"Jim Webster" wrote in message
...

Michelle Fulton wrote in message
. ..

"Jim Webster" wrote in message
...

remember the British Government is composed of a lot of baby boomers
for
who the concept of deprivation merely means not being able to buy
fashionable training shoes.
I think they assume they will be fed, as of right, should they ever
be
hungry.

That's what it sounds like. I guess I consider self-sufficiency a
part of
home-land security, which is all very important to on this side of the
pond.
What is your government really focused on as far as security is
concerned.
I don't know much, but y'all got me thinking about it and it seems
they
aren't interested in self-sufficiency and aren't really interested in
being
part of the EU (which might provide some sense of security), so what
is
their plan as far as y'all can tell?

I'm not one for debating politics; just curious.


as far as I can tell the only security they are interested in is their
own job security. The general working assumption is that the current
government wants to join the euro and get further into the EU. At the
moment it is beginning to look that the Germans effectively have
deflation. Deflation and no central bank is a bad combination. In the UK
the only thing that seems to be keeping us from deflation is the rise in
house prices which is not really sustainable. (At one time it was
considered ridiculous and unsustainable that a couple borrowed three and
a half times joint income to get a mortgage. Recently I have heard of
single people borrowing seven times their income, in mortgages to be
paid back over forty or fifty years. I am not sure I believe these
stories but they could be true.)
When the euro was introduced the Germans insisted on the a stability
pact, governments were not allowed to borrow more than 3% of spending.
This was an attempt to keep the currency strong. Now the French have
announced they are ignoring this, the Germans will not keep to it either
and senior Commissioners have announced the rule is silly and should be
scrapped. The Euro is going to be a weak currency and if the Irish vote
Yes to the Nice treaty it is going to be a larger, less well developed
area with a weak currency.
It may be that having a weak currency is actually a policy decision. It
would mean that Europeans could not afford to buy much in the way of
imports from outside the EU and would give them a more secure home
market. The obvious problem is that we buy a lot of raw materials from
outside the EU and we buy them in Dollars because that is what world
trading is done in. So we will have a situation where manufacturers are
1) buying in Dollars which will be a strong currency relative to the
euro
2) selling in Euros which is a weak currency
3) having to bear steadily increasing social costs.

We have had this in agriculture in the UK for the last three or four
years and it hurts.

Hopefully better prices will hold up a while. I talked to a local gain
merchant and he says the higher wheat goes the less is for sale. He hasn't
started moving his stocks yet and wheat is 5.24 a bushel for export and corn
is $5 a bushel at the feed lot. He is 50 cents away from both in freight.

Hard money and expanding the EU into eastern Europe appear to me to be
mutually exclusive. Particularly at the outrageous tax rates and low
productivity rates in the EU. You can't have high wages, high living
standards, high taxes, high suicidal services, low cost products, lots of
free time and hard money in one package. Only farming, mining,
manufacturing, computer programming and similar industries create or enhance
wealth. Governments, health care, social services, and service industries
are leaches, ticks and fleas on the productive sector. We have to have some
of those services but we all need dipped.

I don't know about the off the books income in the EU. In the US it is
estimated to be 50 to 100% the size of the known income. The street price of
dope is high. Travelers tell me that cash does speak its own language in
Europe as it does most places so I expect it is a simulate situation.

The US government doesn't like small business becase so much of the money
misses the tax man. Governments would like a cashless society so they could
trace every dollar. Even then barter will beat the tax man. The government
really likes people that work for wages. They have them with no way out.
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