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Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

economist.com

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Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#261

Post by Aerroon »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #190
Dma54rhs wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to be employed in order to get Healthcare in most of the EU countries anyway, so it's not all that rosy as Americans tend to think.

Which countries is that exactly? I know for a fact Finland and Spain have free healthcare for the unemployed.

Is that for everyone or the Unemployed that you have to register to be a part of with terms & conditions? Because Estonia also gives healthcare to the Unemployed, but you have to be signed up at the job agency and I think you have to have had a job recently. If you don't fulfill some other criteria you can be taken off the list.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#262

Post by techrat »

reader_mode wrote: post #145
poopypoopington wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lack of national healthcare really puts a damper on free labor movement in the US. You want to start a company but also have health insurance for your family? That'll be $12,000 with a massive deductible... Gets in the way of a lot of would be entrepreneurs

The EU is no different with regards to movement. Just consider public health care in say Norway and in Bulgaria. Yeah it's financed indirectly by public funding but the quality can be terrible. In Croatia (where I'm from) you will regularly wait for 6+ months on life altering procedures and tests. And the public health system is in a constant crisis because of underfunding and overuse - just a few months ago drug sup…

>In Croatia (where I'm from) you will regularly wait for 6+ months on life altering procedures and tests.

Anecdote meet anecdote: I had to wait over a year for life altering surgery. My first test after becoming a candidate was over 6 months out.

I'm in the US.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#263

Post by [deleted] »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #94

Europe is stagnating for the same reason the US is: the rise of social democracy. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-long... There is a strong negative correlation between the size of government, as a percentage of GDP, and the rate of economic growth: https://web.archive.org/web/20170821004405/http://ime.bg/upl... The data shows that the Scandinavian region, which is the poster child for social…

[deleted]

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#264

Post by kortilla »

brnt wrote: post #197
238475235243 wrote: post #43

I've lived in a few different parts of the EU, and couldn't imagine a worse idea than starting a company there (which I did, once). Starting is hard enough without the general negative attitudes, the government insanities, the insane taxes, the low work ethic, the 8 weeks of vacation every month (I exaggerate, slightly). And I was in one of the two best EU countries, God only knows how bad it is in Spain or Italy or…

Sounds like an awesome place for workers!

Low pay and not meaningful/interesting work but otherwise it’s good as a “lifestyle” gig.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#265

Post by brainless »

ganzuul wrote: post #188
brainless wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you do not understand. I have more "skin" in the game than you might think. I am a founder who understands business, finance, talks to users, takes support tickets, can talk to investors, and write in 3 different programming languages, setup the entire software pipeline myself. I am more hands-on than you might have seen around. Trust me on that. Your definition of "skin" does not need to be mine. I want to h…

Is there a forum for like-minded people? I went and acquired all the technical skills I need but then discovered that I have zero interest in the profit motive.

I second @codewithcheese here. I am really sad about what is going on with the open source maintainers. So much of our modern machinery is created by them yet (almost) every company simply uses the software and gives nothing much in return.

There are impactful people in there and I have gradually started going back to these communities now. I wonder how we can create an system where small/medium businesses are directly aware of the empowerment through software and they want to financially contribute to the development. There are millions of small/medium businesses around the world, they are the backbone of most economies and are more directly involved in the social structure than unicorns. Start the conversations and you will find a way to bring the change you want to see.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#266

Post by Apocryphon »

tcoff91 wrote: post #246
bennybob wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also wages in tech in the EU are laughably bad compared to USA. I'm in the UK, same problem. Yet everyone seems to think that a couple weeks more holiday makes up for it.

Isn’t university for your children free in Germany? That’s like a 100-200 thousand dollar savings if you have two kids you want to put through college vs the USA.

Or the healthcare, saner rent prices, better traffic because of public transit?

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#267

Post by Dma54rhs »

sildur wrote: post #203
Dma54rhs wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to be employed in order to get Healthcare in most of the EU countries anyway, so it's not all that rosy as Americans tend to think.

No, that's false. At the very least, all residents are covered, regardless of their working status in Austria, Spain, Portugal, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Luxembourg, Norway, Romania, Serbia, and Sweden.

The subject is about mobility of workforce.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#268

Post by knolan »

mattlondon wrote: post #206
profunctor wrote: post #4

Would have been nice if they had given a serious mention to some of the positives. Sure, Europe ahs hundreds of mobile operators but we also have cheaper plans than any I could find in America. We also have serious competition with our internet providers so I can actually switch to a better service. Anyway it is sad that we can't seem to grow as many new large companies. Hopefully we can improve at that while keeping…

Yes this is something I have been really surprised by too - people spending 50,60,70+ USD a month on a mobile service. WTF? Even in the UK there are numerous providers (some virtual networks I admit but they still price differently) and you can get perfectly decent service for less than 10GBP (typically unlimited calls, but data is the thing you pay for now, so 5GBP might get you 500mb of data 10GBP gets you 2gb a mo…

I haven’t had data allowances that low in years.

I pay €10 per month for an ‘unlimited’ SIM only plan. The fair usage limit is 120GB per month.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#270

Post by Learning2-2 »

thijsc wrote: post #168
reader_mode wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a thriving tech scene in Europe and we do quite well! Is there really ? I see attempts at copying the US tech scene, but a lot of it seems structured to suck money out of government funds and programs. I see very little private investment. Just recently I talked to a local VC, in a casual chat about how they started their fund I found out they pulled money out of a EU fund, they had to put up like 25% of t…

I totally agree with you that the EU's efforts to replicate a SV style startup ecosystem are misguided and ineffective. The comment however was about the EU not being a good place to start a business. Personally I ignore all that stuff you mentioned. We just focus on building a good product. And the EU is a great place for that. I have many acquaintances that have built a multi-million euro business in the last decad…

There is absolutely a thriving tech scene in Europe. Here is for example a list gaming companies in Sweden: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_game_companies_o...
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