Oh, and by the way those with -2.2% growth rates had approx 40% of the difference from the mean growth transferred to them via the Federal System, with the money coming from those who were growing at 5.4% - obviously this also happens inside most eurozone countries - and this is why you need a single Federated state.

Basically under this system Spain would be transferring money to Germany, and not vice-versa.

I guess you mean the eurozone and not Europe here, but still, I’d say what has to happen for the euro to work is that the members states have to federate politically, just like the US, and basically I’m in favour of that.

But absent that, and remember two states just voted down the constitution, it’s my opinion the euro won’t work. That’s what I think, and that’s what I’m sticking to.

The U.S. has labor mobility. If the economy goes sour in one
state then people will, after a while, move on to somewhere
else. A significant percentage of the U.S. population relocates
across state boundaries every year. Whatever the divergences of
local economics this human mobility has the effect of tying the
national economy more closely together and rebalancing disequilibriums.

My understanding of europe is that this is not true. I believe
that high-status, high-income professionals move from country
to country fairly freely, but that this is not at all true of
the great bulk of more ordinary workers.

Joerg, I’m sure you’ve seen this point made before. But I haven’t
seen you respond to it.

How come nobody asks “Which United States?” when confronted which such divergent income data? Seems like the U.S. is an optimal area for getting mentally accommodated to the use of a single currency across both shrinking and growing regions. All I´d ask is that Europeans just conclude they can do it, too, i.e., mentally adapt and carry on.
I definitely have no idea what you expect. Does Europe have to be more homogeneous, more cohesive and more uniform than the U.S. for you to get on the bandwagon? Do you want to indicate it will take a few more years before you get used to this newfangled Euro thing? Well, the British pound surely is a currency with a long history, so maybe now that Britain no longer outperforms France economically it might not be a bad idea to have Britain come into the fold and raise the average age of Euro predecessor currencies by a significant margin? Then again, you´d probably not even trust an economic union of Britain with the United States, as they have this new money over there that they call the dollar…

(And, yes, usually a currency´s survival potential is tested early on in its career. The Euro won´t make it without determination on the part of its backers.)