Can someone explain to me the title of the article? This looks like weird English syntax to me.
Or maybe I'm not used to that grammar?
Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?
871–880 of 905 posts
Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?
#872Earlier quoted context omitted.
> No, it absolutely certainly does not, unless that's the only way you could die. That's really, really basic statistics. You're right, but all other stats regarding mortality are worse for US than my country, so... Homicides rates in particular are many times worse not just some % worse, that's why I mostly complain about them. But we also have longer life expectations, better food, better healthcare, etc. etc. if t…
I assume you’re not in a violent criminal gang in your country. If you were in America and continue to not be in a violent criminal gang then your numbers don’t hold up nearly as well. Its even smaller chances if you’re not related to a gang member, and smaller yet if you don’t live in gang neighborhoods, which I assure you are not hard to determine. It’s easy to overblow the concerns if you don’t factor that in your…
> I assure you are not hard to determine. It’s easy to overblow the concerns if you don't
See? this is exactly what I am talking about: when you talk about quality of life in Europe "living in a gang neighborhood" is not a concern, there is no "gang neighborhood" the like you can find in many US cities.
There are of course bad neighborhoods but the chances of being killed are still very low.
I am from a bad neighborhood, one of the most powerful criminal organizations of my country's history was from the neighborhood I grew up in.
It was bad, but far from American armed gangs bad.
You might get harassed or have to be careful who you talk to, journalist receive threats, someone is beaten, but killed? Possible, but highly improbable.
And when it happens usually the reaction from the State is quite strong.
That's generally the worst that can happen.
The only place where I've seen something similar to LA gangs (I've lived in LA) is developing countries ruled by warlords.
Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?
#873Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why not set the filters to something more directly related to what you want to achieve? Fine I'll bite: draw cartoons of you-know-who, see if they still integrate so seamlessly. Its the elephant in the room.
What you're trying to say is Muslim immigrants have trouble integrating in secular European society. But that has been a problem with immigration for years. In Australia in the 50s/60s the same thing was said about Italians and other post-war immigrants. The first generation works hard and busts their ass to get their kids a good education and into professions and business. They also have more of the attitudes of the…
Comparing Italians with muslim immigrants from war torn countries is far fetched. Italians are all over the world and have integrated just fine. Nobody is more European than people from countries like Italy, Austria, Germany, France.
Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?
#874Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
How is this "misleading"? We want the poorer countries to get richer faster in order to close the gap. Accomplishing precisely this is a large part of EU policy. And it is working.
If the US had its eastern part communist, it too would have a higher average GDP from decades ago. It is basic economics.
Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?
#875Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Which US part suffered terribly?
Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?
#876Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can confirm with the anecdote of an acquaintance in the EU. Nothing fancy. Just a hair salon. He was complaining about the authorities coming down to inspect it, looking for the smallest details to fine him. Sign was the wrong size, it wasn't illuminated the right way. Something about serving tea. It seemed absurd to me. On the other hand, it was a nice place to get a haircut.
Can confirm. My parents own a restaurant in Italy and if the authorities come it’s a € 2000/3000 fine for sure. For a small seasonal business that’s substantial. For example if you give a receipt and the customer misplaces it on the way out and can’t find anymore, you’re liable for tax evasion. Never mind that the POS has its own registry they can check. For the authorities, “you didn’t give a receipt, so they can’t…
The number of times restaurants tried to defraud me makes me happy that authorities are getting stricter. Waiters make "errors" on the handwritten receipt that somehow are always in the restaurants favor, or they "forget" a 20€ bill when giving you change.
Even with the new EU laws regarding receipt, it's surprising how often you are told that you can't pay by card because the machine is broken, or that the waiter "accidentally" hands you the wrong kind of receipt (they hand you an order summary, which was not yet finalized and is not an official invoice, and after you pay they cancel everything so that the payment is not recorded).
Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?
#877Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?
#878Earlier quoted context omitted.
Talk about moving the goalposts
How is that moving the goalposts? It is irelevant to the present that Nokia was a big player in the past. The fact that I was a top student in high-scool is irelevant to my current job where I underperform. Nokia is now a shadow a its former self both in money it brings to the EU economy and in the amount of tech jobs it provides. That's what's relevant now and there's no pride in this defeat.
> The fact that I was a top student in high-scool is irelevant to my current job where I underperform.
Maybe spending less time on HN will improve your job performance?
Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?
#879Earlier quoted context omitted.
You make it sound like having ease to start companies leads to a better social security net. Easier to start companies -> more companies -> more taxes -> safety net. Sounds credible in theory, but the reality is that despite it being harder in the EU than the US to start a company, the safety net is much stronger in the EU. So there must be something wrong in that theory.
I never made that claim at all. What I claimed is without jobs and companies (economic activity) you cant collect taxes which pay for social safety nets. Am I wrong? Or is there magic fairy dust to pay for a social safety net I don’t know about?
No, you did not claim that. You said that the reason "society optimize for how easy it is to start a business" is that "new companies create jobs" which leads to the safety net.
That implies that making it easier top start a business is a requirement for the safety net; after all, you wrote that funding for the safety net is the reason creating companies should be made easy.
It follows that wherever there is funding for a safety net, businesses are easy to start. So how come that in Europe businesses are -allegedly- so hard to start, but there is a strong social safety net?
TL;DR: Europe is proof that it's possible to have a certain level of regulation to business while still having enough successful businesses to fund a strong social safety net.
Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?
#880Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I can afford to pay the mortgage on a 130 square meter house with 500+ square meters of garden and relax by growing my own food as a hobby with 40 hours per week How is that possible? When I look at typical wages in Germany (50k - 80k Euros) vs cost of houses that size in Germany's four biggest cities (800k to over 1 Million Euros), something does not add up. Either your pay is way above market rates or you got you…
Bought a property for 210k in 2011. Invested 160k and a lot of manual labor for renovation. Current value is around 500k. Not sure were you have your numbers. But sure. I can get a similar property for 900k or more in some other parts of Hamburg. I could probably pay more than a million in the most prestigious parts. Living in a middle class area surrounded by greenery is more luxurious in my book, though.
> Not sure were you have your numbers.
They're made up.