Get out of Belgium, then - if it was you and your people.
There are clear ideological, decadent faults in the eu administration. They are responsible for the destruction of one of the main continental industries, transferring (even reduced) pollution to Africa, where decent old cars go (with again no effect on global warming), and transferring the enterprise to China.
I would not build nordstream 2.
I would not turn off nuclear reactors and build pan EU 1 type nuclear reactor project.
I would put sanctions on Russia the moment they invaded ukraine the first time.
Build armies and heavy industries before second invasion.
Make EU PRO business. MOre interesting tax incentives and reformed retirement plans and social services, because this is what will drag most countries do ground.
0 consequences when we look back
Def would try to get off russian gas - Schröder is basically traitor to the whole EU.
Not really much of a consolation, but it's pretty obvious that the standing committee is perfectly happy to sit back and chuckle while watching the rest of the world burn from that nice safe distance. So at least there won't be any china-taiwan issues.
But that's little consolation I understand. I get that when there are two elephants sitting on you, someone telling you how fortunate you are to not have a third one on top of you as well, is a little annoying.
China perhaps... but US? really? personally I can't think of any single person who grew up (like me) in Europe and would choose US as a destination.
From my point of view is as awful as it can get: stark inequality, literally hundreds of thousands of homeless people roaming, no basic health care, but to be honest just the number of guns pro capita is enough to keep me and most of other Europeans away for good, it's just insane for what we're accustomed to. And I'm not even referring to the dystopian situation worsened daily by the current administration.
Unless you're the kind of person who confuses absolute numbers (e.g. money you can spend per month) for actual wealth / quality of life / freedoms / rights protection / etc. Then perhaps USA is the right place, I guess?
FWIW, FEANTSA estimated over 1.2MM homeless in Europe in their most recent report[1]. That's over a population of 515MM so ~23 per 10k population. Us 746k homeless is roughly 22 per 10k population. I suspect that differences in methodology will overwhelm that 1/10k difference, but the order of magnitude seems similar.
1/3 of the US homeless are unsheltered ("Living Rough" in the FEANTSA terminology). A quick skim of the FEANTSA report did not show any countries breaking out their rough-sleepers from the rest of the data. I do suspect that this number is higher than in the EU.
Perhaps in USA is very much unevenly distributed? I visted a couple of big cities in California and the situation is abysmal, I don't know of any place in Europe even close to that, still have to see campings in the middle of a big city. I could't see the same in other cities I visited, e.g. Las Vegas and Miami.
The numbers seem to say it's the same in theory, in practice my experience is that it very much doesn't _feel_ the same.
> still have to see campings in the middle of a big city
I saw that in London, in Rome and afair in Berlin
Not to the same extend as camping villages in LA but still.
But I also didn't go that much inside those bad parts of cities in Europe, in US I drove through them
It's actually the extent which is the measure here. I don't think a population with 0% homelessness ever existed nor is even possible, it is just endemic to human societies, like e.g. nomadism is.
More in general, the feel you get as an European visiting the US is that either you're in, or completly out of the society. There's not much of a grey area, more like a quantum leap.
Brussels too. There's some US cities that seem to be exceptionally bad, in a league of their own, but that's probably still a small fraction of all the homeless.
If it comes down to European vs Russian manufacturing capacity for missiles and hi-tech weaponry, etc, I'd put my money on Europe. Europe also has the advantage of seeing 5 years of Russia throwing their best at Ukraine, having their air defenses repeatedly breached by Ukraine, even deep into Russia using slow low-tech drones - they know many of Russia's weaknesses.
That is because contrary to what Russia claims, it is not a war between EU and Russia, but between Ukraine and Russia. EU support is there but still minuscule compared to what EU could do.
Ukraine isn't in the EU and the USA has a duty to help Ukraine but doesn't because they (choose your favourite) [have been compromised by Russia] [are too weak] [can't afford it] [don't have enough weapons left because they used them helping Israel commit genocide] [are scared of losing votes for a pedophile] [all of the above]
The US GBP is 100x large than Iranian one and yet the US cannot open the Strait of Hormuz and even defend own bases in the region from cheap drones (52 aircraft lost, most on the ground). GDP is not the only factor when it comes to military capabilities.
>The US GBP is 100x large than Iranian one and yet the US cannot open the Strait of Hormuz
The US regime has no support from its voters and taxpayers to get deeper into the IRan war because the US is the one who started it, it's not an existential threat for Americans in the US to spend more of their money or die intervening in the middle east.
