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Comment by fzfaa | Hacker News Reader

It's time to inflict massive pain for the south. Can't spend any more decades wasting money.

Thank you, we appreciate it. Specially when just a few weeks ago Central Europe wanted the south to be solitary with the rest of Europe and save gas, gas they don't get from Russia and always paid more for.

This is why the EU is a stupid idea. When it is the south, they should suffer, when it is Central Europe, everyone should come together and sing kumbaya

The EU is a great idea, implemented in a way that leaves a lot to be desired. It certainly is a lot better than what came before, the economic gains are felt everywhere but not equally so. That's the thing that should change, unfortunately such change takes time.

Not so fast. The ECB should have raised rates like the Fed, but didn't to accommodate the Southern EMU members. If what you are claiming was true, the ECB would have just gone ahead and leave the south to fend for itself. Instead their policy is adding fuel to the inflation inferno to protect the south.

They're not wasting money. They simply don't have the massive wealth of the North to jump off from or to cushion blows. On top of that a large quantity of what they do earn is spent on interest payments to the North.

I am from the south. We are wasting money and producing too little. We don't have the massive wealth of the north because we are culturally incapable of behaving some other way.

It's like the US: young people move from poor states to rich ones. Nobody in America ever talks about the basket case that is Alabama. People have been moving into New York and California for a hundred years.

Anecdotal: My dentist was from Rumenia. I'm sure they need dentists too but he can make more money in the Netherlands.

Likewise the doctors in Netherlands move to Denmark, and the circle goes on.

Not a circle, a ladder

i'm sorry but this is plain ignorance. chalking up the performance of a collection of european economies to just "it's cultural" is being, at best, ignorant.

is the cultural problem an important factor? as someone who's also from the south, yes, i think it is. is it the only one (that matters)? no.

the eu (and the euro) works mainly to provide a cheap-access market for the stronger economies to a series of other countries. it's extremely difficult for poorer economies to compete with the stronger ones (due to regulations, size and how those two interplay). it's even more difficult for those economies to provide the same quality of life (i.e. higher salaries, same level of social care, etc.) when they themselves don't have full control of their economy/market.

That's a very generalist statement that doesn't explain much.

That is totally to forgot that Italy has been cost reduction/ austerity since the 90's. Precisely when it's started to do that, its economy stalled.

Spain had its debt going from 30% to 70% after the 2008 crisis.

Significant part of it is also deepened de-industrialization. The entire western world but Germany experienced it. Doesn't have much with a culture or just south culture.

Even in Germany, parts that lost industries decades ago are still borer that the rest of country. France and Belgium have similar problems and Italy north-south split is even older.

Nobody know how to reverse it or at least succeeded. This is not easy.

Yet when we move north we are able to be productive, so maybe we are failing to bring that cultural change back home.

Of course: those who move north do so because they do not share the cultural shortcomings of the south. Therefore they are self-selecting.

I'm from the south too. Our engineers are all over the north, proving to everyone that we have the brainpower to build some of the best systems in the world.

There are pending issues related to management, but also north-enforced market control (milk cuotas come to mind) that definitely have affected the economy.

It must be terrible to live with this level of self-hatred.

They don't have this wealth because when they were given access to interest rates much lower than what they would have under independent central banks / currencies they went and spent it on consumer goods instead of investing into capital.

They don’t have this wealth because their ability to export is severely hampered by their money in order to shield the German from the consequences of their stupid working laws and boost Germany unsustainable trade balance.

I really wish the south acted like the north is acting now when Germany was considered the sick part of Europe in the 90s. We would have avoided so much trouble.

Ironically they've already been in pain since 2008. But within the eurozone they can't escape the trap of having a strong currency (relative to themselves), combined with a terrible economy with massive debt.

The euro just cannot work in the long run. The sooner people up top admit this the better for 300m europeans. But they will never admit defeat.

If you want more "Brexits" that is certainly the way to influence public opinion and the growing national parties.

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