• @[email protected]
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    22011 months ago

    These kinds of charts are a bit dangerous, as it will be used by anti-EU folk in net contributing countries to say look at how much money we can save when we leave the EU. But this looks only at money being shipped back and forth. The EU has so much benefits in terms of trade and collaboration, it’s a steal at any price.

    • @xkforce
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      7711 months ago

      All people have to do to refute the leavers is point to the UK

      • @[email protected]
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        2611 months ago

        These people are usually reality deniers, so showing them anything is a no go.

        And you know how they do it too.

        First they do a whole FUD campaign, which get the people riled up and polarized. Up till the point that it doesn’t matter what the truth is, it’s tribalism, us against them etc. This phase is in full swing in Europe right now. Next they say well what if we do a non binding referendum? It shows the people we are actively taking an interest and we get to see what people think. If everyone votes remain, the issue is done and buried. Then leading up to the referendum they do a massive misinformation campaign, with TV ads, social media ads and posts, etc. Everything they can do to misinform the public, with Russia footing the bill for most of it. Most people aren’t interested enough to dive into such a complex topic (and I don’t blame them, it’s very complicated), so they’ll go off their gut and their gut is influenced by their experience in the world and on social media, so they will vote exit. After the referendum is done and the outcome is 50/50, they’ll go yell: “THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN”. And before you know it your whole country goes to shit and you are leaving the EU and basically committing economic suicide. By the time people realize what happened, it’s much too late and all the shitbags responsible have gone away.

        If you told me this before Brexit, I would have laughed and told you it’s total BS. But then it happened in real life and I don’t know how to deal with that.

    • @[email protected]
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      11 months ago

      Exactly. Germany makes way more than 25 billion Euro by being able to freely trade with neighbours.

      • Bigmouse
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        311 months ago

        Not to mention the fact that the €’s low value makes german goods much more competitive for international export.

    • @Spaceballstheusername
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      2611 months ago

      Also by improving struggling countries it means you have more and stronger markets to sell to. When you empower your neighboring countries everyone is safer and stronger.

    • @anewbeginning
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      211 months ago

      Also, Germany has been by far the biggest beneficiary of the euro so it all evens out.

    • Tar_Alcaran
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      211 months ago

      But this looks only at money being shipped back and forth.

      Not even that. It only looks at money being shipped back and forth via one specific channel.

  • @rtxn
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    7011 months ago

    Not surprised about Hungary, but hoooly FUCK, what’s going on in Poland?

    • @[email protected]
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      6911 months ago

      It’s a big country with large regions that are still comparatively poor and agricultural. The latter two factors are what the EU pays for and the first works as a multiplicator.

      Per capita it looks a bit different. According bpd.de the main recipient per capita in 2022 was Estonia with 677 Euros per capita and year and the main contributor is indeed Germany with 237 Euros. Poland “only” gets 279 Euros per person and year.

      • TheMurphy
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        11 months ago

        Agriculture is a great point overlooked in this chart.

        EU puts a lot of money into this, and Poland being a great exporter for this, they also receives alot from EU to be able to do it.

        Why are we doing it then, if it’s a net negative? It’s not, because we can all get our bread (literally) this way. And Poland farmers can make a living making the country richer.

        • Ooops
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          11 months ago

          All countries get agricultural subsidies and Poland is not one of the big ones. They sit on place 5 with all 4 before them production at least twice as much. (see here, page 10)

    • @teslasaur
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      011 months ago

      War in Ukraine. A whole fuckload of people that seek asylum in Poland for obvious reasons.

        • Hyperreality
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          11 months ago

          Well, duh.

          But it used to be behind the Iron Curtain.

          None of the former Eastern Bloc countries are net contributors in this chart. Greece, Portugal, and Spain were also dictatorships not that long ago. Cyprus there’s the whole Greek military Junta and Turkish invasion thing.

          The only other net recipients are Malta (which doesn’t receive much), and Luxemburg and Belgium. They host a lot of EU institutions.

            • Hyperreality
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              11 months ago

              Love the former East Germany, lived there for a while, but it’s still deprived even after the federal state pumping loads of money into it. I suspect West Germany’s crumbling infrastructure is in part caused by the burden of absorbing East Germany.

              But it’s not an independent country, so it’s hidden in these figures. Germany’s had to shoulder that burden on its own.

              Cost trillions. West Germany shouldered that burden, but West German companies also profited from it. Eg. not as if there were private East German companies to build motorways to western standards.

        • @[email protected]
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          -1111 months ago

          PiS combine socialist economics with one-party control of state institutions, so while their rule has technically not been communist, it has rhymed with it.