But for EU what happens in Ukraine is an existential threat and they also didn't provoke the war there, so Europeans are more motivated to support the war against Russia than AMericans are to support military intervention in Iran.
Yemen, one of the poorest countries on earth, closed an important EU trade route for over a year and we couldn't fix it. Defending your land vs protecting your trade interests are different things.
The brainless policies continue as we speak: traditional parties keep you exposed to financial masters because money talks, and extremists keep you exposed to their masters because, again, money talks. So: money talks and Europe is still a good milking cow.
Europe has 15x the GDP of Russia. If they were "hell bent" on militarily defeating Russia, they could have made even tiny sacrifices to the social welfare system, diverted industrial production to military aid, and drowned Ukraine in help. That was a very achievable goal, and they didn't do it.
Instead, the vacillated on importing US natural gas, continued shutting down nuclear power plants, and paid Russia MORE CASH FOR OIL than they ended up giving Ukraine in military aid! They did not in fact, dedicate themselves to this war in any way shape or form.
> they could have made even tiny sacrifices to the social welfare system, diverted industrial production to military aid, and drowned Ukraine in help. That was a very achievable goal, and they didn't do it.
We already did that. Welfare and funding to social services, elderly care, etc is significantly reduced and with higher bar to get than before 2022 where I live. Plus we're also paying the price in higher housing costs thanks to housing millions of Ukrainians.
It's easy to want a higher reduction on welfare services when you're not the one needing them. It's easy to write cheques that other people have to cash.
That was always going to happen. The war just makes that worse. The demographics and lack of economic growth were always going to break those welfare systems. How much they break and who loses out were the only real questions.
> Welfare and funding to social services, elderly care, etc is significantly reduced and with higher bar to get than before 2022 where I live.
Same here! I'd actually say it's basically shut down to new people.
I have spoken to 5 different health/government departments just trying to get some care for my elderly family member who lives alone and has badly hurt both legs, but I have been denied, denied and denied and lied to at every single stage. "We have no money", "Go private", "We are at capacity", "There is a 16 week wait for an assessment", "You can only access us via your GP" [lie]
All because they aren't retirement age yet - then they get more red carpet treatment.
The Government is also busy trying to figure out how to cut welfare for those who don't vote in sufficient numbers to matter
Mhmm it's hard not to feel aggrieved with people who get certain basic care no-questions-asked when there are so many reports of questionable claims of what they're fleeing from/age/origin etc and given the numbers (~220k asylum seekers in the system as of 2024, and conveniently a 'transition to a new caseworking system' has prevented any newer figures being published)
But I think we have bigger taxation/spending and economic issues in the UK. Nobody really cares about asylum seekers/immigrants when the economy is booming, jobs are plentiful and inflation is low.
We do seem have a defective system in which people who suddenly need help after having a job and paying lots of tax are more-or-less ignored, but life-long welfare claimants are already so entrenched in the system, it's just a continuation.
Job Seeker's benefit is £408/mo for a maximum of 6 months and only if you had paid sufficient tax in the 2 years prior – basically just a small tax refund but only if you follow the rules imposed upon you by your 'job coach'. And that benefit doesn't then entitle you to any other discount/benefits unlike certain other benefits. It's designed to make you to take any job that turns up – indeed your work 'coach' will likely force you to do that.
Are you for real? Look into France's pension situation. The median pensioner has HIGHER INCOME than the median working adult. And retirement was at 62!
No, there have been absolutely no real cuts to elderly care, the UK's triple lock ensures that the situation gets monotonically worse until the system collapses.
>No, there have been absolutely no real cuts to elderly care
Yeah they have. My city is short 30 million Euros on disability care this year despite increases in taxes. I (non retiree) now need to wait 6+ months for a surgery when it used to be 2, and pay from my taxes for money and weapons to Ukraine and housing to Ukrainian refugees in my city while they have nicer cars than me and don't pay the back breaking car taxes because they leave them on UA plates. I don't necessarily mind that per se, but I do mind being berated as if I'm not sacrificing enough. Please set an example and sacrifice yourself and your family for Ukraine before lecturing us.
> If they were "hell bent" on militarily defeating Russia, they could have made even tiny sacrifices to the social welfare system, diverted industrial production to military aid, and drowned Ukraine in help
Why do you think an entire continent with multiple and (sometimes even conflicting with each other) culture, priorities, national interest would do that? EU is an economic union. Not a federation like US
European support started out slow, but has ramped up as the US has backed away.
