It’s not only about suppression; it’s about cultivating fear around expressing your opinions.
There are groups actively working to have individuals fired for voicing support for Palestine.
For instance, a woman wrote “Freedom for Palestine” in Gaelic on LinkedIn, prompting a group of Israelis in a WhatsApp chat to actively coordinate efforts to get her fired.
The General Manager of Wix, Batsheva (Levine) Moshe, responded in a WhatsApp chat saying:
“Hi yes we know. Being taken care of since it was published. I believe there will be an announcement soon regarding our reaction.”
For those who have lived and worked in multiple EU countries, the benefits of EU membership are clear, including the relatively simple process of moving between countries.
Using the same currency without a common fiscal policy and resources is a disaster. It means currency and interests rates cannot be tuned to each country's economy. It means governments cannot borrow in their own currency (which is cheapest). There is a reason almost all countries have their own currency.
The hope was that the single currency would be soon followed by political union. Without this the Euro has been a disaster, leading to the European debt crisis, and painful austerity as the price of bailout.
Couldn't agree more. Greece is a great example of what happens to a country when they have a sovereign debt crisis and no control over the value of their currency.
The ability to control your overnight bank rates, and your monetary supply is important. I don't think the convenience of easy travel or easy(ier) trading of goods outweighs it at all.
> The good thing is that the EU has improved since then
It was indeed a big backdoor attack to the Euro, exploited by GS [1], at least.
> Greece would have absolutely collapsed outside the EU.
Meat for the IMF, BlackRock and so on; Argentina's twin.
Global economy seems to be an ocean with Orca whales, they hit and eat alongside with sharks. The citizens turns to meat at same moment their politicians betray them [2], whether caused by ignorance or by malice (corruption).
Greece cheated their way into EUR. They didn't meet the requirements, so they cooked the numbers with the help of GS. This later on blew up into everybody's faces (well, everyone except GS's).
By your theory, and by the endless claims of the anti-EU crowd, but it hasn't been. People use euros with no problem, every day, for transactions large and small. It's a major international currency, maybe second only to the dollar.
You’ve offered zero counter points to OPs claims though.
Every time I travel abroad, I transact in local currencies for transactions large and small all over the world using real-time currency exchange rates via the magic of the Visa/Mastercard network.
If that was the core thing the Euro was supposed to solve, the better solution today is just an EU wide digital payments standard.
The point still stands, a common currency without the ultimate unification part is just disadvantageous for most.
The overwhelming counterpoint that I'm making is that it's not a disaster and hasn't been one, now for 25 years. It's been an overwhelming success by any measure.
Since the financial crisis the US economy has kept on trucking, while the EU has stagnated. This isn’t all because of the euro, but it’s definitely a disaster and I think it is reasonable to hold the euro at least partially responsible.
Take a long term view the US has done a lot better in the period it has had a common currency than the EU has done in the period it has had a common currency.
Even in recent decades the US has done much better economically than the EU.
Because the US is structured in a way that makes a common currency workable. It has direct federal taxes, and a very large federal budget. The EU budget is a tiny fraction of total EU public spending.
There is a huge difference between EU states and US states.
Meanwhile the strongest federation on Earth somehow manages without allowing Texas and Wyoming their own dollars and currency manipuliation. Funny that.
That is exactly my point. The US has a very large federal budget, federal taxes, direct federal spending and federal national debt. To make the Euro work the EU needs to emulate that.
Technically, the whole country could just switch to Euros without even being in the EU.
Granted, the only two countries to do so (Montenegro and Kosovo) never bothered with creating their own currency to begin with, they went straight to Euros post-independence (with some disgruntlement from the EU). And then there's also two (Bulgaria and Bosnia) which are technically not using Euros, but their currencies are pegged to Euros and stupidly simple to convert (1 EUR = 1.95583 BAM/BGN, so just multiply/divide by 2).
Likely to make it simple for retailers to accept euro. Making it exactly two means the retailers would lose money on the exchange spread. Another example is with 1 hkd = 0.97 mop.
