remarkable with how little “money” Russia gets a seat at the geopolitical table. i’m quite skeptical that labor time is the binding constraint on Europe’s geopolitical heft. 1/

on narrowly economic grounds, much of their current difficulty has to do with having too much to sell and requiring US markets to absorb it. producing more would do nothing to address that, unless wages also rise. but if the politics permitted, wages would already have risen. 2/

or maybe for geopolitical heft, the (economic) constraint is the supply side of the defense sector. working more would enable more supply there, but on inflationary terms, the extra wages would have to be sterilized by taxes, rates, or regulation. 3/

alternatively you could shift existing labor hours to defense production, which would be inflationary via fewer consumer goods for the same incomes, requiring sterilization by taxes, rates, or regulations. 4/

not sure why shifting the consumption basket from leisure to other goods matters very much one way or another, other than via a kind of discreditable angloamerican calvinist intuition. 5/

(maybe it’s German Cavinism + somehow the politics, once there is extra arbeit, allow an increase in domestic aggregate demand that the ordoliberal order refuses under conditions of lazy leisure? so working more is how Europe permits its international account to rebalance? i guess it’s possible!) 6/

(mostly i think Europe’s geopolitical constraint is not economic at all, it’s the EU’s consensus-oriented decisionmaking which, with its absence of strategic unity, renders the union a geopolitical nonentity. taking away the lovely vacay will do nothing about that!) /fin