Europe has fallen behind America and the gap is growing
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Re: Europe has fallen behind America and the gap is growing
#2Re: Europe has fallen behind America and the gap is growing
#3Of course it has, and it will further. EU countries are busy dominating each other. The EU is not about unity but rather about modern day colonialism. I think storm clouds are brewing over europe and wont be too long until things will blow up again.
Re: Europe has fallen behind America and the gap is growing
#4The point about the lifestyle industries is a good one. Europeans feel they have the good life, so why would they want to be more like Americans (who work like crazy, have no safety net, and live with random gun violence) or like the Chinese (who slide into even greater autocracy)? Perhaps the drawbacks of American and Chinese society are the very factors contributing to their economic growth?
Re: Europe has fallen behind America and the gap is growing
#5Who had more dept?
Re: Europe has fallen behind America and the gap is growing
#6Of course it has, and it will further. EU countries are busy dominating each other. The EU is not about unity but rather about modern day colonialism. I think storm clouds are brewing over europe and wont be too long until things will blow up again.
> The EU is not about unity but rather about modern day colonialism.
What does this mean?
Re: Europe has fallen behind America and the gap is growing
#7The EU without a common language and government is a failed experiment
Re: Europe has fallen behind America and the gap is growing
#8The EU without a common language and government is a failed experiment
Gonna need more info on that.
The EU is rooted from the ECSC from 1951 that started with 6 countries and that many languages that quickly evolved to 11.
72 years, that's quite a long experiment.
Re: Europe has fallen behind America and the gap is growing
#9The EU without a common language and government is a failed experiment
The EU is in fact a resounding success of monetary integration and legal harmonization leading to a mutually beneficial zone of economic cooperation.
People can travel, work and live in any member state with little or no barriers. Produce and sell their goods and services across the whole zone in one big legal bloc.
The cost of being outside of that bloc is one that Britons are now starting to realise, and are beginning to bitterly regret leaving.
After all, what have the Romans ever done for us?
Re: Europe has fallen behind America and the gap is growing
#10The point about the lifestyle industries is a good one. Europeans feel they have the good life, so why would they want to be more like Americans (who work like crazy, have no safety net, and live with random gun violence) or like the Chinese (who slide into even greater autocracy)? Perhaps the drawbacks of American and Chinese society are the very factors contributing to their economic growth?
Yeah I live in one of the lower-wage EU countries even though I'm from one of the higher-wage ones. Though in practice it doesn't really matter as cost of living is lower too, it just matters when buying electronics. Or a car but I don't need one where I live and I hate driving. And having completely free healthcare gives a lot of peace of mind.
But I don't want to work harder to have more. I have enough to live comfortably. I don't get this whole ratrace thing and most people here don't.
The Americans can have their expensive gadgets and double jobs to pay for it :) Though admittedly I'd love an Apple vision pro, I wouldn't want to live in American society so I could pay for it. There's a few things that I really don't like about it like the heavy income inequality and resulting crime, gun violence, heavy conservatism (eg pressure on gay rights which we can take for granted here - see Florida), lack of cheap healthcare and welfare safety net. The latter two are not things you always need but they're a great peace of mind knowing they're available when you do need them. It makes life less stressful. I don't want a loss of my job meaning I will lose my health insurance as well!
And eventually they'll bring the price of gadgets down so we can afford it, after all the EU is too big a market to ignore.
Ps: according to my American colleagues a lot of the US is economically worse off than we are, it's only a few central spots like silicon valley and New York that are bursting with money and bringing the average up? Here we have less differences in each country, though the difference between eastern European member states and northwestern is still huge.
Ps.2: Sorry I wasn't trying to diss the U.S. but I really wouldn't want to live there. What might be a paradise society for some isn't the same for others.