Yeah. But then the EU lost the plot a very long time ago. There is one EU company in the 50 of the world by companies market cap. One. Just freaking one. It's ASML.
From 2008 to today, in USD and inflation adjusted, the eurozone saw no growth. While both the US and China skyrocketed.
There's been this little thing lately that kinda took off: it's called AI. Where's the EU? How much of a leader was the EU in this AI revolution?
Explain how the EU is not long gone?
The EU is not even sinking at this point: it sank years ago. And it's busy making sure it's turning into the third-world.
I'm in the EU and honestly it's more than frightening.
Billions of people exist in the EU. In real terms it has not gone anywhere.
Obsession with preserving political dogma, rhetorical forms, atheist appearing syntax and semantics (language that does invoke specific concepts of theology); political and economic abstraction that do not represent reality is not much different from religion.
By your measure every nation effectively died out centuries ago as some originating principles died with their originators of those principles. Yet here we are still discussing France and Russia and the US as real things. They only ever existed as ethno objects to begin with; things that only exist if we talk about them as existing.
So what if some rhetorical specifics that used to define the economic and political foundations of the EU mutate. That's immutable reality for you. It's bound to happen due to generational churn.
People who live there can still use the term EU to define whatever political structure and economic model they land on next.
Economic growth has been slow in the EU, but it's mostly a demographic issue. There are too many retirees, too few children, and the size of the workforce is stagnant.
Measuring economic growth in someone else's currency can be misleading. By the same metric you used, Eurozone economy grew by ~100% between 2002 and 2008.
Economically the EU might not keep pace, but the built infrastructure to live an enjoyable life is there.
I certainly had a delightful time visiting the winter markets across Europe, and it seemed like there were a fair number of people living well.
While the Eurozone might not be a great place to start a new business it is still a going concern, enough that those top 50 companies all have a European presence.
> infrastructure to live an enjoyable life is there
Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but living in the US ain't exactly like Escape from New York or Escape from LA. For every Mississippi there is an analogous place in Europe, and for every Liechtenstein there is an analogous place in the US. I'm not sure if your comment is a counterargument or neutral commentary.
New York City. Compared to small cities like London, Paris, or Rome there are areas where it's not on par, but its multimodal transport, energy, heating, water, sanitation systems is larger and more comprehensive than most cities in Europe.
What's frightening to me is that even in the EU people seem to think that unchecked consolidation of services is a good thing. I don't think it is a good thing at all that there exist companies with a budget larger than an average country.
Is the budget of Saudi Aramco, of the King, larger than that of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, also of the same King? Why would that be not good, or bad?
Think about every international dollar the Kingdom takes from Aramco: would Aramco or the Kingdom make more profit from it, including taxes on the percent more Aramco makes from it than the Kingdom?
>There is one EU company in the 50 of the world by companies market cap. One. Just freaking one.
And this is a good thing. All 50 of them should be broken up anyway.
>I'm in the EU and honestly it's more than frightening
I'm in the EU and I love it. It's not perfect, but I wouldn't want to live in any other place. And in the coming fight for digital freedom EU is almost always on the right side.
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