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Things are getting pretty freaky around here in Spain. We've got some horrible (freedom-wise) laws passed recently and we're all angry about them. They've been

Things are getting pretty freaky around here in Spain. We've got some horrible (freedom-wise) laws passed recently and we're all angry about them. They've been trying to for several years, and now that people is tired of fighting these stupid laws back they can pass them. This basically means that Google would need to pay to index newspapers.

adventured 12y ago
As an American I watch Europe pretty closely, and I've seen some things that are worrisome such as increasing amounts of fascism (anti-freedom / anti-privacy)... but, things seem to be getting pretty freaky almost everywhere, freedom seems to be on the retreat globally. For Spain, speaking sociologically, how long can an advanced country have 30%-35% real unemployment, before there are severely destabilizing effects that tumble out of that (culturally, politically and so on). Greece is facing a similar context and similar extreme unemployment problems. I would think it dramatically increases the risk of getting dangerous politicians that start making fantastical promises, with voters increasingly willing to buy into them. There has been a near total collapse across Europe of the system of promises that were made, that support the premise of the modern welfare state. Only a few countries have been spared (either partially or totally), such as Norway, Sweden, Finland, etc. France's economy for example is smaller than it was in 2004 inflation adjusted. GDP for the whole of Europe is still below 2007 levels. Even Finland's per capita GDP hasn't increased since 1990 inflation adjusted. How long can such stagnation continue before there are severe consequences.
- ddebernardy 12y ago
  > As an American I watch Europe pretty closely, and I've seen some things that are worrisome such as increasing amounts of fascism (anti-freedom / anti-privacy)... As a European who watches the US, I hope the irony of your statement has not escaped you. The NSA, the Can-Spam act, the TSA, Guantanamo Bay, how Obama gave a kill order on a US citizen without due process, how the hardline christian right and hardline libertarians across the pond would make most of our local extreme right wing clowns look like socialists, how some major libertarian voices in financial news are regularly cheerleading whacky anti-Europeans, the list could go on ad nauseam. > Even Finland's per capita GDP hasn't increased since 1990 inflation adjusted. How long can such stagnation continue before there are severe consequences. Doesn't sound so dire... The main reason that inflation-adjusted income has increased in the average US family unit since the 1970s is that it went from one bread earner to two. (See e.g. Elizabeth Warren's research on debt or her books, for instance The Two Income Trap, for the gory details.) I'm not seeing pitchforks. In more seriousness, this is not meant to be a contest. The point is that things aren't as bad on the continent as you might read in Anglo-Saxon news outlets. There's some uneasiness and some distress, sure. Here, like on the other side of the pond, the main cause of it at the end of the day is economic woes, most of which stem from bailing out the well connected instead of having let the financial system collapse -- for better or worse. The most important take away, imho, is that we're at peace. Consider... Since the fall of Rome, we had been almost constantly at war with each other. Whereas besides the Balkans in the 1990s, and the ongoing skirmishes in Crimea, there has been no war here since WW2. That's the longest period of peace between Europe's major powers in history. And thankfully, no ending of this streak is on anyone's radar.
  - vixen99 12y ago
    Peacefully dying with France's and UK's immigrants high birth rate bucking the trend a bit.
