Comment by petra
7 hours ago
Let's say I'm a German small business owner.
Tomorrow Europe becomes a single market. How do I compete with a similar business but from a country where business costs are significantly lower ?
7 hours ago
Let's say I'm a German small business owner.
Tomorrow Europe becomes a single market. How do I compete with a similar business but from a country where business costs are significantly lower ?
How does a Californian company compete with a company in Missouri that has lower labor costs and less overhead/ regulation?
They seem to manage this just fine, but it's a pretty similar scenario. You could also push for standardized business costs and regulations eu wide ofc to help.
Standardized costs would just hurt the poorer members more. You’re underestimating the economical difference between EU member states. It’s more like if Californian businesses had to compete with Mexican in a single market, and Mexicans would be paying Californian prices with Mexican wages in the end.
The Californian company probably opens their new plant in Missouri, so now it's not exactly a Californian company.
That's the entire point - the Californian company leaves the higher-value R&D jobs in California, while it outsources the lower-value but still necessary manufacturing jobs/data warehousing jobs to Missouri. Both places benefit, because ultimately the union benefits as a whole from the distribution of productivity.
If you concentrated all manufacturing around just a few spots, you end up in a situation like India - inland states with resources get stripped of their resources while all the companies are based in coastal metropolises with port facilities.
One could also go the other way, like China, and let the states compete between themselves for manufacturing prowess, but you need a central planning committee to ensure that the competing provinces still coordinate and work to complement each other. Easier in China, not so much in the EU.
The EU single market is a sorry joke.
You boast about the superior quality of german manufacturing. Or move your manufacturing to eastern Germany where costs are lower.
You specialize in things that are more difficult to make in poorer countries - you use your advantages they use theirs. Afterall this is what happened to a lot of Polish industry after we got our EU membership - it died under pressure of already developed competition from countries like Germany.
You don't and that's by design.