Ergh, no you can't. Money can't just be taken out of the economy, well, it can, but it has huge negative effects.

If you take a large some of money out of the economy, then someone, somewhere a long the line will suffer. If money is taken out of the economy, consumption will go down, followed by demand, employment and incomes.

By borrowing money from other countries, you can basically slow down this effect because you're taking smaller chunks of money out of the economy over a longer period of time.

People seem to think that a country's money is just a big stock pile that can be taken from or added to at any time without consequence. It's not, an economy is constantly flowing, and taking something out of it damages its flow.

I made a post some time ago trying to explain some of the basics of an economy and how it works (without getting into any of the controversial stuff). I'll try and dig it up for you guys.

Found it, here ya go: http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=58849

Thanks for the info Samuel, it was really informative. :)

Yep.  As far as i can tell your the biggest EU supporter on the boards.

^I'm a supporter of an EU, not the EU.

The EU, as it stands, isn't very democratic in its nature, and it feels very distant to citizens of countries. Both of those things create huge amounts of resentment in EU-member countries.

I mean, look at the Lisbon Treaty fiasco. I was for pretty much everything that was in the Lisbon treaty (minus a couple of smaller issues), but I was not happy in the way that Governments went about getting it ratified.

On one hand, looks of people were against it, and yet national parliaments all agreed to it, anyway. Many people said that this wasn't democratic.

On the other hand, it could be said that Ireland's rejection on the treaty was also undemocratic, because the views of a very small proportion of the EU population stopped a process that would effect the entire EU. I would also say that this is undemocratic.

My views? The Lisbon treaty should be broken into four - or - five smaller proposals and referenda should be held on each at an EU level. So the entire EU votes are all collected and counted.

This would be beneficial in so many ways. The good parts of the Lisbon Treaty would be ratified, whilst parts that people disagree with will be left in the dust. It will also be ratified in a far more democratic way and people would feel more in-touch with the EU overhead.

If people are happier with the EU, then they're more likely to vote in European elections. If that happens, then the European Parliament would have more mandate and thus be able to demand more power, taking power away from the Council of Ministers and the European Civil Service.

And that's when the EU will make huge leaps and bounds in terms of becoming a singular voice, with all the people united behind it.

Hm.  I'm not sure i agree with you there.

I mean what would stop the United States from holding a referendum, and including like... Cuba... on the combination of the US and CUba?

Or would you maintain a states right to leave the EU if a proposal it disliked was accepted?

Many proposals have opt-out clauses, and a member can leave whenever it so wishes (which they can't, because it'd be economical suicide and foreign policy suicide, as well as losing a large proportion of the electorate's support).

There's also several key differences between what I'm suggesting, and what your example is. After all, the European nations are all much closer on a social, economical and political sense than the US and Cuba, and one EU members population doesn't dwarf the rest.

What I'm trying to say here is that the views from someone in France is similar to that as someone in the UK, which is similar to someone in Germany. There will be differences, of course, but those differences are no where near as big as the differences in views between someone in the US and someone from Cuba.

What's more, it's more democratic than what is really happening. Where the rest of the EU states have ignored RoI's "no" vote and are ratifying everything they can now, and are waiting for RoI to just "change it's mind".

I don't like EU. They are no different than USA! They need to ''fix'' everybody's problem even when nobody asked them to do anything. And they are also against every country who don't have the same regime as EU countries do and they are also against every country who DOESN'T want to join them

Regardless.... I mean nothing in your proposal currently prevents say... the entire EU but Ireland voting on repossessing all the food or some other resource of ireland for the good of the rest of the EU.

Etc. 

There are a lot of differences still there at the moment. 

As long as a country can opt out at any time... there should be no problem. Though I can't help but think the first time countries want to opt out we'll end up repeating history.  With the EU playing the part of Civil War America.

Tough thing really international alliances aiming to unite.  Much easier to break apart.

Yes, but this wouldn't be done at a national level. It won't be counted separately, all votes will go in one big pot. So, in essence, you will get some countries with an overwhelming "no", and some with an overwhelming "yes", but it doesn't matter, as the Lisbon treaty is a Europe wide thing.

You don't hold a referendum in the UK, which gets a "Yes" vote, then rejected because the "No" vote came from a very concentrated area.

You're also forgetting that not every one voted "No" in Ireland - it was a 53.4% victory. And the turnout was 53.1%. Around a quarter of the Irish electorate put a stop on a matter that effected around 700 million people.