US democracy and free market capitalism is so extreme that can even choose which government you buy your services from. (Though not at the federal level.)
To be fair, some level of “government-shopping” is also part of the design and purpose of the EU. But it’s harder for ordinary people to take advantage of it because the language barriers and culture differences are larger than in the US.
That’s not an impediment for corporations though. Ireland and Luxembourg have done very well attracting rich companies that can choose whose taxes to pay within the EU.
It's not a part of the design or purpose. It's a part of the current status quo but the EU is a very different construct to the USA both legally and culturally.
The USA has the Constitution which at least in theory places hard limits on what the federal government can do, and the Constitution is strongly supported across US culture and society. The Supreme Court for example has recently started returning powers to the states.
The EU's equivalent is the treaties, which begin by saying the goal of the EU is "ever closer union". So the EU's stated goal at the very beginning of its foundational documents is to homogenize the continent's systems of government. Nothing in the EU's institutional philosophy or culture recognizes that it should be limited in scope and that countries should always have local control over some matters. For example the ECJ almost always rules in favor of more EU control, even when the treaties clearly say otherwise. Due to the widespread nature of this cultural mileu amongst the European political class, the EU routinely takes control of policy areas that it was never granted by treaty whilst facing minimal or no resistance.
For example, you talk about government-shopping by companies who set up their HQ in Ireland. The EU hates the possibility of government-shopping because it thinks the entire concept is illegitimate, so they have been attacking Ireland for years to try and force it to stop being so competitive. You can see that culture at work in the language they use:
"Ireland has been criticised for the way in which its tax system has been used by multinationals to set up aggressive tax planning structures and exploit mismatches and gaps in the international tax framework"
Low taxes are "aggressive" and a "mismatch" which gets "exploited". They think of a country competing against others using low taxes as some sort of hack that needs to be shut down, not a natural part of the competition between jurisdictions. In theory the EU has no control over corporation tax, but in practice the treaties let the EU regulate subsidies, so they redefined subsidy to not just mean direct payments from governments but also just charging lower taxes than France/Germany. And then told Ireland to change.
Now in practice the picture is complicated by the fact that the EU treaties do supposedly limit the EU's powers, because the people who signed them recognized the danger of the EU's unlimited ambition and sought to restrict it. And the US federal government has always grown, often working around or just ignoring the constitution in various ways. But this stuff is all downstream of culture. The Americans have the Republicans and its associated culture, which tries to decentralize government at least sometimes, in some ways. Even in cases like military spending where they don't reduce the size of the federal government they do try to spread it around, hence "porkbelly politics".
Mainland Europe doesn't have many similar parties or cultures. They're all very pro EU "integration" (read: passing control to Brussels). The UK had a smaller equivalent in the form of euroskepticism until they succeeded and Brexit rendered it irrelevant. And now Germany has something a bit like that in the form of the AfD, which despite being constantly smeared as Nazis has a relatively decentralized and conservative manifesto that wouldn't look out of place at a Republican convention. But you can tell how different the cultures are by the reaction: there's a very real and serious discussion in Germany about flat-out banning the AfD despite that it polls at about 20%. Nobody is talking about banning the Republicans.
So in practice I'd argue that the EU doesn't have the same design or purpose with respect to government-shopping as the USA does.
The EU isn’t the result of a single intent by a single group of people at a single moment in time. There’s a constant push and pull between the statists and the market liberals, for example.
Thatcher was pro-EU (despite the rhetoric) because she saw it as an opportunity both for British exports and to attract businesses. And it did work! Britain practically wrote large sections of the EU free market rules. The massive growth in London’s financial sector since the 1980s is one example of the benefits.
> “the AfD, which despite being constantly smeared as Nazis has a relatively decentralized and conservative manifesto that wouldn't look out of place at a Republican convention”
Honestly, a substantial minority of today’s Republican Party wouldn’t look out of place at a 1930 German National Socialist convention.
At least Germany is having a discussion about whether forces that are against democracy and human rights belong in a democracy. Most Americans, including old-school Republicans, appear to be just closing their eyes and hoping the problem goes away on its own once the nearly 80-year-old populist leader exits the arena.
Looking at total executive orders is misleading (and dishonest), EO’s historically were often used for very inconsequential things, like declaring some nation a friend or thanking someone for something. Without looking at the actual order it’s hard to know the impact and any given EO. Please try to argue in good faith.
You literally said Obama started the problem with executive orders. How would you judge these in a way that is impartial?
For instance George W Bush signed an executive order establishing the homeland security department. He established Afghanistan as a combat zone via executive order. He declared war on the Taliban via EO. He changed classification rules and military pay based on EO. He removed Congressionally approved union protections via executive order.
Your comment finally made me realize this.