A good point, Linus, and we can see how in the European Union the nations find themselves in a different setup than at their own national levels.
At the national levels, the voters are able to express themselves much better than people in the United States can express themselves at the State level. That is the true point of the article. This is about showing how voters in the US are suppressed to a much lower level of empowerment than people in the EU, with particularly the Scandinavian countries giving the most power to their voters.
The EU is not like the United States. It is not a federation, but rather a union. That makes a big difference and we can talk about that.
Yet once we do that, then we need to talk about the EU and we need to talk about WTO and all other agreements in which borders are open (or closed) to others.
To provide an example, the nations that suppress their own people the most (for instance, with having very low minimum wages) compete with the people in Sweden with higher minimum wages. This competition among minimum wages undermines the ability for Sweden to improve their own standing to some extent.
So, it is not just voting that is at stake here. It is truly about empowering, because if US voters were empowered better, the poor would be able to get higher minimum wages in place than what we have now. In effect, that would remove the false economic competition that is now in place. It may hurt the US economy some, but we would also have fewer people poor as dirt here.
If the USA were to use the EU definition of poverty, then one in three (I kid you not) would be living in poverty here.
Today, the USA uses their own definition for poverty. To put that in perspective, the EU has 60% of what the person in the middle makes as the poverty line. In the USA, translated into this setup, that is 39% of what the person in the middle makes. The USA does not capture all its poor, but fakes a lower number so people are not as upset when they are poor because they think it is their own fault. If the USA were to declare that one in three lives in poverty, then that would wake people up to reality, and the ones benefiting from the current situation do not want people awake.
Thank you for your reply. You have a wonderful country to be proud of.
