Hearted Youtube comments on Into Europe (@IntoEurope) channel.

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  15. Several point of interest: 1. China account for 95% of the world Rare Earth supply was based on a study back in 1980s which several things has drastically changed, in 2000s, the official reserve number is 528 million tons, while in 2009 that number decreased to 185 million tons 2. Additional survey on previous uncharted area such as the EEZ of Japan has proven there are abundant rare earth supply, as the demand and price increase, we should expect to see more and more previously unknown mining area within horizon. 3. The word 'reserve deposit' is a somewhat tricky terms, within EU border, there are in fact quite some large scale LREEs deposit, in Northern Spain and Poland and North sea as well as EEZ of Portugal but due to environmental regulation or government policy, mining in those area are either economic non viable or forbidden and therefore excluded in the data 4. Rare earth indeed provide China a leverage, but so far not a very effective one, the 2015 TWO rule out in EU, Japan favor against China limitation on element export, and lets not forget China rely 100% on ASML EUV lithography systems that is why the the embargo on China in 2019 nearly bankrupt the tech giants. 5. the Belt and road initiative has engulfed China own fiscal strength as well, their intention is to expand influence indeed but there is a reason why World Bank of the West did not invest in those developing countries either the ability to repay the investment or simply geopolitical stability, take Congo as an example, they recently revoke the copper mining right of a Chinese firm after the Chinese promise of funding on local hospital has not meet the schedule.
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  34. Excellent video Hugo thanks for sharing this. I’m myself a Swedish small scale livestock farmer and have been thinking about these issues for several years. It’s just like you said, these new policies introduced last year are driving farmers in two completely different directions. In the 60s and 70s farmers were basically told to produce as much food as they could by having subsidies coupled to production. The 80s brought about a quota system limiting production to stop the butter mountains and lakes of olive oil flooding the market. The 90s brought about a shift from price support to income support, ie direct payments based on the amount of land in production. Ultimately changing the priorities of producers and leading to the 80/20 ration you mention. Now, post COP21 the union is scrambling to move the sector in a new direction and fast resulting in a clash of paradigms that we are currently seeing. Apart from the regional differences that can easily be pointed to with for example nitrous oxide limits in the Netherlands to cheap grain flooding the Polish farmers. There are deeper systemic and cross cutting concerns that I think brought farmers to the streets in this capacity. It’s the feeling of being at the end of the line. The old timers (avg age of farmer in EU is over 62 have seen it he following trend through their lifetime. Falling incomes and rising costs. inequitable pricing structures across the food chain. lack of level playing field when it comes to ag imports. dissatisfaction with european negotiations on cheaper imports. A rapidly changing international context making markets and pricing increasingly volatile and risky. Increased bureaucratic burdens and even more too down demands with no or little tied compensation. At the same time the young farmers trying to get established in the sector see a lack of future prospects, and with the insanely high capital intensive start up cost coupled with even uncertain and rapidly changing pricing structure for both input and output it’s just too risky to pursue a life as a food producer. Another salt on the wounds is the huge problem that the profits of food production don’t lie with the farmer but at the retailers and input end (fertilizer and pesticide producers). there needs to be a redistribution of profits so consumers aren’t only ones that have to bear the load of increased food prices. While farmers are loosing money the retailers downstream and input producers upstream are getting away with insane profits. All the while banks are making out like bandits on the interest payments from the debts of farmers. The problem is not the commission has proposed stricter environmental demands that are slowly creeping into the system. Many farmers do care and want to see more biodiversity on their farms and want to adapt and transition to climate resilient production methods. But to do that costs money. And the demands now posed on European farmers have been unrolled to quickly and been too ambitious with not enough proposed funding. These protests are very important because they are shaping the direction of the future EU farming policies and the farming sector. However with the looming elections this summer this is going to be an issue for the next elected mandate. It’s easy to understand why farmers have a deep sense of being stuck under the thumbs or large corporations up- and downstream dictating their costs and incomes as well the beurocrats not willing to share in the burden and risk of being a food producer. And the irony is that the people hit first by the consequences of climate change and a decrease in biodiversity, which these environmental schemes try to address is the farmers themselves. I believe they want to move in a greener direction but we are not willing to carry the entire burden and do it alone. We demand that others take responsibility for their part in making this happen for everyone. As long as the farmer feels as if they are loosing at the benefit of others, farming in Europe will never be able to be part of the solution it needs to be. That’s just a sad fact. These protests need to show everyone how sick the system is and urge everyone, from consumer to policymakers and food producers alike that we need to have a deep and serious discussion of how we realign our cultural values about food and food production. Subsidies are just one tool. The deeper work of healing our food system is a ginormous undertaking but one future generations will thank us for doing.