  - mcv 12y ago
    > As a European who watches the US, I hope the irony of your statement has not escaped you. To be fair, he did say freedom seems to be on the retreat globally. The US and the EU are both guilty of this, though I'd argue that torture and illegal detention are a bit worse in that respect than banning newspapers from the internet (or maybe not, now that I've formulated it like that). The EU does have the edge that these movements away from freedom are somewhat balanced by other movements towards guaranteeing freedom (like the user data protection directive).
  - adventured 12y ago
    "As a European who watches the US, I hope the irony of your statement has not escaped you." There's no irony in fact. I didn't claim the US condition was X Y or Z. There's nothing ironic about a heart disease patient pointing out the condition of another heart disease patient. Nor does pointing such out, imply that the observer is lacking of heart disease. Your reach is a failure of the application of logic. Just because I note that Europe has X problem, that does not mean I automatically think the US is lacking in X problem. Your response was emotional, the classic need to point out another's flaws because your flaws were pointed out. I get that. I don't get my European news from Fox or CNN. And I pay close attention to the economic data coming from just about every country in Europe. I'd argue I'm likely better versed on the economics of most every country in Europe than most Europeans.
    - ddebernardy 12y ago
      Well... it was emotional indeed, but to my credit your own post could just as well have been understood (no offense meant) as an "everything is perfect over here at home, but hey look at how things are over there!" kind of statement. Which, admittedly, rubbed me the wrong way, knowing all too well how frequent that type of statement is in Anglo-Saxon news outlets -- particularly in the economic sphere. Anyway, no hard feelings I hope. ;-)
- antr 12y ago
  I don't know where you get the "30%-35% real unemployment" figures, that to me seems absurd given that European economies are known to have large underground economies in the region of 15% of GDP... and in the case of Spain somewhat larger[0]. Albeit, unofficial, the number of jobs created by a shadow economy of €253bn is too large to ignore. Now, 25% of GDP is underground economy, and 25% unemployment seem to have something in common, don't you think? The problem to me seems to be a budget balance issue: how can Governments pay for services that a large number of the population uses, but doesn't pay. This, in my opinion is what is causing a collapse: lack of funds to pay for services, and obligations (debt), and loose cost/investment policies. [0] http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jan/30/spain-black-economy-gdp-growth http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jan/30/spain-black-...
  - tomp 12y ago
    > The problem to me seems to be a budget balance issue: how can Governments pay for services that a large number of the population uses, but doesn't pay. If the population doesn't pay, who does? The way taxes work, is that the population pays the taxes to the government, and the government in return pays for/provides certain services. Taxation is basically just like insurance, coupled with some sort of progressive redistribution or wealth.
    - antr 12y ago
      > If the population doesn't pay, who does? Like in most countries, including the US, budget deficit is paid with debt, and increase in taxes. That is the problem. The solution here is to uncover the underground economy, make them pay taxes (at reasonable rates), although this is no silver bullet.
      - lazylizard 12y ago
        about collecting taxes to pay for stuff..isn't it far easier to print new money than to collect old money back?
        12y ago

