I’ll try to track down US GDPs for comparison to this chart of U.S. budget deficits, but if my recollection of GDPs is even roughly accurate, US deficits were over 2% of GDP continuously from 1982-1995, and for many of those years were over 3%.
This was bad policy, too. The deficits remained consistently high, even during times of economic expansion. But deficits of 2% of GDP aren’t uncommon, and even really aren’t that troubling economically - so long as they are eventually balanced.
Sua
I’ll try to track down US GDPs for comparison to this chart of U.S. budget deficits, but if my recollection of GDPs is even roughly accurate, US deficits were over 2% of GDP continuously from 1982-1995, and for many of those years were over 3%.
This was bad policy, too. The deficits remained consistently high, even during times of economic expansion. But deficits of 2% of GDP aren’t uncommon, and even really aren’t that troubling economically - so long as they are eventually balanced.
Sua
It makes sense that a country should balance the surplus of the good years with the deficit of the bad years but the problem is that governments get hooked on spending money they don’t have and just leave the bill for those that come behind. Imposing strict limits on deficits means a self imposed discipline. From the link provided by Sua I get
YEAR DEFICIT YEAR DEFICIT YEAR DEFICIT
2000 6.6 1970 -1.5 1940 -30.8
1999 4.6 1969 1.8 1939 -31.1
1998 4.2 1968 -14.1 1938 -1.3
1997 -1.4 1967 -5.5 1937 -28.9
1996 -6.9 1966 -2.7 1936 -52.3
1995 -10.8 1965 -1.2 1935 -43.7
1994 -13.8 1964 -5.0 1934 -54.8
1993 -18.1 1963 -4.3 1933 -56.6
1992 -21.0 1962 -6.7 1932 -58.7
1991 -20.4 1961 -3.4 1931 -12.9
1990 -17.6 1960 0.3 1930 22.2
1989 -13.4 1959 -14.0 1929 23.5
1988 -14.6 1958 -3.4 1928 31.7
1987 -14.9 1957 4.5 1927 40.5
1986 -22.3 1956 5.6 1926 29.5
1985 -22.4 1955 -4.4 1925 24.5
1984 -21.8 1954 -1.6 1924 33.1
1983 -25.7 1953 -8.5 1923 22.7
1982 -17.2 1952 -2.2 1922 22.4
1981 -11.6 1951 13.4 1921 10.1
1980 -12.5 1950 -7.3 1920 4.6
1979 -8.0 1949 1.5 1919 -72.3
1978 -12.9 1948 39.6 1918 -71.2
1977 -13.1 1947 11.6 1917 -43.7
1976 -19.8 1946 -28.9 1916 6.7
1975 -16.0 1945 -51.3 1915 -8.4
1974 -2.3 1944 -52.1 1914 -0.1
1973 -6.1 1943 -69.4 1913 -0.1
1972 -10.1 1942 -58.4 1912 0.4
1971 -11.0 1941 -36.2 1911 1.6
The huge and continuous deficits from 1970 to 1996 are just totally unjustified.
Sailor, I think you made a goof. Your figures are deficit as a percentage of the budget, not as a percentage of GDP.
Sua
I don’t know that I would call it a goof. What’s wrong with considering “deficit as a percentage of the budget, not as a percentage of GDP”? Especially when I don’t have the GDP to work with. Budget deficit as a percentage of budget seems to me to be quite an indication of a government spending beyond what it can take in.
Two reasons.
First, deficit as a percentage of budget isn’t a good indication that a government is spending beyond what it can take in. Instead, it is an indication that a government is spending beyond what it chooses to take in.
Second, the damage to the economy isn’t really caused by how far the budget is out of whack in comparison to revenues, but instead how much of the GDP is sucked in to cover the gap, money that can’t be used for productive investment.
And, yeah, yeah, I’ll get off my duff and get the GDP stats. :smack:
Well since Sailor and Sua went to so much trouble to look up stuff I guess I better get off my butt and contribute also.
This is an excel spread sheet for federal budget deficit vs. gdp.
It shows 1985 as having deficit of 5.1% of GDP and just in general the percentage in general being above 2% as being pretty common.
So maybe 2% is somewhat low.
