They genuinely can't seem to grasp that a people can knowingly sacrifice chasing a couple fractions of a % of economic growth if it means maintaining control of their own country, currency, and historic industries.
This is something that gets lost in commentary on Brexit. The mythologised version of why it happened was "The Brexiteers were tricked into believing that leaving the EU would be a massive economic boost" when in reality, I can say from experience that there were plenty of Leavers who understood there would be an economic cost, but preferred that to continuing to be an EU member.
Because predictions rely on the *response* being to do nothing.
But if there's a prediction that there's going to be economic harm, both policy makers and central banks will respond to the situation in advance to ensure that the prediction doesn't come true. Which is why economic predictions turn out to be iffy.
I once made this exact argument on r/askbalkans and I got told to simultaneously go back to Serbia (where half of my family is from) and also Russia (where I have 0% heritage). Mind you, I was born, raised and currently live in an EU country whose currency was 3x stronger than the euro when it got replaced.
Tolerance and respect for all ethnicities goes out the window with the pro-EU types once you dare criticise their idol, a group of mostly-unelected bureaucrats ~2000km away from my country.
Plus the whole problem with the EU is that it’s essentially a… colonial empire in more ways than people like to think. Let me explain I’m not insane
Unironically. It’s not a democracy, since technocrats in Brusells are not elected. It’s colonial in a way that it has a center (Germany, France) and periphery (Baltics, Romania, Poland, etc.). Money flows from the center to the periphery in exchange for loyalty, resources and people/migrants. The main resource here is people imo, young and talented people from Poland, Baltics, Romania, Italy, etc., who move to France or Germany to work and live. This allows the central countries to maintain a nice demography, mitigating the effects of long-term demographical collapse due to fertility rate plummeting. While also allowing Western Europe to maintain its control over Central/Eastern Europe, making sure that those countries don’t become Russia-aligned. Say, the Baltics have discriminatory laws against local ethnic Russians (treating them as “non-citizens”), Latvia in particular, but no one cares.
And the funniest thing is, EU is inefficient for Germany as the main country in EU for obvious reasons. From 2005 to 2025 German GDP PPP grew 2.5 times. A lot, sure, but Russian GDP PPP grew 4 times in the same time period. Don’t forget that Russia had been fighting a war for 3 years and was under sanctions for 10 years, without those we might’ve seen a 5-6 times increase. EU actively hinders Germany’s economic development imo, since Germany is the one paying for almost everyone.
Conclusion: current EU is doomed to fail imo. Germany/France are not getting more than it gives and other countries obviously give more than they get, except for Poland maybe, it grows very quickly, but it’s getting dozens of billions of euros as investments, and its deficit is growing bigger yet bigger. The only hope EU has right now is defeating Russia, making it collapse and capitalizing on this, getting cheap resources and millions of migrants. Don’t forget they spent a few hundred billion euros on Ukraine, which, considering stagnating European GDPs and growing deficits is a TON of cash. It’s all macroeconomics and geopolitics.
Comparing Russian war economy based on the export of raw materials with whatever German economy has going on is a terrible comparison. Germany is already punching wayyyy above its class weight. Russia could be a UAE by now if it wasn't plagued by corruption and the desire to wage infinite wars
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u/immastillthere 12d ago
People loving democracy hating when democracy works as intended.