Playing right into the US hands. They’d love to see the EU disappear so that they can bully the individual countries even harder. Don’t be daft. The way to fight is to make the EU stronger, not to surrender to Washington/ Beijing/ Moscow.

We’re still going to need lots of US military equipment for a long time, so agreeing to that wasn’t too bad IMHO. As for the investment we’ll have to see. What’s the time frame? Perhaps we’ll see a little more sane US after the midterms?

But yeah, this isn’t a win for the EU by any means. It might be less bad for the smaller countries that might have been subjected to the Thailand deal if they had been alone though. But that’s not how the far right and Russia funded anti-eu brigade will frame it.

It’s pretty far from a win. It’s backing down to a bully because you know a fight would hurt you both badly, and that you still need the help of this bully against another.

Shit sucks, but that’s where we are now.

I think the EU is hoping for the mid-terms and that the Democrats take over the house of representatives. With any luck they’ll start doing their job again, and repeal these tariffs that Trump doesnt really have the mandate to set. It should be the house, yet somehow…

The EU gets time to move away from the US and build their own alternatives with reliable allies.

But yes, this isn’t the US of old where mutual benefit was the goal. This is “the US gets whatever it can take and fuck everybody else”.

As far as I understand it, no. It’s just American consumers that gets taxed. Sucks for EU businesses though because all their products will be 15% more expensive.

This might be a good time to remind people to #buyeuropean

You should. It’s an interesting article. Not sure why it got voted down.

Europe avoiding the worst hit while it takes steps to de-risk its economies, ie don’t see the US as a reliable trading partner.

Ok? Then where is it? Give me a Facebook that isn’t shit. I want to connect to a small group of friends, share photos and stories and not be “profiled”.

People i haven’t met should not be able to see anything I post, even if we share friends. I’d make it so you’d have to connect with NFC or something before they could see your stuff.

This influencer crap would not exist there. Nor should it anywhere, but that’s just my opinion.

No. But if you give women the choice you have to create the conditions that having a baby is the best option.

Assuming the freedom to choose, I don’t think those conditions exist. I think that people that want children will have them, and people that don’t won’t. I think the new normal is a lower nativity.

It is, if you give women the choice.

In countries where women get to choose, nativity goes down. In Bangladesh the nativity dropped with improved living standards. There’s a great video about it.

So the latter two can still be improved.

All three are vastly superior in most of the west compared to most of Africa, yet women in most, if not all, African countries have more kids than western women. Do you honestly think that’s because they’re happier? Women in Afghanistan have more babies than women in the nordics. Do you think it’s better to be a women in Afghanistan?

My argument

Your argument makes no sense. Living standards are abhorrent in Afghanistan and fantastic in the nordics, generally speaking. It’s not about the living standards.

You think having a newborn is a “vacation”? Oh dear.

Having a baby is risky for a woman, physically, financially, emotionally. Perhaps the outlook of the world isn’t great either. Combine that with women realising that they have choices, that they don’t have to have children, and you get the decline.

We’re not forcing people to come here you know. Also the nordics are generally winning the “happiest country” award, so I don’t get why you think people here aren’t happy.

The decline in births is a global phenomenon. It’s down everywhere except Africa, parts of Asia and parts of South America. I think 1-2 countries in S.America and a few more in Asia.

Wouldn’t surprise me if countries will beg migrants to come in a decade or two.

Sweden has one of the highest living standards in the world, and you think we should let that go just to avoid immigration? I hope I misunderstood, because that’s just dumb

How easy is it to get housing for a family of 5? How is child care if a child is sick? How high is the expectation for women to lose weight after birth and look good?

Housing obviously depends on where you want to live, but for the most part it’s accessible, and you get handouts from the government if your salary isn’t enough. Child care is free as I said, and you get paid if you need to stay home to take care of sick children. Not sure how to measure the expectation on women to look good, but I don’t think it’s a major factor in society.

If people have 2 children but not 3 then something is missing. It could be that a third child is simply too expensive, even though almost all resources were bought for the first two children. It could be that parents are already too old and don’t want to lose more sleep. Maybe all TV shows just show two children.

People aren’t having even 2 children, but for those that do have 3 or more, you get extra money from the government to cover extra cost.

What I’m saying is that there are massive incentives for parents here, but people aren’t having children. We’re having more than other countries, but no where near enough. So we need immigrants.

One year paid leave per kid per parent, almost free child care, free health care, free dental for kids, free education up to and including university, both parents expected to be on leave, can’t get fired for taking leave. Oh, and you get a government alimony of about €100 per month. This is for Sweden, other nordics might differ slightly.

Having kids in the nordics is insanely good, I don’t know what else we could do.

If we didn’t have immigration our population would decline, along with our living standards.

The fewer workers exist the higher the wages rise. Look at the compensation for people after pest waves.

That’s only true if either the work can’t be moved elsewhere. The other option is that output drops to match the available workforce, like in Britain after brexit for fruits and vegetables for example.

Immigration allows the elite to avoid the consequences of their bad politics. If living conditions were good enough people would have children.

I don’t mind better politics or living conditions, but look at the nordics. Best places in the world to have a kid and we still can’t manage to have 2 kids per couple.

Now people are moved instead of moving production processes to where the people are.

That’s been happening for the last 200 years, which is why most manufacturing is in China and other parts of Asia now. But if we want to keep people in work here we need workers, and there’s not enough of us.

The anti immigrant stance confuses me. I get that this is being used by bad actors to drive a wedge between people, but how is it that people can’t see that migrants are needed to keep the standard of living?

The amount of working people compared to the elderly or sick is diminishing, so you either have immigrants, raise taxes, reduce welfare or raise retirement age.

To me, immigration seems like the obvious choice.

Not really. The world needs the oil unfortunately, so someone needs to transport it. Who should do it? The option “nobody” isn’t really realistic.

Do I wish we didn’t need oil at all? Very much so.

Do I wish we could just say no to all Russian oil? Absolutely.

Sadly reality gets in the way.

Who would you prefer make money on the logistics? The EU27, or Russia?