Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record • Hacker News Board

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#191

Post by TulliusCicero » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 12:48 AM UTC

vkou wrote: post #182

PostOnce wrote: post #166

My 2 cents, some of the reasons America succeeds: (fact) America is a single market with a single language with basically a single set of regulations. Expansion is cheap in America. It makes a hell of a lot more sense to expand to another US city than it does to expand to Norway or New Zealand; but for a company in those countries, expansion is very expensive, expanding requires new laws, regulations, business entiti…

> (fact) Americans are ambitious to a fault. All 350 million of them? And if you mean 'some of them are ambitious', surely you will have to accept that there are people in other countries who also share that property?

Culture is real.

Americans tend to be optimistic and positively inclined towards entrepreneurship. This is often refected in business practices and regulations.

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#192

Post by foobiekr » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 12:48 AM UTC

Tiktaalik wrote: post #179

PostOnce wrote: post #166

My 2 cents, some of the reasons America succeeds: (fact) America is a single market with a single language with basically a single set of regulations. Expansion is cheap in America. It makes a hell of a lot more sense to expand to another US city than it does to expand to Norway or New Zealand; but for a company in those countries, expansion is very expensive, expanding requires new laws, regulations, business entiti…

I think your point about USA benefiting from a single big market is a strong one. Consider for contrast Canada, also a single language market, also geographically isolated, and sharing many of the inherent benefits of NA that America has. Canada though, not often considered a real economic dynamo in the same way as the USA. Well one big difference is that Canada is a relatively small population spread thin over an en…

A big issue for Canada is that the government focused on resource extraction.

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#193

Post by nafey » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 12:48 AM UTC

Tiktaalik wrote: post #179

PostOnce wrote: post #166

My 2 cents, some of the reasons America succeeds: (fact) America is a single market with a single language with basically a single set of regulations. Expansion is cheap in America. It makes a hell of a lot more sense to expand to another US city than it does to expand to Norway or New Zealand; but for a company in those countries, expansion is very expensive, expanding requires new laws, regulations, business entiti…

I think your point about USA benefiting from a single big market is a strong one. Consider for contrast Canada, also a single language market, also geographically isolated, and sharing many of the inherent benefits of NA that America has. Canada though, not often considered a real economic dynamo in the same way as the USA. Well one big difference is that Canada is a relatively small population spread thin over an en…

I heard (not verified) that every province of Canada trades more with USA than with any other province which I think is quite remarkable.

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#194

Post by CountSessine » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 12:50 AM UTC

Tiktaalik wrote: post #179

PostOnce wrote: post #166

My 2 cents, some of the reasons America succeeds: (fact) America is a single market with a single language with basically a single set of regulations. Expansion is cheap in America. It makes a hell of a lot more sense to expand to another US city than it does to expand to Norway or New Zealand; but for a company in those countries, expansion is very expensive, expanding requires new laws, regulations, business entiti…

I think your point about USA benefiting from a single big market is a strong one. Consider for contrast Canada, also a single language market, also geographically isolated, and sharing many of the inherent benefits of NA that America has. Canada though, not often considered a real economic dynamo in the same way as the USA. Well one big difference is that Canada is a relatively small population spread thin over an en…

It's even worse than that because we didn't have a commerce-clause the way you do. Canada actually has trade tariffs between it's own provinces. It was only in 2017 that the provinces signed a free trade agreement with each other, and even then it was a very limited agreement with enforcement issues.

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#195

Post by ETH_start » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 12:51 AM UTC

ttul wrote: post #34

non- wrote: post #6

> The flexibility of the labour market helps employment adapt to shifting patterns of demand. Already many of the workers in America who were laid off from Alphabet and other tech firms at the start of the year are applying their sought-after skills elsewhere, or setting up their own businesses. In continental Europe, by contrast, tech firms are still negotiating lay-offs, and may think twice about hiring there in fu…

America operates on the principal that it is better to fail quickly and rebuild than it is to defend what’s not working to preserve the status quo for as long as possible. In a century marked by rapid technological change, it is probably better to hybridize the American and European approaches, allowing faster bankruptcies and more flexible job termination in Europe while also providing a more generous safety net in…

America has, along with Canada and Europe, rapidly moved toward social democracy:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-long...

