Should Britain and the United States merge?
- Thread starter dumpthemonarchy
- Start date
Many examples, but I'll give just a few:
1. If one country has a high unemployment rate in a particular trade or profession and another has shortages, it would remove all buraucracy in international travel between those countries.
2. A kind of scratch my back and I scratch yours scenario whereby if one country's economy is weak and another's is strong, rather than have to take more social assistance, those willing could seek work elsewhere.
3. countries sharing a common passport could more easily share embassies and embassy services, thus reducing overhead there too.
4. It protects mroe against beggar-thy-neighbour policies in that a country will not be interested in protecting its jobs at the expense of another country seeing that, with common citizenship and thus free labour movement, it would be shooting itself in the foot. Thus, the interests of one country are the interests of the others.
Mostly good points for sure! How would that affect the "security fence" that is proposed around the U.S. and Canada?
Each country would still be sovereign otherwise and so could pass its own drug laws.
Well, while I agree with closer ties between Canada and the US, it shoud not come at the cost of Canada's ties with the rest of the world. That by the way was one big drawback of "Fortress Europe". I would really not want Canada to go down that route. The EU is a wonderful idea in princiople, except for its protectionism against non-EU trade and such.
Should the US insist on the "security fence", then we bow out and establish such a union with other countries that are not so willing to build such a barrier around them, whicle trying to keep the basic free trade agreement we currently have with the US.
As long as you can figure out how to keep the freeloaders from migrating to where ever is paying the highest welfare. Or stop a massive influx to certain areas and driving wages down.
This might prove to be a good thing in that if all of a sudden people move from a jurisdiction that gives poor social assistance checks to places that give more generous ones, it will give that government an incentive to lower its social assistance rates too.
This of course will go only so far until they can't lower them any further without causing severe hardship, at which point it might force them to come up with new ideas on how to help the poor, such as community work programmes or other ways to help the poor while also making them work too, or some other solution.
And as for an influx to certain areas to drive wages down, that too might be a good thing seeing that such an influx would likely go to high-paying areas, thus driving their wages down towards the average for other areas, while also brining wages up elsewhere in the areas they're leaving from, so as to help bring about a more even distribution.
An amicable separation with Quebec while still ensuring free trade with them and possibly even dual citizenship for those who know both languages would mean reduced government translation and interpretation costs on either side of the border, not to mention that it woudl also free Quebec to seek out a similar union with the Francophonie.
One issue is that with such open borders, the Federal NDP would be forced to redefine itself considerably. Provincial NDPs have become somewhat more moderate on the grounds that they recognize that if they're not careful people just leave the province. Now the Federal NDp would have to worry about people leaving the country. As a result, it would have to think out its policies more carefully.
Good idea, there is always garbage along the rights of way that needs picking up or just patrolling the streets after dark to reduce thuggery or at least increase the apprehension of the thugs. Those willing to do so could perhaps have their welfare increased by $20 day. It would also give them a taste of what working is like. It would also increase employment as supervisors would have to be hired. I'm all for the idea. :smile:
One problem though is nationalism. As good an idea as it would be for English-speaking countries to share a common citizenship and passport, the benefits are purely economically logical bu are lacking in any kind of emotional national identity. As a result, many would likely oppose the idea on naitonalistic grounds though not necessarily on logical grounds relating to economic efficiency.
What is wrong with the fence we have now?
Well, that would keep the cows out! :lol:
Well that IS what our fence is like for 1800km + across the Prairie but recent adjustments to sovereignty have made it that if a CDN cow gets loose into US RCMP can go round it up and a Sheriff can come across without special requests and paperwork to pick up their cows. If the fence falls over in a lightning strike and the whole herd gets loose both RCMP and Sheriff can rally in just minutes to corral the whole lot.
They've made a couple big ass coke busts in the beta testing.
We should be talking about re-establishing the sovereign nation states of Canada, Britain and United States rather than talking about economic union. We and the rest of the world have already delivered ourselves to predatory jaws of global oligarchs and there running dogs in the IMF, WTO, World Bank, UN.
The desperate collapse of the Western economies are all predicated on the Global Free Market policies. So i say reestablish the sovereign national rights of trade policy, of currency and credit, of government economic planning in the public interest, and of public ownership of natural monopolies in resources, utilities, transportation and communications.
Look at Europe, teetering on the brink of chaos. Economic union does not work now, it has never worked and it will never work. The only question is whether we have to fall into a Great Depression of unknown depth and duration before we realize that.
Good fences (figuratively speaking) make good neighbours.
The desperate collapse of the Western economies are all predicated on the Global Free Market policies. So i say reestablish the sovereign national rights of trade policy, of currency and credit, of government economic planning in the public interest, and of public ownership of natural monopolies in resources, utilities, transportation and communications.
Look at Europe, teetering on the brink of chaos. Economic union does not work now, it has never worked and it will never work. The only question is whether we have to fall into a Great Depression of unknown depth and duration before we realize that.
Good fences (figuratively speaking) make good neighbours.
Or better yet, let's reestablish the city-state. I declare ourselves the Kingdom of Ottawa, but maybe we could establish trade relations or even share a common currency with Gatineau. I hope that won't be too free-market for your taste?
Love the Gatineau. The Gatineau is Canada.2. Canada 1 is the Prairie. Britain is a bewildering, class-rigid, marble-mouthing series of paradoxes - much like darkest Africa but without the good weather.