Live data from Hacker News

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

economist.com

401–410 of 905 posts

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

#402
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Work for a tech company in Europe. GDPR compliance is costing us massive manpower hours and money spent on compliance consultants. Most of my salary gets obliterated before it reaches me and I make significantly less than tech workers in the US. There's a lot to like about the security but I'm starting to wonder if I can ever really break out of working until I'm enfeebled here.

Not a fan of GDPR either. I'm really not sure the total tax load as an employee is much worse compared to California if you factor in state taxes and health care payments.

And child care costs and college savings.

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

#403

This article is truly bizarre. The main point it makes is that the top 500 US companies grew faster than the top 500 European ones in the last decade or so. But then it quickly mention, without any further analysis, that both their GDP actually grew at a similar pace. So the entire EU economy grew at the same speed than the US one but not its 500 bigger companies. So all else being equals it means that the smaller US…

> the entire EU economy grew at the same speed than the US one but not its 500 bigger companies This is literally the article’s point. Europe and the U.S. grew similarly. The U.S. and China produced more large companies. (The Continent’s larger companies also being older than the other two’s.) > supposedly more investment in R&D Not supposedly, factually. The article explicitly states this. It’s the Economist; if you…

>> the entire EU economy grew at the same speed than the US one but not its 500 bigger companies

> This is literally the article’s point. Europe and the U.S. grew similarly. The U.S. and China produced more large companies. (The Continent’s larger companies also being older than the other two’s.)

So Europe did a better job in distributing wealth more equally, while in the US and China you got a massive concentration of wealth? So ... fuck yeah, Europe FTW.

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

#404
post #203

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.

In Romania you need to be employed to have the public health insurance. There is a long list of other exceptions, but being an entrepreneur who just started a company and doesn't have income is not one of them.

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

#406
post #373

This article is truly bizarre. The main point it makes is that the top 500 US companies grew faster than the top 500 European ones in the last decade or so. But then it quickly mention, without any further analysis, that both their GDP actually grew at a similar pace. So the entire EU economy grew at the same speed than the US one but not its 500 bigger companies. So all else being equals it means that the smaller US…

> But then it quickly mention, without any further analysis, that both their GDP actually grew at a similar pace. So the entire EU economy grew at the same speed than the US one but not its 500 bigger companies. So all else being equals it means that the smaller US companies grew more slowly and that this article is simply mesuring increasing corporate inequalities (if there is such a thing). No. About half of the Eu…

Isn't it nice that a large part of the European economy consists of stuff helping people (the "state activities" you mention) vs. the large part of the US economy that consists of hurting people?

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

#407

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…

You are exaggerating as you say yourself, but these things are mostly not issues at all. You just hire people (and that does not cost much: made a company including employees a few weeks ago for 1000E first year including accounting and payroll, no work from me; if 1000E is an issue, maybe do something else) to handle them, and, you put some provisions in for the stuff you mention, like in the US, to use your ranting…

This comment gets it. I would say there is a European identity in the sense that we all kind of know our ancestors have been here for a long time and have dominated world history in most regards. Our fellow Europeans neighbors have the same identity, since they did the same thing in general. They also created successful nations. We created humanism in the process. But that’s about where it stops. We mostly killed each other in the whole process after all.

There is no such thing as a European work ethic. Maybe a Spanish or a German, but even those places are diverse.

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

#408

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.

What? I think citation needed here. As far as I am aware, healthcare in most EU States is universal and not dependent on employment. Sure you can get private healthcare through employment, but the state systems is there for everyone if they need it.

I think they probably mean if you move countries, for example it took a few months for me to get setup with Iceland’s health service when I moved here.

But there’s easy schemes to retain cover like EHIC. https://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=559

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

#409

This article is truly bizarre. The main point it makes is that the top 500 US companies grew faster than the top 500 European ones in the last decade or so. But then it quickly mention, without any further analysis, that both their GDP actually grew at a similar pace. So the entire EU economy grew at the same speed than the US one but not its 500 bigger companies. So all else being equals it means that the smaller US…

So the entire EU economy grew at the same speed than the US one but not its 500 bigger companies. This is misleading. The article says the poorer (former communist) eastern European countries got richer, which brought up the average.

Ok. So lets look at the US on a state level - some got terribly rich, some suffer terribly?

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

#410

This article is truly bizarre. The main point it makes is that the top 500 US companies grew faster than the top 500 European ones in the last decade or so. But then it quickly mention, without any further analysis, that both their GDP actually grew at a similar pace. So the entire EU economy grew at the same speed than the US one but not its 500 bigger companies. So all else being equals it means that the smaller US…

> the entire EU economy grew at the same speed than the US one but not its 500 bigger companies This is literally the article’s point. Europe and the U.S. grew similarly. The U.S. and China produced more large companies. (The Continent’s larger companies also being older than the other two’s.) > supposedly more investment in R&D Not supposedly, factually. The article explicitly states this. It’s the Economist; if you…

I agree with this and on top of it, the GDP per capita of the EU grew at the same pace as that of the US over the last 20 years only because poorer Eastern European countries are catching up to Western Europe. The GDP growth rates in France, Germany, UK etc have been anemic during the same period.

The EU did a great job at distributing wealth eastward, the GDP per capita of Slovakia for example doubled in the last 20 years, far outpacing the growth in the US.

Post reply on HN