> How does a French/German person benefit from the money from their taxes being sent to another country when their own economies are in the dumpster?

I benefit when I can use a Latvian bank that does not take an arm and a leg for basic services, and when I can get decent and cheap goods from all over Europe. I benefit when I can go and work in another country with different opportunities. People who complain about the EU and inflation have no clue how it was before the single market.

> If the EU is a no brainer, we should be swimming in cash, shouldn't we?

Well, firstly by most standards we are. The problem is inequality and the way wealth is distributed, not the lack of it.

> Even the most ardent supporters of the EU have finally admitted the truth (such as Mario Draghi), the EU is falling behind on many fronts including but not limited to AI, EVs, economic output, industrial output, defense spending and so on...

This is true, but none of this is the EU’s fault. It does not control the industrial policies of the member-states. And how would any of these member-states fare in an ideal timeline where the EU does not exist? Would having 27 different currencies, 27 different tariffs systems, 27 completely different tax structures with controls at each border help with developing any of this?

> That's a bit disingenuous. There are many countries in Asia or elsewhere that are doing just fine without being part of a union such as the EU.

I never said it would not be fine outside the EU, I am just saying that it would be measurably worse. That other countries in other circumstances do better or worse is neither here nor there. The UK provides data on a single country being inside and outside in a short time span. All the complications it is going through is something it did not have to do when it was in the EU, and any other country would have to deal with the same issues.

> What about Germany currently? What about Greece after 2008? What about France which had a 10%++ unemployment rate for the majority of the 2010s?

You are cherry picking. All these except (in part) Greece are the consequences of national politics. You cannot say that the EU is to blame for every single bad outcome in the last 30 years while saying nothing about the successes. It’s just dishonest.

> The UK is not doing well at the moment, that is a given, but let's not pretend that the countries in the EU are doing any better either.

The UK is doing spectacularly badly. I sincerely hope that it’s getting better but let’s not fool ourselves: I cannot name a French prime minister or president that was as bad as May, Johnson, Truss, or Sunak (I could name a couple of Camerons though, so it’s certainly not all good). Good luck to Starmer and I hope everyone will get better, but in the meantime it was the opposite of smooth and painless, and the UK is still not where it would have been.

> At least the UK has a functioning government whereas France is in a deadlock and will soon go through it's 4th prime minister/government of the year.

None of these governments were as inept as Truss was and the reason why there is some instability currently is that the parliament is more representative of the people. I’ll take that any day instead of a party having an absolute majority with 37% of the vote.