this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2024
1044 points (83.2% liked)
Political Memes
5598 readers
2253 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Saved from a Russian invasion. It's a bit exaggerated, but not entirely untrue I believe.
Europe has contributed more money than USA, so they can share a little less than half the credit.
It's basically the same deal as WW2 - sure, the USA has had a big impact - but Europe's not exactly shirked its share of the heavy lifting.
You are comparing a single country to an entire continent though
But don't forget that the EU and US have very comparable surface area and population
Who told you that? Google the populations.
EU is slightly over 448 million people vs 332 million in the USA.
4.233 million km² in EU vs 9.833 million km^2^ in the USA.
91 billion USD equivalent support from EU (including the EU organization and EU members) versus 75 billion USD from the USA.
91/75 = 1.213...
448/332 = 1.349
If you want per capita you get 0.203 (unit not given, they are the same for each comparison) per capita from EU, versus 0.225 per capita from the USA. The numbers based on area will be a lot worse for the USA.
To be clear; yes, the USA has contributed a little more per capita, but less in absolute terms. There's a maximum of 35% difference in the populations between the EU and the USA. That's "very comparable" when it comes to such large populations.
Then there is a lot of varying census data. When I searched, the site said 780 million. I wonder if some sites still include the UK and others are maybe restricting the definition to the Schengen area.
It's because some people are using Europe in its proper continental usage, and some people using it really mean the EU. In this thread we're discussing the EU because it's a comparable entity to the US as covered in a previous reply.
FYI the UK is a shade under 70m population the last time I checked - nowhere near enough to add 300m to Europe's population.
Correct but I also know the Schengen area doesn’t include all European countries too. So my guess was that combined with the UK might be the missing 300M
Any count of Europe's population that is over 700 million is including Russia, which is 140~150 million that shouldn't be included when trying to answer the question about who has contributed more per capita to fighting Russia.
If someone wants to give an explicit list of the countries that should be counted for populations regarding the question of "who has given more to help the war in Ukraine, the US or Europe?", we can get to the bottom of this real quick.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/tps00001/default/table?lang=en
Here you go.
I mean, he's right in that the population of EU seems to have two very different numbers. If you Google it, the first two results agree on over 700 million and it isn't until the third result that you get 400 millon. Your argument literally goes either way depending on the definition of "Europe".
There's no definition of Europe at all in play here. It's the EU. A specific subset of countries, which is not the same as Europe. So what I wrote only goes one way. I'm not quite sure it's an argument, really. I presented the facts, and said that something with a maximum difference of 35% is very comparable. The first result I got through Google was the numbers I have given, which are also the official numbers from the European Union itself. That should be a lot more correct than other numbers you could find.
If you want to google it, make sure you use "EU population", not "Europe population". Or you can look at that link I gave, which gives data not just for the EU, but a lot of other European countries as well.
We're talking about EU here. Europe is a continent and so if people are using that in its proper usage it will encompass a lot more people - hence the discrepancy.
a continent united through trade, (mostly) shared currency, open borders, and a union that governs over member countries each having their own laws.
Now compare it to the US, united through trade, open borders, shared currency, and a federal government that governs member states that each have their own laws.
obviously there are major diffences between the two but for the sake of comparison in the "who put more effort into something" debate comparing US and Europe on the grounds of "single country vs many countries" is rather silly
Well the other person said you can compare based on surface area (wtf?) and population. Googling population of Europe gives me a number that’s twice the size of the USA. So per capita, assuming they’ve both given the same effort, the USA has given twice as much as Europe.
Come up with a metric that’s not silly then.