Germany will spend 20% of it's federal budget on military in 2027, planning to increase that to 30% by 2030. "We cannot defend ourselves against Putin with a balanced budget".
> What would come next after Ukraine may be the Baltic states or Poland.
According to your YouTube sources? NATO has nothing to do with Ukraine. NATO countries can defend themselves if one of those countries actually are being attacked. That happened in 9/11 and NATO countries supporting militarily the US wars that preceded.
There is no such thing as moral obligation when it comes to politics and national interest. If it’s your country, then it’s your job to defend it or whatever. So far it doesn’t seem to be serving their self interest supporting an endless war.
Their self-interest is in keeping Putin at arms length and avoiding WW III. Putin is already threatening Lithuania, sending drones into Poland. If Putin wasn't prevented from taking Ukraine, do you really think it would end there?
Europe has been stepping up a lot recently, given Trump's reluctance to push back against Putin - looks at UK/France supply of missile and anti-missile systems and IP to Ukraine, stepped up air defense based out of Lithuania (anticipating Kaliningrad as the first front of the war), etc.
No, they have not been "stepping up" relative to the existential threat at their door. They are still doing 10% of the minimum you'd expect from someone whose literal lives and civilization are at risk from a barbarian threat literally murdering their neighbors (and playing games with their own sovereignty more recently, with drone incursions).
> If you think about it the war could have ended years ago and all the Ukranian/Russian lives lost could have been avoided if EU leaders were not so arrogant.
How exactly is Europe to blame for Russia continuing its war in Ukraine? Russia has clearly demonstrated a lack of interest in peace on any terms that could be acceptable to Ukraine.
the geopolitical takes on this website are something else man. I would say don't bother, but letting this type of rhetoric go would also be unfortunate
Yeah, there are a lot of similar bad takes everywhere, not just on this website. This particular one seems to be reasonably common in finance type spaces. I think it presuposes a "correct" outcome to the war and then just tries to take shortcuts to that outcome despite that outcome not being desireable for the parties that get a vote. Its especially frustrating when it ignores the instability of the outcome, which is true in this case. After all both sides have already demonstrated a willingness to fight to try to change the outcome.
> But now Trump is inviting Putin to G20 and I'm sure sure all those EU politician would be all smily and act like no war is going on and gladly talk with Putin
Putin is deathly afraid of being assassinated and is avoiding air travel in favor of trains, and has identical offices to film in at multiple locations to hide his location. There is no chance he is getting on a plane to Florida.
> If you think about it the war could have ended years ago and all the Ukranian/Russian lives lost could have been avoided if EU leaders were not so arrogant.
How so? By Europe rolling over and not supporting Ukraine?
That's a weird stance to take. If someone invaded a other territory next to yours and some of your unions members fear they're next, business as usual is the wrong strategy, imo
That's why diplomacy is important. There is no scenario that Europe, let alone Ukraine can militarily defeat Russia (a country with nuclear weapons). I understand defending the territory. But what is the end game? fight forever? or mutual destruction?
Kick them out so they gain nothing and have a credible enough deterrent they don't try again. This is also well below the stated threshold for Russia escalating to nukes but well above the threshold of military defeat.
Then that is a loss, yes. It is an attritional war: whoever runs out of resources or will first loses. I don't think most of Europe has internalised how big of a loss that would be.
Ukraine is winning. Defending your own territory is natural. Ukraine don't want a war, Russia can stop whenever they want it to stop. What is Russia's end game? look weak and easy to beat and have to threaten to use nukes to feel like a big man?
> Europe is of course well aware that war with Russia seems increasingly inevitable, and have been preparing for it
What is the source for this? I have seen some news articles with this narrative, it was more on the line of fear-mongering rather than providing evidence.
Ukraine is only Putin's first step, and Europe is well aware of that, so look at all the advanced weapons systems Europe is now giving to Ukraine (Storm Shadow, SCALP, SAMP/T etc), as well as the statements they are making. They are well aware this has made them a target for Putin, with UK missiles having been used against Black Sea targets etc, but are doing it all the same.
Europe is not tolerating Russian drone incursions, and has been shooting them down, have been on air combat footing patrolling the finish border and Kalinograd region (operating out of Lithuania), boosting defense of the Suwałki Gap, etc.
YouTube is perhaps one of the best sources of information, since US MSM is not interested.