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  61. That was good video, showing both narrative. As a French, I personally blame 2 things : - Uncontrolled migration, making the creation of banlieue and segregation very easy. If you migrate to Japan, and there is already 5 millions of people from your community here, you don't need to assimilate to Japanese population. Also, a lot of migrants come but are unable to find a job. If we had a migration policy closer to Japan or Australia, that would had never happened. - Broken justice system, our prison are full and our judges release people like Nahel with 15 felonies, into the wild. Making our police having to deal with those people that should be in jail. If Nahel was in prison for his past felonies, that would had never happened too. We can talk about racism, inequality, etc... But that is inevitable when you have a huge influx of poor uneducated population from a very different culture coming to your country, with little border check and an overwhelmed justice system. You can't ask French people to just accept to pay more taxes for those populations, accept to have military patrols due to terrorism in their streets, accept to see their friends getting stolen, beaten, raped or even stabbed by some migrant gangs, and then accuse them to be racist and to not give enough to migrant population. I am not blaming migrants, they are also the victims. The migrants that don't cause any troubles are the ones who get the worst of it. The migration and justice system is the problem, has been since decades. But French politicians always refused it to reform it, preferring to flood banlieue with money and making hundreds of social reforms in their favor. But maybe that was wake-up call to start fixing this issue from the root.
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  63. I'm a Hungarian economist living in Hungary, so let me add some things, because this video is mostly right, but very superficial. As for the 'cronies', orban follows the russian model, there are no 'businessmen close to orban' - the 'businessmen' are LITERALLY 'employed' by orban in a shadow employment way, they are not 'businessmen' by any means, only sock puppets, p.e. the two of them you can see in the video, one was lajos simicska, kicked out in 2015, all his money taken, the other is lorinc meszaros, who is (and I'm not kidding!!!) by now the wealthiest person in Hungary, a plumber by profession, who really seems to be illiterate as I say, that man can hardly articulate a proper sentence out of his mouth, so dumb everybody laughs at him all the time, would be surprising if he was able to even sign his name on a contract or anything like that. The son in law of orban, istvan tiborcz is not mentioned in the video, a 30-some guy, now one of the richest in Hungary, and one of the most obvious sock puppets... The automotive sector is the biggest of the manufacturing mainly composed of German companies, that's true, but that's not the whole thing. There are dozens of factories in Hungary owned by German/American/Canadian companies, altogether they make up about 80% of Hungary's exports!!!, of course with a high import proportion as we mainly do the assembly part of the job, nothing more. A small part of the Hungarian economy that is not agriculture but can export its goods being competitve on the international market is composed of mainly tourism, the pharma and the IT sector, maybe 15% of exports, tourism is the main factor here and the rest 5% is compiled by agricultural products, wine etc. As you see, nothing like 'Hungarian economy' actually exists, the 4,5 million workforce can be roughly divided this way: 0,5 million works abroad in the EU and UK; 1,5 million people work for the state or companies closely affiliated with the state (public transport is organized through 'companies', but of course the workers there are basicly public sector employees); 0,5 million people work for the German/American/Canadian owned manufacturing companies who create the 'exports' mentioned above; 1,5 million people work in the domestic service industry and tourism, like retail trade, banks, phone/internet companies, media, catering, all kinds of workmen (mechanicians, plumbers, bricklayers, hairdressers ), lawyers, accountants etc. - this part is very unproductive and uncompetitive, in this sector also the activities that can be centralized are mostly owned by foreign companies like retail (Lidl, Aldi, Tesco), banks (Erste, KBC, Raiffeisen etc.) and about 0,5 million work in the agriculture and food processing, wine making etc., their products are mainly consumed on the domestic market, some exported. The 'cronies' (sock puppets) of orban are not involved in any competitive business except tourism, owning hotels, bars and restaurants and agriculture, but they mainly did their dirty job in the contruction industry as long as there were EU funds - finally stopped in 2021 thank god... And the money they make there is used partly to create such a widespread and very disgusting propaganda that russia can only envy. Hungarian is in an economic crisis, but DO NOT be deluded: the 2,5-3 million voters of orban don't care about the economy at all. These are mainly poor people who are also very uneducated, mainly the 2,5 million pensioners vote for him, because he 'protects the country from the migrants' - and that's enough, these people don't understand economy at all, barely they know the difference between million and billion...
