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    EU and social welfare

    In 20 years time, if I ever have kids, I'll probably tell them how good those glory days of free movement around the EU were. That, if it weren't for freedom of movement, I'd never have met your mother. But a few weeks ago, me and my EU wife were sat in the IVF clinic with other hopeful couples, couples from the UK, but also couples from the EU living in the UK and couples from other parts of the world, living in the UK. This is to be admired, that as long as you're working in and contributing to a country, you can share the social services it has to offer.

    Sadly, when I lived in Portugal, I was never given a social security identity card which would entitle me to the social services I had paid into. I had a number, but no card. The number alone was not sufficient to claim the discounts on medication or doctor visits I was entitled to, I had to queue up each year at the social security office to request a letter which verified my entitlement. This letter would need to be accompanied by my passport when going to the doctor or the pharmacy and even then, I had to go to pharmacies I knew would not refuse my documents, which would humiliatingly happen. It was, quite simply, shit.

    Why, when the EU and freedom of movement and trade were first rolled out, was the emphasis on having a common currency rather than a common social welfare system? Surely this should have been the first point to address before fishing laws or other weird things the right wing love to latch onto?

    I can only speak for Portugal, but the large-scale absence of taxed at source income, unemployment benefit paid at 80% of your last salary for 1 year, huge pensions paid out on your 10 best years of work and a bloated government and local government gave sufficient signals towards an economy that was destined to be fucked. Then the lack of investment in health care or any public service (education especially), leading to a population largely readily reliant on private care and schooling, if they have a grandparent wealthy enough to pay for it.

    Brexit is a major fuck up and remaining would always be my choice. But I'm beginning to believe the EU cocked it all up decades ago with its desire to expand rapidly without ensuring social welfare within its members met a minimum standard that would allow total freedom of movement within its member countries. The focus was primarily on trade, wasn't it? Let's get rich, rather than let's get equal.

    Please let me know if my ramblings are falling dangerously into Daily Mail reader territory. If they are, I'll give myself a massive slap.

    #2
    EU and social welfare

    Why, when the EU and freedom of movement and trade were first rolled out, was the emphasis on having a common currency rather than a common social welfare system?
    Like anything else, the EU is a product of the politics of its time and the governments of its time, all of which - to put it crudely - placed capital ahead of people. The Market came first, even if it was going to fuck up.

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      #3
      EU and social welfare

      The problems in Italy and Greece were an excess of The Market?

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        #4
        EU and social welfare

        Berba and I have brough this up before.

        http://www.doingbusiness.org/rankings

        All 3 Scandinavias in the top 10.

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          #5
          EU and social welfare

          The problems in Italy and Greece were an excess of The Market?
          Well, kleptocracy was/is a massive problem in both countries, so it's not as if they were some sort of indictment of social democratic welfare provision. An attempt to impose market solutions as a way out didn't work out too well.

          Brown was always right to overrule Blair on the euro.

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            #6
            EU and social welfare

            I agree with you, Italy and Greece don't prove anything about social democracy at all. I was just saying that a market economy in line with the EU/OECD mainstream would be an improvement.

            The problem with the solution for Greece was that it was uber stingy, more than it was too much about markets. A failure of solidarity, I think, but not particularly dogmatic free market.

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              #7
              EU and social welfare

              You are actually very right Steveee, that has been the EU biggest fail, to disseminate the social policies of its star members, the Scandis, across the union in parallel with the trade aspect.

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                #8
                EU and social welfare

                I'm not sure the Scandi solution is scaleable to every EU country, especially since expansion, where let alone a lack of cash, many eastern bloc countries seem addicted to proving they aren't dirty Welfarist Commies by systematically dismantling the provisions guaranteed in the former Warsaw Pact (and often it's ex Commies like the bloody awful Lithuanian and Slovak PMs driving such measures, and pocketing the cash in their kleptocratic fiefdoms). Lean and mean is how they want it.

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                  #9
                  EU and social welfare

                  EU states have kept a grip on certain elements of their economies like tax and social services and budgets.
                  (Ireland is clinging to 12.5% corp tax rate until it is taken from it's cold clammy hands).
                  What the EU laid out was that states had to treat other EU nationals in the same way as they treated their own nationals.
                  Sounds like Portugal did not - maybe due to red tape/ inertia / hidden barriers to foreigners.

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                    #10
                    EU and social welfare

                    nah, that's not it. It's that the govts wanted to keep control of all of these areas and refused to cede them to central control. If there is a lack of progress in integration, it's usually because govts want to retain sovereignty (to do dirt) this is the struggle at the heart of the EU. Everybody starts out signing up to a new economic or political development, but refuse to agree to central oversight, or take the various steps actually required to make it work.

                    Then it progresses for a bit, goes wrong, and the EU uses the crisis to eventually force through the appropriate regulation or standardization. The UK was usually at the front of the queue on fighting literally everything. There's really no point in analysing what the EU does or doesn't do without remembering that most things within it are a sort of battle between a centralizing power trying to harmonize things across the continent, and get everyone to stick to the commitments they made in order to get access to the benefits of Eu Membership, against local elites who want to keep the power to do dirt, either to the direct benefit of their wealthy donors. This is usually expressed in terms of the people's will but invariably revolves around the ability to engage in clintelism.

                    But the big reason is that steve's thing is that whatever the country, there's no great political support for allowing migrants access to social welfare, because it's just not electorally popular, because the world is full of stupid cunts, so anything that you do give migrants is used to claim that they're benefit tourists

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                      #11
                      EU and social welfare

                      Lang Spoon wrote: I'm not sure the Scandi solution is scaleable to every EU country, especially since expansion, where let alone a lack of cash, many eastern bloc countries seem addicted to proving they aren't dirty Welfarist Commies by systematically dismantling the provisions guaranteed in the former Warsaw Pact (and often it's ex Commies like the bloody awful Lithuanian and Slovak PMs driving such measures, and pocketing the cash in their kleptocratic fiefdoms). Lean and mean is how they want it.
                      I agree about the newer members' political culture. And the Euro has probably made it worse because it's a symbol of having arrived as a proper Western economy. Previously just joining the EU was the "kitemark". The Euro is grim for poorer countries.

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