B/c the conversion to Euro happened later. It was already fixed after the hyper inflation in 1997.
The initital rate was 1000 levs = 1 DM, in 1999 there was a denomination of 1000 : 1, same year the Euro happened and the Deutsche mark enjoyed the same rate to the Euro.
Schengen has independent of the EU status. Eg. you can move freely from Germany to Switzerland (without obligatory border check) but not between Germany and EU-member Cyprus (there is the obligatory border check).
EEA gives you that, and Iceland is a member state of that too. So Iceland already enjoys this freedom.
I think Switzerland has a bilateral agreement with the EU (or via EFTA) that allows for free movement and employment of people, so they enjoy these freedom as well despite neither being in the EU nor the EEA (but they are a member of EFTA).
Yeah, I don’t know about what is included in the bilateral agreement with Switzerland. But at least in EEA (which is EU + EFTA - Switzerland) you are free to work in any of the member states.
The person you are replying said "moving" as in you relocate to another country. Not going on vacation. Swiss people can not just move to say denmark one day and start working there. They need work visas etc for that.
Switzerland is both a member of Schengen (meaning no border checks) and its nationals enjoy FoM (via bilateral arrangements). They don't need work visas.
I have worked in Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and France.
Belgium took 3 years to process the form for national insurance which caused me to draw down about 20,000 Euros. I couldn't drive my European vehicle in Belgium because I didn't have Belgium license plate which was required for insurance. Rather than working for the first 3months, I had to visit the gemeentehuis every alternate day to push some piece of paperwork to some government authority. I couldn't park my car in Belgium outside my property because I didn't have permission to do so because it wasn't a Belgian vehicle. In order to rent a property I needed a Belgian bank account, which I could only get if I was a Belgian resident, forcing me to live in a hotel temporarily and using that as my address. I required my accounts to be signed off by a Belgian notary, of which there is a government enforced limit, so to speak to one for a microsecond cost 1000 Euros minimum. At the time, operating a British company in Belgium cost 17,000 Euros fee. I still receive paperwork from the Belgian government more than 10 years after leaving.
The other countries aren't much better, and the only country that was easy to start working in was the UK.
Sounds like you had a bad experience. I moved to Lithuania nearly a decade ago, and my experience was just like moving to another city in my country. Opening a bank account took around an hour, they just needed my passport.
After a year I realised I should have applied for a temporary residence permit (if you have FoM you are allowed to live as a resisent for 6 months without it), which took a few weeks to get.
This year I finally changed my drivers license over, as I couldn't get a parking permit without a local license. I've owned 2 vehicles with local plates before that. Took a few days to do that.
I did the same to Ireland a decade before, and my experience there was pretty much the same.
I worked in those countries and more; never had those issues, but then again, I don't worry as much about details as you seem to do. Who reports that they are running a business in another country? The Belgians, like many others in the eu, are on paper a stickler for the rules, but in reality, not many people care or do that. Especially in Belgium where I heard locals at the chess club call them guidelines as a sort of joke.
That you need to be a resident to open a bank account is silly, I admit, but KYC and AML are a problem banks have to work with. Even in the EU, you can disappear a bit over borders: my birth country tax office lost me only after one jump and I moved 6 times since then. I always have to call them and explain things as they still don't have a clue that I am not in in my home country anymore; it's been 20+ years...
Your experience sounds a while ago; things did get somewhat easier; my gripes are opening bank accounts (but we have neobanks now; not sure if that works with rent) which should be eu wide, nummerplates (you have to import your car if you move somewhere which I do find nonsense; it's a tax thing) and renting. The rest is pretty smooth. If these things, and preferably tax, can be done eu wide, it's good. I just do the stuff I agree with and ignore the rest; it is what the locals in every country I have been to do too: hell, I am the only one (that I know of) paying (significant) taxes in my town; people laugh at me at parties.
I've lived snd worked in four different EU countries. Yes, each has some paperwork to do, but none came with the problems you describe. For the most part it was pretty easy, and anything that remained could be solved by paying someone a few hundred euros to assist with the relocation.