All of the empirical evidences indicates this slows economic development. Individuals being responsible for their own safety nets is more efficient, and creates better incentives, than large government bureaucracies socializing the cost of safety nets.

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#196

Post by twelve40 » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 12:52 AM UTC

marianatom wrote: post #20

swalling wrote: post #17

”Average incomes have grown much faster than in western Europe or Japan. Also adjusted for purchasing power, they exceed $50,000 in Mississippi, America’s poorest state—higher than in France.” The article casually dismisses the counterpoint that the US trades high income for a lower social safety net. The average French person has a life expectancy of 82. In Mississippi it’s 74.9, on par with Lithuania. Even Vietnam…

lower life expectancy in US in general can be attributed to a more unhealthy diet and less walking, which is on the flip side due to US's economic success - affordance for more food and richer food, as well as affordance for car as transportation. Another attribution is the larger amount of immigrants, which as a segment has lower income level and thus lower life expectancy

> the larger amount of immigrants

France has 10.3 percent of foreign-born population, the US has 13.6 percent. Even if we assume you didn't make up the "lower life expectancy" part, which by some comments seems like it is incorrect, the 3% difference in immigrants seems like a rounding error.

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#197

Post by vkou » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 12:55 AM UTC

TulliusCicero wrote: post #191

vkou wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (fact) Americans are ambitious to a fault. All 350 million of them? And if you mean 'some of them are ambitious', surely you will have to accept that there are people in other countries who also share that property?

Culture is real. Americans tend to be optimistic and positively inclined towards entrepreneurship. This is often refected in business practices and regulations.

The only thing those business practices and regulations reflect is that the 'entrepreneurs' get a lot of political and regulatory rights, and the people who work for them get very few.

That kind of arrangement works out very well for the former, but just because a king is doing well for himself doesn't mean that the serfs are 'positively culturally inclined towards autocracy.'

----

A country's regulations and politics aren't an average of its culture. They are an average of the culture of the politically powerful. All that you've demonstrated is that 'entrepreneurs' are a politically powerful group in America [1]. That says nothing about the average culture.

[1] Way less powerful than incumbents, but for some strange reason, it's not sexy to point at Comcast and Kaiser and Exxon-Mobil and Wells Fargo as examples of brilliant entrepreneurship.

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#198

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 12:57 AM UTC

crop_rotation wrote: post #36

jutrewag wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let in a lot more immigrants, and not the refugee kind. Vetted, high skilled immigrants. Let those immigrants have something at stake i.e. provide a path to citizenship. Provide automatic citizenship to children of those immigrants born in Europe.

That is common sense, but saying that for some reasons gets lots of pushback from several people (both in Europe and America). People seem to forget that countries are only able to take modern moral stances due to their prosperity, and once the prosperity is not there, the voters forget morality in an instant.

[deleted]

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#199

Post by awesome_dude » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 1:04 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #168

PostOnce wrote: post #166

My 2 cents, some of the reasons America succeeds: (fact) America is a single market with a single language with basically a single set of regulations. Expansion is cheap in America. It makes a hell of a lot more sense to expand to another US city than it does to expand to Norway or New Zealand; but for a company in those countries, expansion is very expensive, expanding requires new laws, regulations, business entiti…

Consider Japan: (fact) a single market with a single language (fact) geographically isolated (fact) not much space (fact) burned to the ground in WW2 and yet for a while it was an economic powerhouse on the world stage. Taiwan, Hong Kong and S Korea, similar stories. So what is the common thread? Free markets.

The Japanese directly intervened in their manufacturing companies, and shaped their economy via the Bank of Japan to "rebuild" and grow their economy. They also have a notoriously closed (to outsiders) economy.

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#200

Post by wslh » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 1:04 AM UTC

PostOnce wrote: post #166

My 2 cents, some of the reasons America succeeds: (fact) America is a single market with a single language with basically a single set of regulations. Expansion is cheap in America. It makes a hell of a lot more sense to expand to another US city than it does to expand to Norway or New Zealand; but for a company in those countries, expansion is very expensive, expanding requires new laws, regulations, business entiti…

I will add that US is a strong "legal platform" for business. It has a very good law system and with more complex cases as precedents that other countries in world. It has also extra territorial reach.