Not tax exactly, but it does have a budget which is funded by contributions from the member countries. The chief instrument of the EU budget for redistribution purposes is what’s called the Structural Funds, which essentially subsidize economic development and infrastructure building in the poorer countries.
It does, in a few ways. First, it collects import duties/tarrifs on goods imported from outside the EU. Second, it’s entitled to part of the VAT paid by citizens of member states. Third, it collects a percentage of each member country’s gross national income (This is where the majority of the funding comes from).
What John Mace is talking about is the EU’s “regional policy”, which, like Kimstu said, comes from the Structural fund, and is a pretty straightforward wealth transfer. Here’s a map of the EU’s “Objective 1” and “Objective 2” regions.
Have you ever been inside a business? Is your entire impression of business made up of what you read in the papers about the really big and famous ones?
It’s my job to visit three or four different businesses every week. In the last seven years I’ve visited hundreds of businesses and gone over their business in great detail. Here are the facts:
- MOST businesses are small to medium sized at most.
- MOST businesses don’t make a lot of money.
- In most businesses the owner(s) and their senior managers are the hardest working people in the company.
- Most business owners are not rich, and start their businesses by borrowing money.
Get your head out of your ass and go driving through an industrial park. Look at all the little businesses trying to get by. That’s where most jobs are created and mnost commerce and industry takes place, you know. Those people are the ones who create all the wealth you’re sucking up.
I see you’re talking about actually merging Canada’s provinces into the US (which is a different idea, a very bad one at that, and would in fact not be accepted by the citizens of any Canadian province), but I must point out that among the Canadian provinces, Quebec might be the one that would be most in favour of a greater level of economic integration within North America. When the free trade agreement with the US was negociated, it was much more popular in Quebec than in the other provinces, where, if I understand correctly, Canadian nationalists were afraid of seeing Canada’s culture be drowned in an influx of cultural imports from the US. It must be said that the United States haven’t taken a leadership role in the worldwide preservation of cultural diversity (for example, unlike Canada and Mexico, they haven’t signed the UNESCO’s Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expression). This may be because the United States don’t consider their culture to be especially fragile.
Some economists have said that a North American monetary union is in time inevitable. We’ll probably hear more of this in a few years or so, and if the arguments for Canada to adopt the American dollar are convincing, I will support it. Right now, I must admit that the fact that it would mean that Canada would lose some sovereignty in setting its economic policy is a worry.
Also, it’s certain that in an eventual North American union (even if each country retains the greater part of its sovereignty), the United States would be, by far, the dominant partner. So most decisions would be made mainly with the interest of the US in mind. This said, if we equip this union with some sort of “North American Parliament” on the model of the European Parliament, we can reduce the risk that decisions would be taken solely with the goals of the current American government in mind.
This said, BrainGlutton is right that in the current political climate, giving a large number of foreigners the legal right to work in the US doesn’t seem very feasible. So I guess it won’t happen especially soon. Unless we specifically exclude Mexico (as John Mace suggests).
But merging Canada’s provinces into the United States, politically as well as economically? No, that just doesn’t make any sense.
Ah. Well, in that case . . . Yeah, we could use something like that in North America. It would solve the immigration problem: Use American and Canadian wealth to help Mexico develop its economy until it approaches our level of prosperity, and Mexicans will be content to remain at home.
But even presented in those terms, it would be really hard to sell politically.
It’s much, much too late to preserve “Canadian culture” from American influence. In case you’ve forgotten, we are your Mother Country; the UK is only your grandmother. Anglophone Canada hardly existed in 1776; it was colonized by United Empire Loyalists fleeing the States – and, in the decades after the war ended, was further heavily settled by Yankee immigrants. That’s what gave your culture its familiar shape.
I’ve got no problem with a wider free trade zone across the Americas. I hope it happens. I’ve got no problem with joint rules for external security, making it easier to travel with the countries of the Americas (i.e. if the U.S. was satisfied that Canada’s screening of terrorists from abroad was as good as theirs, there would be less need for stringent controls and checks at the U.S./Canadian border).
But a single currency is most likely a bad idea. It was a Canadian who won the Nobel prize by pointing out that that floating exchange rates are a good thing. Canada used to fix its dollar against the U.S. dollar, and it turned out to be a bad idea. If the fed loosens the money supply in the U.S. because economic conditions warrant it, what happens if what Canada needs for its economic conditions is a tightening of its money supply?
So long as you have different governments who have different monetary policies, a common currency is a bad idea. It might make sense in the EU, because there’s so much economic friction in having many small countries each with their own currency. The value of the Euro in standardizing the means of exchange may outweigh the cost of losing the monetary flexibilty of separate currencies with floating exchange rates.