Well, since this was about the Euro from the beginning mayhap some figures on the economy that flies that currency would be in place.[ol]Budget deficit as % of GDP in the EU
euro-zone / EU-15
1996 -4.2 / -4.2
1997 -2.6 / -2.4
1998 -2.2 / -1.6
1999 -1.3 / -0.7
2000 0.2 / 1.1
2001 -1.3 / -0.6[/ol]The 1.3% deficit in 2001, was as Sua earlier pointed out, helped along by Germany contributing with a whopping 2.7% - on the other hand the surplus in Germany in 2000 was higher at 1.2% (still bad).
Obviously we can’t go back quite as far as the US figures without some absolutely grueling work. But in these years (as we already knew) the EU overall is performing worse than the US. Post the inception of the Euro we see a drift between the Euro Zone and EU overall. This has to be seen in the light of what London Calling earlier pointed out, namely the tight relationship between the UK and the US business cycles, a relationship that is slowly eroding as UK adapts to the rest of EU, independent of Euro or no Euro for the Brits.
For more EU indicators visit eurostat and euroindicators.
Sparc
Interesting thread, despite the weak start. Just a couple of points.
**
This isn’t Gresham’s law, which is usually stated as “Bad money drives out good.” This however, isn’t actually a complete and correct statement of what Gresham’s law describes because . . . Oh, never mind.
**
I think the real question is whether the existing countries are fundamentally in sync in the first place. The Euro is fundamentally a political rather than an economic project. This is fine, as far as it goes but you can’t manipulate economic criteria for political ends without consequence. For political reasons, the EU decided to bend the original rules for creating the Euro to ensure that as many countries could join as possible. The economies of Greece and Finland are not synchronised in any fundamental sense.
This need not be fatal to the Euro project. It does, however, make it more difficult. World financial markets will not fully believe in the Euro until it weathers an economic crisis that has Germany demanding dramatically higher interest rates to stamp out a surge in inflation and France demanding dramatic cuts to stamp out a surge in unemployment. If there’s a bit of rioting by French farmers it can’t help but add to the ECB’s credibility.
Until then, having seen too many other exchange rate mechanisms blow apart under the stress of reality, traders and investors will always have a doubt as to just how viable the Euro really is.
There are other political factors that have contributed to the long-term weakness of the Euro. The French attempt to ensure that a Frenchman led the ECB was a red flag as was the more recent incident involving Germany’s deficit. You can argue that the Euro economic criteria are too stringent but that’s not the point. What really concerns traders and investors is the apparent willingness to bend the economic rules (good or bad) for political ends.
Anyway, all of this kind of misses the point. Will the Euro be a success? What’s “success?” If “success” is “not completely collapsing” then the Euro probably will be a “success.” If success is “will the entire Euro zone be better off with the Euro than it would have been without it” well, that’s a much closer question, especially in the medium term.
Ok gang, here’s the anti-Euro argument.
There exists a collection of states in North America that have a common currency. We call the collection, the “US” and the currency “the dollar”.
Occasionally, one part of the US will go into recession, while other parts are still doing OK. An example of this was in the mid 1980s, when collapsing oil prices destroyed Texas while helping the rest of the country.
In these cases, the US has a few automatic stabilizers:
Tax receipts go down in the depressed areas as federal government spending (eg unemployment insurance) goes up.
Citizens (and even firms) migrate away from depressed areas.
Now, there is reason to believe that Europe is not an “optimal currency area”.* Fiscal redistribution across the different European states is not that well developed. That is, it doesn’t vary too much with the regional business cycles. Within each state fiscal policy is also repressed by agreement.
Furthermore, language barriers discourage workers from migrating away from states that are depressed.
Conclusion: Given language barriers, Europeans should work on developing more elaborate counter-geographical fiscal policy, if they wish to have a unified currency. This would entail some interesting politics, as underdeveloped Spain could conceivably subsidize Germany if the latter experienced a regional downturn.
Well Flowbark. It’s a solid argument as such.
If it wasn’t for two factors.
Fiscal policy is being streamlined although that will take quite some time. We have already done many things in preparation such as put in place limitations on sales taxes, curtail the right to slash corporate taxes as means to achieve unbalanced competitive spheres and so on. More will follow.
It is a political desire to motivate migration within Europe since it increases the stability of the economy and that free movement of labor and finance is one of our founding principles. I think you overestimate the language barriers, the cultural barriers might be a bigger problem - but then you see we don’t want to keep those in place.
You could argue that we should have waited until all of that was working before we introduce the Euro, but hey if you want to make an omelet…
Yes the Euro is a political decision and it is an experiment on grand scale, but you know what? So far it looks like it’s going to fly.
Forget not that the majority of Europeans want to become a true federation and we have good reasons for it.
