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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?

#621
post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sounds like a really unhealthy market so maybe we should regulate that so this massive upscaling is not required? Like enforcing interoperability between platforms, privacy rules etc.?

Can’t compete, let’s legislate? I can only shake my head

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

#622
post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting you should note anti-immigration tendencies. I believe those tendencies are fueled by ridiculously liberal immigration laws that essentially allows far too many asylum seekers into Europe. That's why you now see ghettos and zones where the police don't go in France, Sweden and even UK. I am not against immigration but I think Europe should be seriously reconsidering non-western immigration as it will…

> That's why you now see ghettos and zones where the police don't go in France, Sweden and even UK. That's failed policy by the people that are already here, not the fault of the immigrants. > I think Europe should be seriously reconsidering non-western immigration as it will simply clash Yeah ... wait what? That's kinda ... what? Why? What's the problem with that? So you don't seem to know, but it worked out very we…

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

#623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

London is not EU, even when they were a member they were a separate story.

Pre covid U.K. was part of EU, very little has changed yet - same regulations and taxes as in 2019 Claiming “ahh U.K. is different” you might as well say “ahh Bay Area is different”.

But UK (and London especially) is different - that's why they left the EU and were always in tention with EU when they were a member, especially with regards to their financial sector. Bay Area, New York, Austin, US has a decent number of hubs, London is most comparable to New York from my experience (I've worked in a London based startup, NY agency and a SF startup) mostly focused on financial and not really into hard tech.

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

#624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Europe’s entire social safety net is at risk if their private sector can’t generate enough wealth to support it. Given their declining populations and anti-immigrant tendencies inflamed by the refugee crisis in many of its member states, it doesn’t look good for the EU’s future.

Few European people oppose migration of educated workers. Rather it's about asylum seekers who often arrive here illegally, and typically lack sufficient education to do well in our job markets, leading to very high unemployment rate and other social problems. Europe has a problem with aging workforce, but it can't be solved by importing people who can't find a job.

The only problem with asylum seekers is that it is too difficult for them to apply for asylum before entering the country. Their first contact is a smuggler that gives them a ticket for an overloaded boat and has zero incentive to make sure they arrive in Germany legally or safely. The people they are shipping are just victims of an exploitative industry.

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

#625
post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first part was about quality of democracy. Europe has problems with the far-right too, and American democracy at least makes it possible that it's being interchangeably ruled by different parties with pretty distinct policies. The second part is, well, like asking why should we sit in the lockdown and wear masks when not a lot of people are dying of covid right now. It's not something that may happen, it will hap…

So you're saying parties in Europe are interchangeable? We know what happens with Covid due to science, modeling and stuff. But a virus spread is oretty easy to model compared to a society and its economy. So until now it worked really nice, haven't seen a lot of studies saying it won't in the future, rather the opposite. Edit: or do you mean because we're getting older and hace fewer kids? Yeah that'll be a challang…

> So you're saying parties in Europe are interchangeable?

No, not at all. But you don't have the same party ruling in U.S. for several decades. That would be legally possible, but that just doesn't happen due to how the system works.

> So until now it worked really nice

I'm not very well versed with the statistics here. But my impression is that social security is on decline. Welfare benefits sum grows much slower than inflation, and there have been studies that it's already not enough to even get the necessary nutrients. So it is a tendency that we see right now, not a prediction about some possible catastrophic event in future.

> And yeah, also let immigrants in ;)

There will be no immigrants if economy is weak, that's the thing.

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

#626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>we're not getting shot in school, and also we're not on the way to be ruled by a fascist I downvoted you since you're going massively off-topic with your generalizations about the US that have no place on HN.

Thank you for your thoughtful downvote. However I don't really follow. The discussion is clearly about politics here, so it probably does not count as off-topic. Also, fascism has a massive influence on the economy, making it relevant. If you merely dispute my view that there's fascist tendencies in the US, that is fair, but no reason for a downvote, I'd argue.

As a European who probably agrees with you regarding many policies: You may be able to argue that quality of life is better in Europe or with European-style policies [1]. Everyone having health insurance and less of a need to worry about your basics needs met are fair points. I wouldn't want to live in a society that doesn't seem to care that much about economic equality.

But "about to be ruled by a fascist"? Trump lost the election. Sure the diverging right is worrying, but is the country "about to be ruled" by a fascist?

And "getting shot at school/street" is pretty much just a cheap shot.

I haven't been to the U.S., but I'm willing to wager that for most Americans getting shot is not a primary concern. I'm not saying shootings don't happen or that they aren't tragic, because they do and they are, or that the U.S. don't have a problem. But when they do happen, they obviously get so much visibility and attention that their emotional effect is greater than their actual chances of affecting you in your life, in a way that's not entirely dissimilar to terrorist attacks.

That makes appealing to shootings a populist-style emotional argument: easy to throw around and force people's attention with, not entirely truthful, and much more work to argue against than the argument would substantially warrant. That also makes it pretty annoying and bothersome.

So, I kind of get why people might not like your argumentation style.

[1] Although both Europe and the U.S. are diverse enough that it's going to get tricky; I'm not sure there is such a homogenous thing as "Europe" when it comes to quality of life. But that's a digression.

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

#627
post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Giving two written warnings two weeks apart for one of the five objective reasons that are grounds for firing, then firing with a three month notice period is by definition harder than saying "you're fired, please leave the building immediately".

So employ people on fixed 3 month contracts, or even by day. You’ll have to pay more of course.

This was actually illegal in Norway until recently. It is legal now, though, and you're right that this is an option. For in-demand professions like software engineers, such a scheme actually requires salaries that are comparable to those of moderately high cost-of-living areas in the US.

A typical annual fee would be ~$200.000 pre-tax for a full-time consulting gig, with 25% VAT paid by the employer on top of that. Contractor pays approximately 50% tax on their fee. It's a bit strange that few companies actually do this, although many will have part of their workforce employed like this indirectly, through a contracting agency. It's popular for roles that have a weak negotiating position, such as teachers, call center employees, nurses etc. Although rarely with contract lengths as short as 3 months.

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

#628
post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not against immigration but I think Europe should be seriously reconsidering non-western immigration as it will simply clash. I don't get why you want to filter them by "non-western"? I have arab, african, indian & east-asian friends here in Berlin that I am sure are net-postives for society. Why not set the filters to something more directly related to what you want to achieve? Such as education level, having a…

Because its obviously not about what makes sense ... you don't seem to know but your friends just don't fit our awesome western culture. I really hate the term "culture" by now.

No, it's just the fact that some part (not all of it) of the economy has become zero sum, primarily low skill labor. When people get screwed in a zero sum game they want someone else to get screwed instead.

It's not surprising. It's completely obvious.

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

#630
post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok yeah the Nazis building your moon rockets were also immigrants, true ;-)

I'm an Eastern European immigrant in Norway, stuff your attitude where it makes you warm.

I don't follow ... what does that have to do with Nazis being a part of or employed by the US government?

And I stand by my point that the big companies that the article is about don't have too much diversity on the higher levels.

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