    • @[email protected]
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      11 months ago

      statistia-netcontrib.csv

      country,netcontrib
      DE,25572
      FR,12380
      NL,6929
      IT,3337
      SE,2826
      DK,1766
      AT,1540
      FI,1109
      IE,703
      MT,-14
      CY,-172
      SI,-386
      EE,-729
      LT,-860
      SK,-1398
      LV,-1544
      BG,-1727
      HR,-1746
      ES,-1946
      LU,-2020
      CZ,-2853
      BE,-2950
      PT,-3132
      RO,-4096
      HU,-4206
      GR,-4278
      PL,-11910
      

      eu-contribution-per-capita.r

      if (!require("pacman")) install.packages("pacman")
      pacman::p_load(
                  countrycode,
                  dplyr,
                  ggdark,
                  ggplot2,
                  r2country
              )
      
      abs <- read.csv("statista-netcontrib.csv",header = TRUE)
      abs2 <- cbind(abs,name = countrycode(abs$country,"iso2c","country.name")) 
      
      df <- inner_join(country_names, abs2)
      df2 <- inner_join(country_population, df)
      df2$percap <- df2$netcontrib/df2$population2023*1000000
      
      df3 <- arrange(df2,percap)
      
      ggplot(df3, aes(x = percap, y = reorder(name, percap))) +
          geom_bar(stat = "identity") +
          dark_theme_gray() +
          ylab("Country") +
          xlab("Euros per capita") +
          scale_x_continuous(breaks = scales::pretty_breaks(n = 20)) +
          geom_text(aes(label = percap))
      
      ggsave("euros-percap.png")
      

      Full size image

      Sorry about the broken escaping of the angle brackets (“<” is “&lt;”) in the source; Lemmy is, regrettably, broken on that at the moment.

      EDIT: Fixed Latvia country code error.

      EDIT2: And Austria country code error.

      • @[email protected]
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        11 months ago

        Also, a Markdown table rendition:

        eu-contribution-per-capita-markdown.r

        if (!require("pacman")) install.packages("pacman")
        pacman::p_load(
                    countrycode,
                    dplyr,
                    r2country,
                    simplermarkdown
                )
        
        abs &lt;- read.csv("statista-netcontrib.csv",header = TRUE)
        abs2 &lt;- cbind(abs,name = countrycode(abs$country,"iso2c","country.name")) 
        
        df &lt;- inner_join(country_names, abs2)
        df2 &lt;- inner_join(country_population, df)
        df2$percap &lt;- df2$netcontrib/df2$population2023*1000000
        
        df3 &lt;- arrange(df2,-percap)
        
        md_table(df3)
        

        name percap
        Netherlands 386.91124
        Germany 302.86855
        Denmark 297.09908
        Sweden 267.98643
        Finland 199.90810
        France 181.71677
        Austria 168.68113
        Ireland 136.52768
        Italy 56.76638
        Malta -26.94577
        Spain -40.25217
        Slovenia -182.27546
        Cyprus -187.34343
        Romania -214.99549
        Belgium -250.73894
        Slovakia -257.60767
        Bulgaria -267.84703
        Portugal -299.21568
        Lithuania -300.05251
        Poland -315.86485
        Greece -408.10926
        Hungary -438.25808
        Croatia -449.01298
        Estonia -533.72029
        Latvia -819.79399
        Luxembourg -3056.85909
        • @Whelks_chance
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          311 months ago

          This is very clever. Is Lemmy actually running the code to achieve this, or did you paste it just so other people can replicate the process?

  • qaz
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    2111 months ago

    Poland and hungary are constantly complaining about the EU and vetooing laws too

  • @Pohl
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    1811 months ago

    Interesting. The red bars almost exclusively belong to nations that had authoritarian single party government in the last half century.

    When laid out like this you really see how deviating and long term the consequences of authoritarianism can be. Stable healthy democracy is a fucking superpower.

  • @hOrni
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    1611 months ago

    I’m Polish. So, if I understand this correctly, we are getting the most out of the EU, and yet still people here are complaining about it. And about Germany.

    • @janja
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      1011 months ago

      Both host import EU institutions. The income they provide for the locals, possibly indirectly, is also seen as a benefit.

      • @[email protected]
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        211 months ago

        Strasbourg in France should also make a dent into France’s contributions then. Would be nice to know how much it would be, without those things calculated in - sure they are?

  • 𝐘Ⓞz҉
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    -2211 months ago

    I went to Poland and I can 100% say its a fucking shithole. Shouldn’t be in EU at all

    • TheMurphy
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      311 months ago

      I went to Poland last summer and I can only disagree.

      • @hOrni
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        411 months ago

        I’m Polish. Can confirm, it’s a shit hole. Still better than the US dough.