Twitteretter

The biggest news this week, in global terms, was the announcement of the EU recovery fund which I covered in post 63. A huge effort in economic terms but, even more importantly, a rare exercise in cross border solidarity. However, despite its seminal importance, it is practically impossible to find in UK news. The EU is one of the subjects I read about the most. Tales of EU failure and woe often feature prominently at the top of my digital news, selected by algorithms which, day after day, try to build an understanding of my interests. But news of this fund was number 43 in the list presented to me, well below items of little importance which I have little interest in. This is peculiar. I am not given to believing in conspiracies, I have trained myself to reject them as oversimplistic explanations of haphazardly converging interests and motivations and, again, I am confident there is no conspiracy here. But it is worth studying. Big news should be big news, even if it is about the EU L...

I have seen several social media threads objecting to the proposed EU Recovery Plan on grounds that the funds are earmarked mainly for technology sectors related to the new economy, and it does therefore not help companies that suffered most directly from the pandemic. This reveals a misunderstanding of how the economy works. Rather than direct compensation and support (MEDE fund is for that purpose in any case, not the RF), funds given to new technology companies with the potential to dominate a growing sector multiply as these companies grow. Money is spent locally, through purchases and salaries, and reaches traditional business that way, in larger sums than the direct help. Can you imagine the amount Google employees spend at restaurants, shopping malls, car dealerships or cafes in Mountain View, or Microsoft employees in Seattle? More than direct help to restaurants, we need to grow our own next generation globally leading companies, and this is what the Recovery Fund aims to do...