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Surge in support for EU on the continent… say polls … and we all know how reliable and objective polls are, right?
“Brexit shocked people in the EU,” Francois Kraus, head of the political and current affairs service at IFOP, told Reuters on Wednesday.
“Seeing the Eurosceptics’ dream come true must have triggered a reaction in people who usually criticise the EU and blame it for decisions such as austerity measures.
“But when people realise the real implications of an exit, there’s new-found support for the European project,” he said.
Ah that magical term “austerity“. Taxing people less so that they get to spend their own money, rather than the government spending it, is not “austerity”. And there I was thinking keeping more of my own money was “abundance” rather than “austerity”. Go figure.
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Wait till the UK’s economy rockets, while the EU’s tanks. Let’s see how the Volk come to terms with bailing out Greece and Italy, forever. And let’s see how la belle France reacts when the EU stops them from deporting dangerous Muslims.
Austerity is what my parents went through during the immediate post-war years. This generation has no concept of what austerity is. And, yes, keeping more of our own money is definitely not austerity.
Unfortunately, so-called “austerity” hasn’t meant taxing people less. Instead, vast piles of money have been handed to government cronies in the allegedly-but-not-really private sector in the form of Quantitative Easing (QE), while nominal taxation has gone up or at least remained stable and QE, as a hidden tax, eats away at the real value of honest private wealth.
Actually Mary that *is* taxing people, just indirectly, as you yourself note.
The words to understand are:
Written by an Englishman
To the macroeconomics types, “austerity” is usually defined as “whatever makes budget deficits go up”, so lower taxes doesn’t count, higher taxes do. There is some verbal subterfuge here, though – the typical trick is that since “higher taxes” and “lower spending” both count as “austerity” you can cite any studies which show negative effects of the former and misuse them to argue against the latter.
The story is flatly contradictory of other polls taken soon after the brexit vote, which reported the more plausible effect of a continental rise in euroscepticism. Recent events (Nice, the axeman, the coup attempt in Turkey, the need to rerun the Austrian vote – to say nothing of brexit itself) are none of them obviously of a character to increase EU support. So colour me sceptical. The words used by the pollster do not encourage confidence in his impartiality.
The very consistency of the effect claimed across EU countries also makes me suspicious – but I guess I would feel that; a eurosceptic is one who does not expect the various populations across the EU to show consistent political reactions.
There will be other polls. We’ll see what the long-term trend is soon enough.
If only that’s what they were talking about. The word “austerity”, in its current usage, just means spending not too much more than you take in through taxation.
Agreed, I think it is utter BS.
The EU is a giant Wizard of Oz, and behind the curtain there is nothing. Take it away and all Member States are still there, with real people living real lives, many interested in us buying from them and them selling to us real things. The EU is not necessary, and the Brexit voted showed that. If anything, the voted let a gasp of fresh air into the stuffy locker room of the EU, and the uncomfortable residents smelt a world with flowers outside.
“But when people realise the real implications of an exit”
Such as… ?
This is one of those “If X meant Y…” polls, isn’t it? The “Would you support higher taxation if it meant better healthcare?” school of statistical legerdemain. “If Frexit meant the sky falling on our heads, endless winter, and the death of your first born, would you be in favour?”
If you think that nationalism is the greatest evil in the world, and Europeans do seem to think that, then outbreaks of Nationalism will be taken as evil coming back into the world. (Is your scar itching, Harry Potter?) Only in Britain is WW2 remembered as a good war- if you had to fight, then this was the war to have (for Britain). Britain was there at the start of the war, kept fighting throughout the War, and was on the winning side at the end of the war. Not many countries can claim the same- and none in Europe! (Russia was an ally of Hitler at one time in the war.)
So the European experience of the war meant they came to distrust nationalism, whilst it bound Britain together. So those polls might well be right- for Europe.
Perry,
Ya almost have to admire the audacity of american politicians like Pres Abamination when he asks how exactly do his opponents propose to “pay for tax cuts”, as if taxation isn’t extorted from ‘the people’ to begin with. As if our holdings rightly belong to the government.
Let’s put this in a more concrete perspective.
Bob has 100 of his earnings.
Mr. Taxman wants to take a percentage of Bob’s earnings, keep 5/6 of it for gov “overhead” and then use the remaing 1/6 to finance something bob cares about, like policing, fire fighting or building public roads. Now, how do we propose “paying for tax cuts” when Bob’s allowed to keep all his earnings?
Oh woe is Bob, right? But of course if Bob kept that 5/6 himself and paid the other 1/6 directly for all the above mentioned programs…wouldn’t that be better for everyone, (except for Mr. Taxman of course).
Ergo “tax cuts” pay for themselves!
“when people realise the real implications of an exit”
So that won’t be for a decade or so, then? Shall we ask them all again then?
Does the EU even have a concept of regulatory austerity, where governments reduce regulation and the costs thereof? It would require reviewing and identifying the worst, least productive regulations and would hurt the fewest people possible of all the economic stimulus options. Once the topic is on the table, it becomes very attractive.
So why isn’t the topic on the table?
Those who oppose the current so-called austerity do so not because the Government is spending less of their money, but because the Government is spending less of other people’s money on them.
When I come across complainers of austerity and starving families etc on social media, I like to direct them to images of real austerity – Leningrad 1943: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XVR54mjOcs
just means spending not too much more than you take in through taxation
The shocking point being that this is not the default situation but one that needs to be actively specified as a policy, it should not be “implementing austerity measures” but “abandoning overspending measures”.
Runcie, you can call it “abandoning overspending measures” (and I would agree with you), but to a die-hard Keynesian reducing government spending equates to shrinking GDP (a correct statement, given the irrational way in which GDP is defined), which in turn equates (in their mind) to a smaller, weaker economy. Thus it truly is “austerity” (from the government’s perspective), and so is objectively bad.
The next actual vote (as opposed to Opinion Poll) is in Hungary in September.
A referendum on the E.U.s interesting idea to force Islamist “refugees” upon Hungary.
Let us see how the real vote (as opposed to opinion poll) goes.
As for “austerity”.
Where is government shrinking in size?
Or is “austerity” just a media (and political) “buzz word”?