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  123. The extracting process of the rare earth element(including lithium) is one of the most polluting chemical processes to local environments, if not the most. Varies of highly concentrated highly toxic acids used in the process guarantee a minor amount of them will pollute the nearby rivers/underground waters. Most of the rare earth elements (REE) are heavy metals which can be bio-accumulated in the local area. Most of these toxic acids and REE have no safe amount, and anything above zero is damaging. In China, the cancer rate (when adjusted for age) is highest in areas when REE is mined and extracted, even significantly surpassing areas with open pit coal mines or areas with large petrochemical plants and steel-making plants. All of the above areas are governed by the same standard and environment agency. You can set a "limit" for these pollutants and control the decrease in life expectancy to an acceptable level. Life expectancy can be compensated by increasing the standard of living and health care from the money that REE brings in. These "limits" will make REE costs significantly higher than in China. From my engineering capstone project completed in 2019, it will be around 30-50% above the 2019 price with Canadian or EU standards. REE is quite abundant around the world, even Japan has a large deposit. I remember reading somewhere that Europe has a large deposit of REE are Spain and Poland. There are obviously national security reasons not to rely on China to supply close to 100% of REE. But also, I don't think anyone would want REE mining and extraction near them. Unless they are poor and desperate to the point that they don't get basic, adequate health care by western standards.
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  753. Just clearing up a net migration statistical subtlety causing some confusion, which I was commissioned to analyze a few years back: The video is correct on annual net migration between the US and EU over past 5-10 years (esp. north, west, much of central Europe), for which there's been a historic reversal with more working-age Americans migrating to those European countries than the other way around. This has become true particularly of lands like the Netherlands, Germany, France, Denmark and Norway, none retirement destinations--again, it's largely young, working Americans and young families moving there (especially if they can prove ancestry in the European destinations, which can smooth citizenship), lately a good deal more than those nationals coming to the USA, the first time this has been seen in the centuries since the United States founding. Notice that this stat is not the same as total numbers of emigrants in each country, which accounts for people who've migrated since the early 20th century. For those aggregate figures, of course there are still more European expats in the US than there are American expats in Europe because, again, the long historical pattern has been for Europeans to migrate to the US as a land of immigration. It's only within the past 10 years that we've seen a reversal of this with America, as the description correctly points out, becoming a land of emigration for at least some destinations. The reasons are way too extensive to cover in a short post like this--I'm just clearing to clear up confusion about statements that mix up the two stats. Obviously it's only recently that the flow has reversed, but the fact that it has sustainably reversed is indeed historically significant, since we haven't seen this phenomenon before around 2014 at any point before in world history.
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  939.  @IntoEurope  I mean Laffer is usually talked about as not being real anyway, but I'm happy to concede that it, presumably, is if you get taxes high enough! I'm happy to concede that some individual taxes in France might be set at a level which is higher than the revenue maximising amount. I wouldn't go along with 45%ish being too high in and of itself. Nor 55%ish spending being inherently too high. My specific objection though, is the idea that the debt level is too high. That's the thing I don't think you've supported in the video. The demographics point is the most plausible argument you make on that and I just don't think that's enough when long dated govt debt is sitting at historically very low rates! No private company would look at it's debt and think it was in serious risk if everyone has only charging it 3 and a half % atm. Govts are more resilient than companies, not less! I think a far stronger defence of where you end up would be if the argument being made was not that the debt looked risky (the market obviously disagrees with you) or that spending or tax/GDP was inherently too high, but instead that the priorities were inefficient. Too much of the spending being on civil servants is a point you make and I'm very happy to concede that's persausive! ...but you can reasonably argue that, given interest on debt is so low, the reasonable choice would be to transfer that spending from salaries (which in a buisness would be a real expense) to broad payments to those not already getting the wildly generous French pensions (which in a buisness would be like returning value to shareholders). That’s just as valid a response to the inefficient use of human resources via the overhiring of civil servants as tax or spending cuts. Equally, sure, I'm happy to concede the methods France uses to raise revenue may be inefficient (as you reference in the video) and keeping the tax/GDP take the same but optimising those revenue streams could allow for a bigger economy for the same tax take. You obviously can argue for lower deficits, spending cuts, etc. I'm not saying you shouldn't, what I'm saying is that the gap in the video is in-between the "debt is an issue therefore we must" and the "spending cuts and tax rationalisation" you're arguing for. The debt bit isn't true and only really makes sense if we're trying to artificially narrow the policy space to one of the possible ways forward. I don't buy that a reduction in the top line spending number/a reduction in the deficit is necessary and I think the other options are also valid. That’s my disagreement, not that I'm inherently saying that the policy set you are moving towards by the end of the video is inherently bad! It might still be the best option! I just don't buy your logic on how you got there.
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