adventured 12y ago

As an American I watch Europe pretty closely, and I've seen some things that are worrisome such as increasing amounts of fascism (anti-freedom / anti-privacy)... but, things seem to be getting pretty freaky almost everywhere, freedom seems to be on the retreat globally. For Spain, speaking sociologically, how long can an advanced country have 30%-35% real unemployment, before there are severely destabilizing effects that tumble out of that (culturally, politically and so on). Greece is facing a similar context and similar extreme unemployment problems. I would think it dramatically increases the risk of getting dangerous politicians that start making fantastical promises, with voters increasingly willing to buy into them. There has been a near total collapse across Europe of the system of promises that were made, that support the premise of the modern welfare state. Only a few countries have been spared (either partially or totally), such as Norway, Sweden, Finland, etc. France's economy for example is smaller than it was in 2004 inflation adjusted. GDP for the whole of Europe is still below 2007 levels. Even Finland's per capita GDP hasn't increased since 1990 inflation adjusted. How long can such stagnation continue before there are severe consequences.

ddebernardy 12y ago
> As an American I watch Europe pretty closely, and I've seen some things that are worrisome such as increasing amounts of fascism (anti-freedom / anti-privacy)... As a European who watches the US, I hope the irony of your statement has not escaped you. The NSA, the Can-Spam act, the TSA, Guantanamo Bay, how Obama gave a kill order on a US citizen without due process, how the hardline christian right and hardline libertarians across the pond would make most of our local extreme right wing clowns look like socialists, how some major libertarian voices in financial news are regularly cheerleading whacky anti-Europeans, the list could go on ad nauseam. > Even Finland's per capita GDP hasn't increased since 1990 inflation adjusted. How long can such stagnation continue before there are severe consequences. Doesn't sound so dire... The main reason that inflation-adjusted income has increased in the average US family unit since the 1970s is that it went from one bread earner to two. (See e.g. Elizabeth Warren's research on debt or her books, for instance The Two Income Trap, for the gory details.) I'm not seeing pitchforks. In more seriousness, this is not meant to be a contest. The point is that things aren't as bad on the continent as you might read in Anglo-Saxon news outlets. There's some uneasiness and some distress, sure. Here, like on the other side of the pond, the main cause of it at the end of the day is economic woes, most of which stem from bailing out the well connected instead of having let the financial system collapse -- for better or worse. The most important take away, imho, is that we're at peace. Consider... Since the fall of Rome, we had been almost constantly at war with each other. Whereas besides the Balkans in the 1990s, and the ongoing skirmishes in Crimea, there has been no war here since WW2. That's the longest period of peace between Europe's major powers in history. And thankfully, no ending of this streak is on anyone's radar.
- vixen99 12y ago
  Peacefully dying with France's and UK's immigrants high birth rate bucking the trend a bit.
- mcv 12y ago
  > As a European who watches the US, I hope the irony of your statement has not escaped you. To be fair, he did say freedom seems to be on the retreat globally. The US and the EU are both guilty of this, though I'd argue that torture and illegal detention are a bit worse in that respect than banning newspapers from the internet (or maybe not, now that I've formulated it like that). The EU does have the edge that these movements away from freedom are somewhat balanced by other movements towards guaranteeing freedom (like the user data protection directive).
- adventured 12y ago
  "As a European who watches the US, I hope the irony of your statement has not escaped you." There's no irony in fact. I didn't claim the US condition was X Y or Z. There's nothing ironic about a heart disease patient pointing out the condition of another heart disease patient. Nor does pointing such out, imply that the observer is lacking of heart disease. Your reach is a failure of the application of logic. Just because I note that Europe has X problem, that does not mean I automatically think the US is lacking in X problem. Your response was emotional, the classic need to point out another's flaws because your flaws were pointed out. I get that. I don't get my European news from Fox or CNN. And I pay close attention to the economic data coming from just about every country in Europe. I'd argue I'm likely better versed on the economics of most every country in Europe than most Europeans.
  - ddebernardy 12y ago
    Well... it was emotional indeed, but to my credit your own post could just as well have been understood (no offense meant) as an "everything is perfect over here at home, but hey look at how things are over there!" kind of statement. Which, admittedly, rubbed me the wrong way, knowing all too well how frequent that type of statement is in Anglo-Saxon news outlets -- particularly in the economic sphere. Anyway, no hard feelings I hope. ;-)
antr 12y ago
I don't know where you get the "30%-35% real unemployment" figures, that to me seems absurd given that European economies are known to have large underground economies in the region of 15% of GDP... and in the case of Spain somewhat larger[0]. Albeit, unofficial, the number of jobs created by a shadow economy of €253bn is too large to ignore. Now, 25% of GDP is underground economy, and 25% unemployment seem to have something in common, don't you think? The problem to me seems to be a budget balance issue: how can Governments pay for services that a large number of the population uses, but doesn't pay. This, in my opinion is what is causing a collapse: lack of funds to pay for services, and obligations (debt), and loose cost/investment policies. [0] http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jan/30/spain-black-economy-gdp-growth http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jan/30/spain-black-...
- tomp 12y ago
  > The problem to me seems to be a budget balance issue: how can Governments pay for services that a large number of the population uses, but doesn't pay. If the population doesn't pay, who does? The way taxes work, is that the population pays the taxes to the government, and the government in return pays for/provides certain services. Taxation is basically just like insurance, coupled with some sort of progressive redistribution or wealth.
  - antr 12y ago
    > If the population doesn't pay, who does? Like in most countries, including the US, budget deficit is paid with debt, and increase in taxes. That is the problem. The solution here is to uncover the underground economy, make them pay taxes (at reasonable rates), although this is no silver bullet.
    - lazylizard 12y ago
      about collecting taxes to pay for stuff..isn't it far easier to print new money than to collect old money back?
      - 12y ago