And we said so, we continue to say so and by the powers that be do I hope that we continue to say so. We might not understand in our time and age the horror that this continent has seen, we might forget the millions that died in Europe’s conflagrations, but if we do we might let slip the dogs of war again and all those people, all humanity has suffered in vain.
The EU is possibly the greatest experiment aimed at freedom and prosperity since the Declaration of Independence, and just like it was for the US it will be for the EU, a struggle that demands grit and resolve. If the Euro helps us get there, bless the Euro. If the Euro is hard to live with, we had better learn fast if we do not want to fail in this grand mission that this generation’s grandparents set out upon some odd 50 years ago.
Sparc
Sparc, you are a true propagandist (in the nicest sense of the word). With tears in my eyes I and my European brothers and sisters stand, arm in arm, shoulder to shoulder, singing Beethoven’s 9th and saluting the Stars of the flag of the Federated States of Europe, our €50 notes fluttering in the winds of change.
Despite the grand rhetoric, I still fail to see how I will be more ‘free’ under a federal Europe. Please also remember when quoting Churchill (as you seem to do quite frequently) that he, while arguably being our country’s greatest during war, was quite unceremoniously and pragmatically defeated in the first general election following the war.
I can categorically state that neither of my two sets of grandparents were aware of any grand mission. My own parents, who voted in the 197x referendum on the EEC, were systematically lied to by the then government.
I ask you. Given the above, why should I treat the grand mission with anything other than cautious skepticism? I’m all for free trade - the more the better - but even then I see that in the grand mission we still have room for countries not playing fair (cough France, cough 100,000 GBP per day mooted fine for failing to lift import ban on UK beef, cough. Or the CAP, for that matter).
Xerxes -
Are you suggesting Churchill lost the 1945 election because he was pro-European ?
Was there not a public debate in 1972/3, an official Opposition, an organised ‘anti’ lobby or are you suggesting your parents accepted every piece of political rhetoric as being sacred text ?
CAP is in the process of being reformed (again !) – what, exactly are you objections to the current regime ?
I’d love to see some evidence for both these assertions.
The majority of Germans, Italians, Spaniards, French, Brits want to scrap their respective sovereignties??
There are good reasons for them to do so???
We will see for sure in a few months, when the UK starts to assemble forces for an invasion of Iraq alongside the US. My bet is, the eurorabble will split three ways - a few will come on board, a few will send some token medical/logistics support or send cash, a few will sit in a huff.
Some federation.
Unlike the US where everybody agrees on everything?
Thank you jjimm for the encouraging words and the support.
Now, xerces,
It’s blatantly obvious how a federal EU grants you more freedom I would say. It guarantees your freedom of movement within the Union. It guarantees your participation in the democratic process on a Union level. It guarantees that you’re rights as a citizen are equally inalienable as those of the rest of the Union and that you are protected on the same level. It guarantees you recourse to pan European laws and protections should your state jurisdiction of residence fail to protect you, or even downright persecute you in breech of the rights laid down in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. A federal union does that by disabling the member states from suddenly discriminating against those rights.
Now if you have no interest in those pan European freedoms whatsoever, or couldn’t care less about the rest of us outside the UK and think that we should mind our own bleeding business, it’s another story. In that case the freedoms you are guaranteed are a little more abstract, but they are still there.
A federal Europe is more likely to stop any of the EU states to engage in oppression and tyranny. It creates a system of dependence between the states of the Union that disables their desire, need and capacity for armed conflict. This keeps you safe and cozy since it ensures that you will not be the subject of yet another aggression like the ones of the 100 years war, the 30 years war, the Napoleonic Wars, WWI and WWII, to just mention a few of the worst wars we fought in the name of our petty nations. Note that not one single one of those wars were fought on British soil, yet subjects of the Crown died in hordes in each and every one of them since the UK depends on her sisters on the continent and thus needs to engage in any conflict that destabilizes the same (well in the first example England was the aggressor, but maybe 600 years later that can be left aside).
Churchill was like any polititian. He had his ups and he had his downs. Reducing his political career too the war years is rather not fair to his legacy. You might want to remember that his social reforms in the 20s were essential in reducing the inequalities of the UK economy. You might want to remember his engagement for suffrage in the early days of his career. You might want to consider his efforts to secure free trade with many nations outside the Commonwealth that brought prosperity to the British Isles. Not to mention that he more or less single handedly made sure that the Commonwealth survived as the Empire dwindled. The man’s political career spanned close to 60 years, 5 years and a few months of those happened during WWII and maybe that was his finest hour albeit just an hour. His being voted out of government after the war had naught to do with the EU. In any case this is a strawman that you put up so I shall stop holding it under its arms. I quote Churchill because he is the founding spirit of our Union and even if that was the only thing he would ever have accomplished, I would still quote him and hold his views on the EU for valid, because they reflect the will of the majority of the EU citizenry including those of the UK.