> In order to rent a property I needed a Belgian bank account,
This part is proper weird and (very) likely not complaint with the EU directives. All Eurozone banks must be treated the same. Since you appear to be British, that would preclude the Eurozone. Still all banks in the UK were allowed to transact in Euro although there was a spat where the guys in Brussels wanted to exclude London from the juice EU clearance.
Many years back (not in Belgium) I did get a bank account prior to obtaining the local residency. Moving to work within the EU has been absolutely hassle free for me. Again, I have not worked in Belgium.
No, the right to live and work is not related to Schengen.
Ireland isn't in Schengen, but a French person can move there tomorrow for work or study etc. They have to show a passport at border control, but otherwise face a very similar situation as they would moving to Germany (fill in some papers, get a local tax id etc).
Iceland already has freedom of movement (to live and work) due to its EEA membership; and it is only somewhat to do with Schengen, which is about passport free travel not living and working. You can have FoM without Schengen - e.g Romania until 1st Jan 2025.
Schengen is more about removing border controls so that EU can be more like USA in this regard. EU is about alignment with each other on common issues and resources like fishing waters, agriculture, trade deals, right etc.
They each have many implementation details, like if you are in EU but not in Schengen you don't have access to certain common databases.
The desire of countries cherrypicking and sovereignty made Europe very complex structure, I can't wait to have Federal Europe with every country in it with a simplified structure. Can be like US, can be like Switzerland or Germany maybe but thise structures over structures is just way too much and its begging for simplification.
ChatGPT feels like a more advanced Grammarly. In our company, they keep creating chatbots tailored to specific domains, but with poor data quality, the ROI remains low. Right now, it's mostly hype, and a true AI revolution seems years off. Even internally, executives are questioning how to measure ROI when they see the costs. I suspect the current hype cycle could lead to the downfall of some companies that focus too heavily on developing AI features for their stakeholders.
Those roles are upper class or professional jobs. I’m guessing they had the ability to extract higher compensation or work conditions, compared to others who had to accept the new normal or else.
My SurfaceBook has a better build quality that my MacBook Pro model from the same era (2019) - MacBooks have improved a lot in the last few years though with the new chips I guess?
I prefer the MacOs to Windows, but MacBook hardware was definitely disappointment on this model. I had numerous graphics & power issues on the MacBook Pro, plus touchbar was annoying.
Dell & Lenovo are crap, I've given up on them. Surface is good, and I'm happy with my LG Gram.
There is selection bias in their ownership experience. But I really concur. Microsoft hardware is better than stock Chinese PC hardware, but still not as good as Apple hardware (all produced in China).
My ThinkPad has okay support with the on-site option, but you're right on with all the other things.
I don't understand why Lenovo (and Dell and the other major PC makers) can see the $/sq.ft. that an Apple store generates and not open their own stores? I'd feel a lot more comfortable recommending a ThinkPad to a friend if there was a local place they could shop at, get repairs, and take classes.
Shhh. Don't break the Microsoft/Windows bashing sentiment, they really need to feel superior with their Apple ePeen.
But yes, if you look at the market, 2K in a PC laptop will usually get something better than what Apple would like to sell you.
You'll get worse battery life but generally better power for most workloads, and if you use it lightly like all those MacBook fanboys seems to do it won't be nearly as big of a difference they like to claim.
But hey gotta justify the extortionate price somehow...
For instance, a woman wrote “Freedom for Palestine” in Gaelic on LinkedIn, prompting a group of Israelis in a WhatsApp chat to actively coordinate efforts to get her fired.
The General Manager of Wix, Batsheva (Levine) Moshe, responded in a WhatsApp chat saying:
“Hi yes we know. Being taken care of since it was published. I believe there will be an announcement soon regarding our reaction.”
Wix were orderd to pay €35K for unfair dismissal.
ref(s):
https://jackpoulson.substack.com/p/inside-the-pro-israel-inf...
https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/israeli-tech-firm-ordere...