GreekIslandGirl wrote:Regardless, the Euro is the second strongest currency.
Its problems are a magnified form of looking at any country's regions and comparing wealth, employment, benefits, debt, standard of living etc.
For example, if you compare the north of England with the south - there are HUGE economic differences! Same across the Eurozone. But these things change. I remember when a certain region of the UK was poverty stricken until the rail-line was electrified and now it is prime territory for the wealthy commuters. Same with the Eurozone! A small infrastructure change and Bingo! And Germany is fighting for survival because Greece scores
highly as one of the MOST worthwhile regions for quality of life etc in the Eurozone.
I am very well aware of the North-South divide in the UK having spent (up to the time I came to Cyprus) nearly equal portions of my life in both south and north, in that order. I saw the devastation caused by the closure of the mines, the yards, the steel works, and the businesses that supplied them, and otherwise depended on the wages of the workers, however these arose within an existing economic system with a long existing single national currency, and for reasons that did not involve profligate government over-spending or reckless bank overlending, but rather the uncompetitive nature of British Industry compared to say Japan, Korea, China, and other "rising sun" economies, where rather than us selling to them , they began selling to us and our other customers and where the nature of the infrastructure did not make a blind bit of difference.
I do not have a problem at all with small (or even big) infrastructure changes if these will be of overall benefit such as provide greater regional job oppertunities in outlying areas, however the economic woes of Northern England did not arise because of lack of infrastructure.
In that respect making an area accesible to commuters does not necassarily bring local jobs (except perhaps in local retailing) to replace local industry that may have closed down since the nature of commuting means the jobs (which create wealth) are elsewhere.,however infrastructure projects do not of themselves create jobs except in the construction phase and in later maintenance - indeed the construction and maintenance of the infrastructure becomes a drain on an economic sysrtem unless wealth is generated to cover the costs of the system and that involves the existance of farms factories factories and offices where goods and services are made, and distributed via the infrastructure: the infrastructure depends for support on being paid for by users: however Infrastructire projects will only benefit the PIIGS if these assist in the PIIGS locally producing goods and getting to market services which others buy, which could not happen if the infrastructure facilites did not exist.
Now what doe the PIIGS nations have (not controlled by EU quotas) that others want to buy and what do we need to do to get it to market?
The however will not solve the problems of profligate governments or reckless *ankers, nor a flawed imposed artificial currency system.
Of greater concern must be the willingness if not the ability of the germans to keep bailing out the Euro system. See the first item in this thread.