But in the Canada-US-Mexico case, there are only three countries, and trade between them is a small percentage of their overal GDPs. I don’t believe the relatively small advantage of a common currency comes close to the liabilities of tying our monetary policies together. Canada and Mexico would be the ones hardest hit, because given our relative sizes the monetary policy would wind up being controlled by the U.S. to the benefit of the U.S., and we’d just have to suffer the consequences.
The elected reps from your area would reflect existing canadian parties/policy/POV. Dosen’t mean a new canadian member of the senate would be an automatic republicrat. If anything could railroad in additional parties it would be something like this.
Nope. They both have socialized medicine. A good rule of thumb: Industrial nation = socialized medicine. Exceptions exist, of course.
What’s “Socialized medicine”? Do you mean the government runs the hospitals and employs the doctors? Because it’s simply not true that all industrialized nations have that. Do you mean the government guarantees all health care? That isn’t true either. Do you mean no private care? Again, not generally true in most cases.
I mean, honestly, it’s like saying “A good rule of thumb: Industrial nation = Armed forces.” Sure, all industrialized nations have dudes with guns, There’s still a difference between the UK, with a lot of guns and nuclear weapons, and, say, Luxembourg.
Socialized Medicine. Again, exceptions exist, but the government is generally responsible for providing healthcare in industrialized nations. Using your armed forces analogy, it would hard to find an industrial country in which the armed forces are provided by the private sector.
But by this definition, the United States has socialized medicine. You aren’t aware of Medicare and Medicaid?
It’s not socialized unless it’s spread over the society. But, yes, if Medicaid and Medicare were expanded to cover the entire country, it would be socialized medicine.
When rich people die, do jobs disappear?
Especially in light of Mexico’s history of political corruption and de facto one party rule (I suppose those aren’t independent of each other). I don’t know how much progress Mexico has made on those fronts, but it takes a long time to turn around a bad rep. But even then, I don’t see the US mind-set being the same as that in Europe. There is no sense of North Americanness as there is of Europeanness.
There’s a not-so-thin line between being a conspirator and being a crackpot. Speaking as a crackpot, I’ve spent a fair amount of time thinking about how groups of nations could/should be lumped together to form “regional federations”. What with Europe leading the way, Sub-saharan Africa, the Arab states, Latin America, etc, could follow at their own pace (at the time, the Soviet bloc already a de-facto superstate).
I wrote a fairly ragged essay to that effect here:http://www.squeakywheelsblog.com/world
At first I imagined lumping the US in with Canada, Australia, New Zeland and a number of Carribean and Pacific Islands to form “Anglo-Oceania”, but I since realized that it wouldn’t work for a regional federation to be dominated by one very large state with the others much smaller. Plus, there’s the if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it factor. And the US is already a regional federation.
I still think is a good idea for poorer regions of more roughly equal-sized states. But getting there is definitely half the fun.
But there is some sense of Latin Americanness, and a Union of South American Nations is already being organized. As some point Mexico might decide to join it even if that means withdrawing from NAFTA. At least, I can foresee a political movement in Mexico for that end.
BTW, which has more autonomy from the federal government – Mexican states, U.S. states, or Canadian provinces?
Yeah, that would make sense. Common language and all-- Latin. 
Beats me. It might vary by what specifically you’re talking about, too.
Winners and Losers as in every capitalistic system. Some:
Canada could benefit from Universal Environmental Standards.
The U.S., especially on the Gulf of Mexico and Mexican border the same. The U.S would benefit by fair labor and an increasing Mexican Standard of living.
Mexico writ large would benefit in every way.
Losers might be the subset of Mexican officialdom that is corrupt and invested in the old way, Mexican businesses feeding off the low standards, U.S. businesses feeding of the illegal 12 Million laborers, border patrol agents.
I don’t disagree with you often and not in this case with your overall post but this piece isn’t right - especially for Canada
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In 2000, 43 percent of Canada’s gross domestic product was comprised of exports and over 30 percent of total employment in the country was supported by exports. With 86 percent of all Canadian exports last year destined for the US, it is clear that trade with the United States creates an enormous number of jobs for Canadians.
Though the United States is not as export-oriented as is Canada, international trade does contribute significantly to the US economy. Last year, U.S. exports of goods and services comprised roughly 12 percent of the United States’ GDP. (Exports to Canada accounted for roughly 20 percent of all US exports.)*
I think people in general (not Sam) underestimate how important global trade is to their personal lives and tend to believe that their bolt hole is pretty much off the global grid. In general this is not the case – people’s lifestyles in 2007 in the Northern Hemisphere and Oceania are by and large very dependent on global forces.