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And furthermore, I'd say however they harmonize the taxation shouldn't even matter, because the the G7 countries (or at least the euro ones acting zone wide) have no structural constraints preventing the money printer.

The real important thing here is establishing the importance in preventing the race-to-the-bottom, so more important things like multinational carbon taxes, developing country capital controls, etc. are newly inside the Overton Window.



IDK what you mean by "constraints preventing the money printer," but in the eurozone we have the opposite problem. Only the ECB can "print" money, or rather, only the ECB can create primary loans to national governments. National banks can't.

In practice, expanding national debt requires eurozone-wide unanimity. Ask Greece.


> Only the ECB can "print" money

> expanding national debt

I feel the need to point out that currency debasement is a fundamentally different thing from taking out loans/issuing bonds/other debt. If anything, currency debasement reduces national debt in real terms, by devaluing the currency it's denominated in. I'm not especially clear on the situation, but I was under the impression that Greece's problem was that noone was willing to lend them money due to a expectation that they wouldn't be paying it back, not that they were prohibited from borrowing by EU law, but even that would be a different thing from being prohibited from printing money.


Extremely short analysis. After 2008 Greece's GDP crashed by 50% over several years and stabilized 2016. It's pretty obvious that when you have a shrinking economy that your real debt burden is going up over time. 100% debt to GDP will turn into 200% and it's not because of irresponsible spending or low taxation.

If anything you have to lend more money to Greece and only give the most productive companies/sections of the government access to loans, if Greece's GDP was 355 billion € in the past it can recover up to that old level.


Yes, it was absolutely cutting off the nose to spite the face on the rich EU countries (well, Germany's) part. Disgusting and shameful.


I feel like I need to point out that they are identical, inasmuch as debasement means anything in our current currency systems.

Debasement of gold happens because gold isn't printed. You need to dilute it in order to make more coins. In a gold currency system, it's the gold that's the "real" currency. Gold value rises and falls, but that's not debasement. The coins are debase. It's theoretically possible for a gold coin to be debased, but also worth more because the value of gold has increased by more than the coin has been diluted.

Euros and dollars aren't redeemable for anything, so debasement doesn't really mean anything.

In the Eurozone, when a national government runs a deficit (all of us, currently) then the ECB issues a loan. That money is then available for the government to spend. This is where Euros come from.

The ECB refused to loan/print money to the Greek government until they agreed to certain demands. Ireland, my country, did agree to the demands and the ECB made some euros for us to pay our banks with.

It works in a similar way in the US. The Federal Reserve Bank gives their government dollars, and they US government give them bonds in exchange... a loan. The Fed can then sell those bonds to anyone who wants them, or hold them.

The one unbreakable eurozone rule is no printing your own money. The "Greek Crisis" was a fear the Greece would try to issue its own bonds, which would trade at a different rate & effectively create their own separate euro... confusing everyone.


But Greece is prohibited from printing money because it's currency is the Euro, and like all countries that have it, Greece had to sign the stability pact and, more importantly, also had to sign off the right to print more Euros. Only the European Central Bank can print money, and Greece can't tell it when to.


By "structural" I meant the material nature of the economy; the E.U.'s is certainly big and closed enough.

Yes, there is the straight-jacketted neoliberal constitution that makes everything terrible, but that's separate. I really hope they can fix that.




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