← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Gregz
Thread ID: 12950 | Posts: 3 | Started: 2004-03-31
2004-03-31 17:50 | User Profile
Europe is by far the more resource efficient of the two main industrial powers. The GDP of the EU is equal to that of the US and yet the US consumes 65% of the worlds finite resources verses the EU's 20%. The worlds oil and gas reserves are fast running out and Europe and especially the US are consequently in very serious long term trouble. Antarctica which is belived to have large reserves of oil is likely to become of long term geo-strategic importance in the future.
Whilst China and India have already in effect missed the energy boat. They should be able to scale up their economies to a certain degree. The European model of light industry and small scale intensive agriculture is extremely likely to be the more sustainable system in the long term.
As a byproduct of global warming the ice around the North West passage is melting and Russia is developing it's Northern most ports. This is excellent news for East/West world trade as haulage costs should fall.
Gregz
"History is a set of lies agreed upon." - Napoleon Bonaparte
2004-03-31 19:40 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Gregz]Europe is by far the more resource efficient of the two main industrial powers. The GDP of the EU is equal to that of the US and yet the US consumes 65% of the worlds finite resources verses the EU's 20%. [/QUOTE]
In America, energy consumers are highly subsidized. And, the energy industry itself is highly subsidized. The result is artifically low energy prices thus excessive consumption and inefficiency. This costs our economy many billions of dollars.
2004-03-31 23:32 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Happy Hacker]In America, energy consumers are highly subsidized. And, the energy industry itself is highly subsidized. The result is artifically low energy prices thus excessive consumption and inefficiency. This costs our economy many billions of dollars.[/QUOTE]
[B]Happy Hacker[/B]
Do you believe US productivity figures? Because I don't! America is currently fiddling it's books big time and the EU and Asia are turning the other cheek whilst buying your debts.
I concur with your view that has become overly dependant on artificially low energy costs. The steel industry being a case in point. This is not I might add, any fault of the American worker who works longer hours than any one else. But an inability of large industries to modernise. European and Asian industry has become increasingly more efficient. Eastern Europe is experiencing something of a manufacturing boom at the moment.
Europe is not competing directly either with Asia or America in the high technology sector but serving it's own rising domestic demand. If Europe gets it's social policy right and I know thats a big if. [I]The EU could become extremely strong economically and eclipses the US as the dominant world economic power.[/I]
The Asians understand this and would tend to favor the EU, who unlike the US doesnââ¬â¢t maintain over 300 military bases around the world and operate a policy of preemption. However they are also fearful of any confiuration that could lead on to a possible Euro-America war.
We have a over abundance of cheap skilled labor in Europe. The US clearly needs migrate labor and Eastern Europe could spare the US plenty. One European can do the work of ten Mexicans, only a thousand times better. Yet the US is still maintaining a hostile anti-European immigration system.
There are now over 500 million people in the EU and not the pitiful 300 million that is some times claimed and 270 million in the US. That gives us a combined total of 770 million. The EU's population is growing at 2-3 million a year due to high levels of immigration and whilst it has a ageing population the bulk of it's inhabitants are at least at working age.
Whilst I believe that our Chinese and Indian competitors are not going to catch us any time soon. They are benefiting from over enthusiastic Western investment, low African commodities prices and cheep Russians energy deals.
Gregz
"The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and range. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates. With the increasing value of the world of things proceeds in direct proportion to the devaluation of the world of men. Labour produces not only commodities; it produces itself and the worker as a commodity -- and does so in the proportion in which it produces commodities generally." - Marx