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Comment by cbg0 | Hacker News Reader

> The EU needs to be truly Federal to succeed economically. That might create uniform regulations with more uniform regulations and actually make Europe competitive.

EU already has uniform regulations, what are you talking about? It's also the third largest economy in the world, as uncompetitive as it is.

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No it does not. There's a lot of gold plating happening at the national level that goes beyond EU regulations. It's EU regulations + 27 national regulations in reality. The EU economies are still too different and the population too unwilling to have a truly US-style single market.

You seems to be arguing that a U.S. style single-market would be an improvement.

But for whom, people or companies?

It's an improvement for the economy and that mainly benefits the shareholders. How you redistribute those gains more broadly is an open question. But keeping inefficiencies in place to protect workers at all costs is a losing strategy in the long term - see: Soviet Union.

Unsurprisingly, people in different parts of the world hold different values. Europe is generally more focused on actual people and how their lives live, than simply accumulation of wealth among the few. It is unsurprising that they focus on different things.

That's easier said than done when you are competing in a global economy. The US is actually getting more consistent here: It starts to become more isolationist (through the trade war and specifically tariffs) and as a result will have more leeway in choosing their own mix of workers rights, compensations, taxation, etc. Sidenote: Of course consumers will be worse off as a result.

The EU however is in this weird spot where they are pushing for a more integrated global economy (thanks to all kinds of trade deals) with fewer barriers while at the same time making their own companies less competitive with all these regulations and internal hurdles: There are examples where a German exporter had an easier time sending his stuff to New Zealand than France.

Thanks for replying to a comment I didn't make. It is clear that your mind is full of American exceptionalism, I'm done in this comment thread. Thanks for your contribution.

FYI: I'm European and worried about our competitiveness. It appears you didn't get my point. You can have different values like you said but then you have to be consistent with this on all levels to make it work. And that means less EU integration into the global economy - the EU doesn't have a clear vision where it wants to go.

What exactly is the difference between that and 50 states having their own regulations?

The absence of a central bank.

EU has two main legal instruments, regulations and directives. One applies directly, the other needs to be transposed into national law which indeed often ends with gold plating, but the tool is there to give uniform legislation- if all countries agree.

In addition there are plenty of technical standards which are agreed in expert committees, and these too apply directly. I'd expect Canada would join at least those technical processes and the two sides align technical standards over time.

The EU is not a fiscal union. It is also not yet a single capital market.

> It's also the third largest economy in the world

If going by GDP (which this claim usually does), the EU as a whole beats out China for second place by ~10%. When going by individual countries Germany alone is the third place behind China, though with a large gap between the two.

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