Bill Mitchell — Subsidiarity – a European Union smokescreen to justify failure

One of the various smokescreens that were erected by the European Commission and the bevy of economists that it either paid or were ideologically aligned to justify the design of the monetary union around the time of the Maastricht process was the concept of subsidiarity.

In 1993, the Centre for Economic Policy Research (a European-based research confederation) published its Annual Report – Making Sense of Subsidiarity: How Much Centralization for Europe? – which attempted to justify (ex post) the decisions imported from the 1989 Delors Report into the Maastricht Treaty that eschewed the creation of a federal fiscal capacity. It was one of many reports at the time by pro-Maastricht economists that influenced the political process and pushed the European nations on their inevitable journey to the edge of the ‘plank’ – teetering on the edge of destruction and being saved only because the European Central Bank has violated the spirit of the restrictions that a misapplication of the subsidiarity principle had created. It is interesting to reflect on these earlier reports. We find that the important issues they ignored remain the central issues today and predicate against the monetary union ever being a success....

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Subsidiarity – a European Union smokescreen to justify failure
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Brad DeLong — Caitlin MacNeal: Mulvaney: If Your State Doesn’t Mandate Maternity Care, Change Your State

I am starting to think that the politics in the US is so divisive ideologically that it may be necessary to subdivide with those more oriented toward the welfare state moving to places like the West Coast and New England, and those more oriented toward the market state moving to the South and West, with the Midwest proving a middle ground.

There would still be the question of funding, however, with the federal government as the currency issuer. Perhaps the way to deal with this is to break the US into several countries issuing their own currency and operating on different economic policy.

Otherwise permanent paralysis or even civil war? 

Actually, the US is returning to a political situation similar to that which led up to the Civil War.

WCEG
Caitlin MacNeal: Mulvaney: If Your State Doesn’t Mandate Maternity Care, Change Your State

Brad DeLong | Professor of Economics, UCAL Berkeley

Steven Rosenfeld — Congressional Radical Right-Wingers Relive Confederacy Fantasies

II have been saying for some time that the US is now engaged in a civil war reminiscent of the run-up to the Civil War. Steven Rosenfeld draws the historical parallels.

I don't see this as one side being right and the other wrong. It's two very different visions for America that were in conflict from colonial times owing to different temperaments, cultures, and institutional arrangements that make federation difficult — as is clear from American history, e.g., as recorded in the Federalist papers. Without Alexander Hamilton America would almost certainly be a confederation now and world history very different, possibly with Germany as hegemon since WWI. While Hamilton prevailed, it was at the cost of a Civil War that has not yet been resolved and is in the process of being revisited.

For this reason, the attempt to force a strong political union is often unwise and premature. If America has still not been able to agree upon a common vision for a strong union, how could the EZ ever hope to chiefly on the basis of a currency union?


AlterNet — Tea Party And The Right
Congressional Radical Right-Wingers Relive Confederacy Fantasies

Steven Rosenfeld