I can't fathom why you would give one parlement all the power. This is the root issue of America right now, individual states have less and less power every year.

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input_sh 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I would argue that the root issue in America right now is that you have one guy that can pass 200+ executive orders in less than a year completely bypassing the other two supposed branches of government.

There's no such position or a branch in the EU. None of the three can make any sort of change of their own.

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pessimizer 31 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

The executive can't bypass the courts with an executive order, unless you've seen something I haven't. The reason Congress doesn't do anything is because it ceased to be a functioning body sometime around the AUMF. Congresspeople realized that doing anything other than what the donors paid for is fraught with risk. Better to watch things being done and complain about it. The UK went the same way, concentrating all power in the current government with even backbenchers being absolutely powerless.

I guess the only thing saving the EU from the same fate is its powerlessness and indecisiveness. The people who run it are certainly insane in the same way as the leaders of the UK and the US. You're both crippled from your lack of federalization and protected by it.

edit: In the US, our real problem is that our executive (including the intelligence agencies) can do whatever it wants without an executive order or a coherent legal rationale, they will simply never be prosecuted. The next executive will proclaim that the illegal acts under the last one will never be tolerated again, pardon everybody who did it, and make those acts legal from now on.

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hulitu 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> There's no such position or a branch in the EU.

cough vdL cough

	▲	input_sh 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		She's the head of one of the three branches, she doesn't get to sign a piece of paper and for that to instantly become a law. Neither does her branch as a whole. At most I would concede that she's way more of a household name than her predecessors, but that doesn't automatically mean she holds more power.
	▲	disgruntledphd2 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		She's basically a civil servant for the Council and Parliament.

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concinds 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

America is already a country. The EU isn't. You could give the EU a metric ton more power and they'd still be more decentralized than the halcyon days of the US that you reference.

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tomrod an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The root issue in the US is regulatory capture. Easier to do with one parliament, but not impossible with dozens.

The US has been fighting corporatism vs. oligarchy since the cold war ended, with regulatory capture as a primary tool in both tool chests.

There are some simple policy changes, politically unsavvy in the US, that a federated EU could implement to induce better outcomes.

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bojan 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Otherwise you get an economy stifling patchwork of regulations, which is what we have within the EU now.

Further, it'd probably be two Chambers, and we have proportional representation, which should make a slide to fascism a bit more difficult.

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saubeidl 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It might not be ideal and wildly swing the pendulum every couple of years, but looking at American centralization from our end, it still seems more functional somehow. At least you guys can get something done.

Imagine if every state governor in the US had veto power over federal legislation. Imagine trying to get anything done that would require buy-in from both California and Alabama. That's the situation we find ourselves in.