Considering that the UK for reasons specific to its status in the Commonwealth decided to stay out of the Union at the time this is hardly surprising.
Which in itself is a lie that you have unfortunately been fed from sources less than interested in fact and balance. This is how it went: The European Community was made effective as of the Treaty of Rome in 1957. The UK stayed out for fear of loosing the favored position in trade within the Commonwealth and for fear of weakening its strong ties to the US. Instead the UK forged EFTA, the European Free Trade Association together with all the other nations not yet ready to join the EEC. But, whoops says the government in 1961, that didn’t work. So for fear of being politically and economically isolated 1961 saw a shift of policy and the UK applied for membership in the EEC. The conditions put up by the UK were deemed unacceptable and France vetoed membership. Finally in 1973 the UK joins the European Community. In 1975 the referendum is held to approve of continued membership, and thus is approved by Her Majesty’s Subjects. Note that the referendum was not about staying in the EFTA, but about the EEC. The UK government promised to work as hard as they could to uphold the rights of its citizenry in this Union, but they did not promise that there would never be a federal EU. And a fine job they have done I would say. For instance in relation to the Mastricht agreement or Treaty on European Union where the UK was instrumental in making sure that a federal EU was not hastily created and in the Treaty of Nice negotiations when it ensured that regional freedoms were still guaranteed as we do finally move into the phase of federalization of our Union. I invite you to proove that your parents were lied to, but I find it a doubtful proposition that you can.
You answer your own question I think. Take what I wrote above, add your fears that fair play is not guaranteed within a free trade association alone and what do you get?
A federal Europe tears down the barriers of isolation and forces us to come together as one nation in pursuit of freedom, prosperity, happiness and peace. That is why you should embrace a federal EU.
OK The SDMB EU school is out for today, for I must turn to writing about our history and future for purposes of prosperity instead.
Sparc
PS Hemlock go to the thread previously linked to by me. In that thread tou will find a link to the latest European wide EU poll that gives you ample proof that a vast majority does indeed support a federal Europe. I’ll also furnish a link from here later on, but I must truly work now. DS
BTW Hemlock… “eurorabble”???
Take it to the fucking Pit if you’re going to use slurs on that level, 'cause I take personal offense OK?
London_Calling said
Nope. I merely point out that he was ousted after the war.
This is subjective. My personal view is that I don’t think there was the level of distrust of politicians that we see now. Certainly I remember talking with my Dad much later on, and he thought he’d been fed a crock by Ted Heath (who later on went on record to say that closer integration / political union had been on the agenda all the time). I am much more skeptical about the political process than they ever were.
Oh, the usual. It’ll end up being fudged again. Can I prove it beyond all doubt? No. Will it be better than the current regime? Probably. When national interests are at stake, I think we’ll find a few corners cut here and there.
Sparc opined:
Well, one man’s blatant is another man’s… not-so-blatant. I had pretty good freedom of movement in the first place, although I cannot see why this is really so important, certainly not worth what I perceive to be the value you attach to it.
We already have a democratic process. In fact, one of the tenets of our current incumbents is that power should be devolved (c.f. Regional Assemblies). The tacit agreement to the centralisation of power shows that our government seems to be a bit torn on the issue.
I simply don’t buy this. Nations act out of self-interest. Always have, always will. Whether they’re bound by some arbitrary set of strictures is irrelevant. This is an argument for more free trade (which I’m all in favour of), not political union.
I have never felt at threat from my own government, of whatever persuasion. Your mileage may vary.
On Churchill; I completely agree with you, he did much more than preside over the country during the war. You however seem to be saying that because he espoused federalism, somehow we all should? I fail to see the link.
Well, thanks very much. I’m not going to stoop to name calling, but I want it on record that my parents were, among other things, as politically switched on as most, and more than many. They’re not around now to defend their decision, but the point is that they latterly felt that they had been lied to by someone in whom they invested their trust (by voting for him). I’ll dig out cites about what T. Heath said then, and what he later said. Maybe you can do the same from someone who is presumably ‘more than interested in fact and balance’.