Comment by shevy-java | Hacker News Reader

Comment by shevy-java | Hacker News Reader

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The question is not whether it is an investment or whether it is not.

The question is whether growth is objective and fair or whether it is not.

For comparison of wealth in Poland, ALL net-subsidies would have to be deducted, because this is essentially wealth taken from other countries, and distributed to poorer areas in the EU. I am not disputing that this leads to more growth; I am disputing the "country xyz is now rich" while not even mentioning the subsidies. And that reuters article does not mention that at all.

It also has to be mentioned because the crazy bureaucrats in Brussels want to aggressively expand eastwards. They think that the richer areas in the EU need to pay for that expansion. I simply fail to agree with that "logic" at all and I also consider it hugely unfair to richer areas. The richer areas made good decisions; now this is being negated by bureaucrats in Brussels. That is unfair. (This is not meant against Poland, but against the constant expansionistic agenda from Brussels.)

Economic zones are NOT zero sum.

And the EU wants to insulate itself from Russia with friendly, ideologically-compatible countries. Can't put a price tag on safety

That also works the other way around: Eastern European countries wanted to join the EU (ok, more importantly NATO, but also the EU) to make sure they never ever again slid into Russia's "sphere of influence". Notwithstanding certain populist EU-skeptic right wing parties that don't seem to mind that anymore (some would say because they are financed by Russia), that's generally still true...

I agree, but people are very weary of these things because of the (correct) belief that their appropriation is guided by unaccountable bureaucrats. It stands in need of justification that Europeans feel they never got to hear

> but people are very weary of these things because of the (correct) belief that their appropriation is guided by unaccountable bureaucrats.

People believe this because every single member state is using EU institutions as a punching bag whenever they have issues locally. The people have no idea how the EU work, they only hear about it when used as a bogeyman

I agree, but subsidies aren't free as well. Simply making the overall cake bigger doesn't necessarily pay out for everyone - some have to foot the bill.

Why not? If the increase in cake size is bigger than the subsidies then it can be a net win, even for the people paying the subsidies.

It also ignores the fact that absent the EU, countries would still have a lot of subsidies.

Because the total increase of the cake can mostly be transferred to those that receive the subsidies. It's not that hard to understand: if you redistribute 10% of total wealth from the top quartile to the bottom quartile for 1% in additional total growth, then even if that additional growth went completely to the top quartile, it would be a net -9% of total wealth for them. I don't say that's a bad thing per se. But it doesn't help to willfully ignore that fact.

Edit: I just now got the part "If the increase in cake size is bigger than the subsidies" – that's a ridiculous assumption. EU total growth in 2025 was 1.5% or 295 billion USD. From 2021-2027, the EU budget committed roughly 370bn € each for Agriculture subsidies and for Cohesion Policies, totaling 720bn € over 7 years; 2025 has seen ~130bn USD from those two buckets alone. Germany alone has paid another 60bn in subsidies the same year. Oh, and there has been a total of 417bn USD in energy subsidies in europe in 2023 (most recent data available). Even if we could attribute all total growth to subsidies alone, we'd have a factor below 0.5 – and that doesn't include any growth through private investmen, PPP, or any kind of increase of regular public spending.

I think what matters is the size of (for example) the German economy with and without the EU.

Futhermore, what matter is the amount of tax collected by the EU. Energy subsidy is not money collected by the EU and distributed.

The Holocaust was a decision taken by one of the two pillars of the EU, Germany, so countries nowadays being rich or poor has nothing to do with past “good” decisions of those countries populaces. And before anyone commenting that the Holocaust and the German economy are two orthogonal subjects, just look at the corporate history of German industry giants VW and Bayer.

Worse, Germany has one of the worst upward mobility stats in the EU. If you look at the filthy rich families in Germany, most of them have ties to benefitting heavily from WW2.

Neither VW and Bayer are rich because of the Holocaust. They are rich because of good business environment and good corporate decisions after 2nd world war.

From a purely economic viewpoint Holocaust and 2nd world war were very very stupid decisions.

OTOH, the more developed EU countries want the less developed countries to be reasonably well-off, so they can keep buying stuff from them. E.g. 56% of Germany's exports went to other EU countries in 2025. And, while Trump and Xi Jin Ping are around, that's only going to become more important...

"56% of Germany's exports went to other EU countries in 2025" - because those products are no longer competitive in the open market.

Yeah, they're so uncompetitive that Trump had to introduce tariffs to keep them out. China is a different topic, but I wouldn't generally call German products uncompetitive...

Trump introduced tarrifs because of insane economic and political illiteracy and for no other reason.

The tariffs put on the US by Germany were higher than the other way around in some cases, even though the US wasn’t exporting such products in any significant amount.

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