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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?

#551

Post by effie »

kmlx wrote: post #424
tasogare wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the low work ethic Incredible to read this... the top-15 of most productive countries [1] are all European save for the US and Australia, which are populated with a huge population of European descent. [1] https://time.com/4621185/worker-productivity-countries/

having lived and worked in Asia, I have to say that table looks weird. i have found no other place in this planet where people work longer and better than certain places in Asia.

The table is not about work ethic, but about how much money is made. The latter is probably correlated with the former, but only partially.

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

#552

Post by marvin »

effie wrote: post #502
Nimitz14 wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing you mentioned is high tech. Car companies haven't innovated anything in decades. Spotify is a perfect example of a company with lots of revenue that doesn't do anything interesting with it.

Ramp up of electric car production isn't innovation?

I'm as big a fan of the European businesses that succeed as anyone, but the car industry would still have been dragging its feet if Tesla hadn't provided a credible threat to eat most of their market share.

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

#553

Post by reader_mode »

techrat wrote: post #393
reader_mode wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a donor list thing ? I'm talking about more day to day stuff. Like recently my friend had a seizure while driving, thankfully he was at a red light, but lost his licence etc. He had to wait 2 and a half months for diagnostic scans. He went private and got it done in a week. Other friend had herniated disk, 6 months till his appointment with a specialist. Also went private and got surgery done in a mo…

Not a donor list thing. Had to wait months for scans, referrals and tests. All private.

Sorry didn't understand candidate part. Anyway - yeah I have no doubt private systems can get overloaded too, here if you have the money you have access to really good private system and low wait times, going public is guaranteed waiting list.

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

#554

Post by refurb »

j_wtf_all_taken wrote: post #406
Hermel wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Dude, all you’ve done is pepper this post with empty rhetoric and unsubstantiated claims. If you’re interested in an actual debate based on facts, great, otherwise you’re just adding noise.

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

#555

Post by simonh »

j_wtf_all_taken wrote: post #403
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

That's about the distribution of economic activity between large and small businesses. It's got nothing to do with wealth distribution between individuals.

All that the Economist is pointing out is that there are some businesses in which you have to have massive scale to be competitive. In those specific businesses, you either scale up or you can't compete at all. Europe is giving up competing in those areas.

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

#556

Post by JumpCrisscross »

tovej wrote: post #450
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US creating top paying tech jobs for the working class and not taxing them to death so they can grow into a flourishing middles class is also helping people. >large part of the US economy that consists of hurting people Source? If you're talking about the defense sector then you should also know that the UK and France were several years in a row number 2 and 3 worldwide in arms sales, including to the Saudi regime.

US upward social mobility is among the worst in the world. US workers are stuck in a rat race that simply doesn't exist to the same extent in Europe.

> US upward social mobility is among the worst in the world

This is incorrect. American social mobility is low. But not widely so, and certainly not consistently lowest among rich countries. (It is consistently among the lowest.)

If one takes "the extent to which son’s [sic] earnings levels reflect those of their fathers," Britain and Italy are worse than America while France is quite close [1]. Similarly, "after adjusting for the country-specific distribution of socio-economic status, the United States, France and Belgium are countries where parental background has the greatest influence on student achievement."

[1] http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.411... Figure 2, page 9

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

#557

Post by ciguy »

As a dual citizen of the US and an EU country, I have first hand experience with both systems. In the US if you want to start a new company you can basically start selling or offering your service and then sort out legal, accounting and registration later. In most countries in the EU you start by hiring a lawyer and accountant and then wait for months for various permits and registration before you can get anything meaningful done. This is the fundamental difference IMO, the barrier to getting started in the EU is way too high and the red tape is a full time job even for small businesses. Some EU countries do better at this than others of course, but it's a general trend amongst most.

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

#558

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

j_wtf_all_taken wrote: post #540
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the topic of this thread was corporate and tech related so what do you expect? You can't always bring the lifestyle of minimum wage employees into every single discussion just as an joker card to argue that Europe is better than the US. Yes, minimum wage immigrants have it better in Europe and skilled immigrants have better opportunities in the US.

> Well the topic of this thread was corporate and tech related so what do you expect? I expected exactly this - that people that benefit from those giant companies fail to see the downsides. > You can't always bring the lifestyle of minimum wage employees into every single discussion just as an joker card to argue that Europe is better than the US. Why not, if it works? Are you not just confirming that the US works f…

> those giant companies fail to see the downsides

So in your book big companies have only downsides? What about VW, Mercedes, BMW, SAP, Bayer, Siemens, etc?

Why are big US companies evil for you and not the rest?

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

#559

Post by marvin »

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…

Norway's public healthcare isn't terrible at all. There are some painful cases where a well-insured US individual would get better treatment, and there are frequently waiting lines of a few months, but for the vast majority it works quite well.

There are private-sector providers for taking up the slack if you can pay and the public sector drags its feet. The cost generally matches what the treatment costs to produce.

I recently had the choice between paying $3000 to get a novel treatment procedure done in Belgium on short notice, or pay $400 for two private consultations, leading to a referral to the public system with 6 months of waiting to get it done through the public system here. Went for the latter.

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

#560

Post by arthur-st »

SOMA_BOFH wrote: post #149
ddalex wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand the people in EU are happier, have better social protection, better benefits, better health systems, better consumer protection, better application of rules and laws, they make for more productive employees. Do the shareholders get as rich as fast as in the hyperactive US economy? Not, but the society functions better. I very much prefer the EU.

have you tried to start a company there?

Yeah, took a few hours of work and 1 week for correspondence to clear. Your point?
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