration as wealthy cities? I hear a lot about how almost all of New York (state) suffers under the rules New York City puts into place. From the other direction, does it make sense for New York City to be technically located in four different states?

locopati 8y ago
Or for NYC to be controlled by Albany (the state capital) on many matters (for example, public transit).

sonnyblarney 8y ago

Well - if other nations have already 'split out' their capital regions - then this is really just normalization of regionality, it's kind of the opposite of gerrymandering, i.e. London/Paris are already slit from UK/France data, so maybe the other nations should as well. It wasn't done before because there's no reason to. It does feel a little like gerrymandering, but it's also rational. This is just one of many such tactics these countries are using, most of them deal with the Euro and ECB. In Canada, we have this as well, a complicated distribution agreement based on weird things. If anyone even hints at changing the formula it causes a political war. A example of 'maybe cheating' in Canada: provinces have to pay for other provinces infrastructure spending. In Quebec, they want to subsidize electricity as part of social welfare. If Quebec literally gave a direct subsidy to citizens for electricity, or, a tax rebate ... then the other provinces would not have to contribute to that program. So what Quebec does is gives $500M every year to the nationalized electricity company. That company then sells electricity at a loss to Quebec citizens, i.e. 'losing $500M' every year. But - because the money is given to 'Hydro Quebec' by the government, i.e. 'infrastructure spending' - then the rest o f the provinces have to help pay for it. Even though really it's just a backwards way to do a subsidy. I should admit - it's not an unreasonable way to run the program, it just has the added benefit that Alberta and Ontario have to help pay for it ... which in political terms (by that I mean money terms) is a huge, huge thing. If anyone puts up a fuss about it, it's like political civil war i.e. very, very sensitive. In the news recently, Greece's government has just told Germany they want hundreds of billions of dollars for 'reparations' from WWII. No kidding. World War II reparation requests in 2019! Which is very interesting to say the least, but it gives us some hints at the kind of financial/political warfare going on. One way around this problem might simply to use other forms of measurement. For example, EU can help pay to improve roads, bridges, networking etc. but not for other things. So a measure of the quality of infrastructure overall would be the impetus to invest. It's also more easy to swallow from a populist perspective, and as we see from recent elections ... that's a thing.

bonoboTP 8y ago

Can you explain why? There are poorer regions in Pest County that would be denied resources just because the average is skewed heavily by the richer people in the capital. Is that fair? Budapest really is on quite a different level than any other part of the country, it makes perfect sense to make it its own region. It's about 20% of Hungary's population and there are 8 NUTS-2 regions in Hungary.

nitwit005 8y ago

One also suspects the people who wrote the law knew this could be a problem and just ignored the issue, so there's at least two sets of poorly behaved people.