this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2025
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You are right, but it lowers the prices for Russia, and takes away a hughe market to put Russian money into. There is a reason the oligarchs send their kids to British schools and buy property in Bavaria. Europe is stable and has a stronger rule of law compared to regions now available to them.
Getting rid of the sanctions will not help the economy. Russia offers mainly cheap gas and that is currently limited to flow through Ukraine - a prime target for sabotage. Europe needs to transition to other sources, and not by betting on new nuclear or fuison, both need decades to get up and running (plus, nuclear ties you to Russia, Khazakstan and others - with Canada and Australia being the only big producers with democratic standards).
Upgrade if existing infrastructure, big ass battery storages (maybe with additonal H2 systems), Geo thermal and a smarter net are the way to go, IMHO. We need to build as much as possible. The good news is, those technology is mature and experts are available. It just needs secure funding.
Edit: added spider country
very much not true: canada produces only slightly more uranium than australia, and canadian uranium reserves are fraction of australia’s - we just don’t mine it much because it’s a bit of a political issue
(canada 873k tonnes, australia slightly more than 2m tonnes)
when it comes to mining pretty much anything, never underestimate just how much raw resources australia has in the ground… and our country is basically entirely based on resource extraction
that being said, i do agree that nuclear isn’t the answer
Ha, did not know that, thank you
i always find the scale kinda mind blowing
we’re in the top 5 for pretty much every raw resource you can think of, and the funny thing is: they’re actually all just byproducts of iron mining
and the scale of the iron mining… you know how australia is almost the size of the US and pretty much entirely covered in desert? desert that’s the same colour as rust because there’s just iron literally everywhere
Sanctions are good, but Europe needs to do more than just sanction Russians and send just enough supplies to Ukraine to keep them going.
I totally agree with increased investments, Europe needs to spend on infrastructure that will allow them to operate independently so they cannot be crippled by sudden changes in geopolitics. I think they should throw money at literally everything. That includes energy, IT, security the lot. I just hope they can do this without putting themselves into unsustainable debt though lots of debt is required at this point
Indeed. Sanctions do work in the long term, but when an invader is marching into your country right now, you can't wait for those long term effects, you need capable weapons in sufficient numbers right now in order to stop and beat him back on the spot.
Really, that's easy. Just tax the rich. They have been leeching off the rest of society for decades, it's high time they pay up.
I do believe taxing the rich is part of the strategy but it can't be everything.
Thing is, the rich are the ones most able to move their money around so they pay the least in taxes so I'm not sure Europe, as a whole, will be able to effectively tax them to the correct level in the long term. If the taxes end up 'too high' by their standards, these people will just move to the US where they don't need to help any poors like they should. Rich individuals are also a source of capital to fund start ups which the EU also needs too.
I think it could be more productive to force the rich to put their money into the economy by creating innovative new companies. Companies are harder to move to another country compared to an individual and their family. At the same time, somehow prevent them from dodging the current taxes so they can't just hide their immense wealth from the state for free
You can prevent the rich from sneaking their money out of the tax man's reach, if you only want to. Tax investigators are worth their weight in money. Also a lot of the money of those rich people is in companies and property, which is hard to move, and, for a government willing to do so, easy to impound. We don't need a whole bunch of "innovative" for the sake of "innovation" tech bro brain fart startups, a large part of which will never become profitable, like the US is getting.
Thing is, Europe lags behind in tech on most metrics. We need to foster new companies that can compete in current industries and creat new ones. Without this, tech will continue to be another dimension in which we rely on others to supply us. Of course, some of these start-ups will be shitty cash grabs. But most will be trying to accomplish something real. Europe cannot only rely on once reliable industries for growth (like automotive), it needs to look at the future and jump on it before others do
The Berliner Zeitung claims they will pass a 700B EUR defense aid package right after the German midterms in a few days.
That's much more than all aid so far totaled. So let's hope it's true.
I saw that claim but I dont understand where this money could from. My understanding is the EU, as a whole, has provided ~140B€. So 700B€ would be 5x more than what has already been provided. Whilst this could be possible if it was also intended to revitalise EU militaries and with joint EU borrowing I fear the joint borrowing will prevent everyone from being onboard
It's an EU defense spending package. It might include direct aid to Ukraine, but it's mostly internal spending