Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the US is now nearly 2X

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 767 posts

Re: The US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the US is now nearly 2X

#101

Post by dogma1138 »

mrb wrote: post #96

Note this chart shows nominal dollars, not PPP-adjusted. The EU has certainly kept up with the US when looking at PPP GDP from 2008 to 2022: US grew from $14.8T to $25.5T EU grew from $14.3T to $24.3T What that means is that the prices of goods are inflated in the US compared to similar goods in the EU. That's all. Want something interesting? Look at China who grew from $10.0T to $30.3T over the same period (!) Sourc…

No one uses PPP for measuring growth, GDP PPP can increase whilst your economy contracts.

PPP isn’t a good measure for population’s wealth or quality of life especially for developed economies either.

The economy of the US is still twice that of the EU and its global purchasing power has also pretty much doubled.

Re: The US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the US is now nearly 2X

#102

Post by dougmwne »

lyu07282 wrote: post #98
futureshock wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d like to point out that the open door policy to refugees came because Europe was trying to escape the demographic trap and the collapse of the social safety net. The hope was that young refugees would become net positive GDP contributors for decades, an idea borrowed from the US. If that has failed, it’s due to a failure of integration. Europe can actually be quite a racist place and in many ways the US is better…

The US’s secret sauce is that is an empire that can, will and does constantly project its massive military and clandestine power around the world to further its interests at all times, while never having to deal with any of its blowback. And then americans laugh at the EU welcoming refugees you created in the first place, or pretend the EU is socialist while laughing at its massive energy crisis caused by its complet…

I’d largely agree with that, though I originally meant the secret sauce that gets better results out of immigrants.

The effects of empire go far beyond military. The monetary dominance serves as a hidden tax on all other currencies as the US enjoys more money creation than other central banks can manage. The US prints and the world gets the inflation consequences. Plus the cultural dominance lets the US reshape the world economy, legal systems and behavior to suit the interests of US companies. And yes, there is massive political interference and an absolute fit when foreign governments don’t bend the knee.

Your big mistake here is to imply some kind of us vs them. Regular Americans are not laughing at you, they are under the same boot heel that you are. This whole system is for the benefit of maybe a few thousand or tens of thousands of incredibly rich and powerful people. They don’t care about the citizenship of of the people they are exploiting. Actually, people in the EU have done a better job fighting back for more comfortable lives for all. Working class Americans are a lost cause.

Re: The US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the US is now nearly 2X

#103

Post by sangnoir »

futureshock wrote: post #89
tinus_hn wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I’d like to point out that the open door policy to refugees came because Europe was trying to escape the demographic trap and the collapse of the social safety net. The hope was that young refugees would become net positive GDP contributors for decades, an idea borrowed from the US. If that has failed, it’s due to a failure of integration. Europe can actually be quite a racist place and in many ways the US is better…

> I’d like to point out that the open door policy to refugees came because Europe was trying to escape the demographic trap and the collapse of the social safety net.

Also, the US was bombing a couple of Middle Eastern countries then: creating the said refugees who could reach Europe on foot and/or boat, but not the American mainland .

Re: The US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the US is now nearly 2X

#104

Post by selectodude »

mrb wrote: post #96

Note this chart shows nominal dollars, not PPP-adjusted. The EU has certainly kept up with the US when looking at PPP GDP from 2008 to 2022: US grew from $14.8T to $25.5T EU grew from $14.3T to $24.3T What that means is that the prices of goods are inflated in the US compared to similar goods in the EU. That's all. Want something interesting? Look at China who grew from $10.0T to $30.3T over the same period (!) Sourc…

The EU is an export-based economy, so that's great that people in the EU can drink cheaper beer and pay less in rent, but if they want to buy imports, they're absolutely poorer.

Re: The US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the US is now nearly 2X

#105

Post by selectodude »

lyu07282 wrote: post #98
futureshock wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d like to point out that the open door policy to refugees came because Europe was trying to escape the demographic trap and the collapse of the social safety net. The hope was that young refugees would become net positive GDP contributors for decades, an idea borrowed from the US. If that has failed, it’s due to a failure of integration. Europe can actually be quite a racist place and in many ways the US is better…

The US’s secret sauce is that is an empire that can, will and does constantly project its massive military and clandestine power around the world to further its interests at all times, while never having to deal with any of its blowback. And then americans laugh at the EU welcoming refugees you created in the first place, or pretend the EU is socialist while laughing at its massive energy crisis caused by its complet…

Pretty sure Europe's massive energy crisis is an own goal caused by replacing all their energy generation with Russian natgas.

Re: The US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the US is now nearly 2X

#106

Post by Supermancho »

Alupis wrote: post #45
notfromhere wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it doesn't. Growth in the economy has to increase real wages, and real wages need to keep pace with housing, food, healthcare, etc increases in order to be meaningful. More jobs are only good if they actually provide a living wage.

> More jobs are only good if they actually provide a living wage. This is false if you spend even a few seconds thinking about it. Not all jobs are intended to "live" off of. Most of your entry-level jobs were supposed to be for highschool and college kids working part time. The problem is we have more and more people never graduating out of entry level positions, and today we have folks demanding those entry level p…

> Most of your entry-level jobs were supposed to be for highschool and college kids working part time.

This is some soft language hiding some bad assumptions.

"supposed to be" - what does this mean? because it's a lot more interesting...low skilled jobs, are probably what we're going to be talking about. However, it's not the 1950s anymore. eg Staffing a movie theater is not a part-time job (which you would know if you have ever worked one), even post-covid.

Targeting for graduates (or current students) is reserved for economies like college towns, historically. Those places have also experienced wages rising noticeably over, at least, the last 2 decades. Industrial and metropolitan areas don't have enough "school labor" to staff all the unskilled positions, regardless.

> Not all jobs are intended to "live" off of

If you have a fulltime job, the minimum wage is intended to allow you to survive^. The main issue is that places with fulltime positions open to unskilled labor, have living costs that outpace the minimum wage...all the way out to the most rural of US towns. The financial guidelines for employees from McDonalds, Wallmart, etc are telling.

^Claiming that jobs that pay minimum wage and only allow working 30 hours a week, aren't intended to "live" off of, is cherry picking exploitative employers. This is not compelling, nor the common case, so we can focus the discussion on the issues that the majority of the economy deal with.

Re: The US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the US is now nearly 2X

#107

Post by aaomidi »

dogma1138 wrote: post #101
mrb wrote: post #96

Note this chart shows nominal dollars, not PPP-adjusted. The EU has certainly kept up with the US when looking at PPP GDP from 2008 to 2022: US grew from $14.8T to $25.5T EU grew from $14.3T to $24.3T What that means is that the prices of goods are inflated in the US compared to similar goods in the EU. That's all. Want something interesting? Look at China who grew from $10.0T to $30.3T over the same period (!) Sourc…

No one uses PPP for measuring growth, GDP PPP can increase whilst your economy contracts. PPP isn’t a good measure for population’s wealth or quality of life especially for developed economies either. The economy of the US is still twice that of the EU and its global purchasing power has also pretty much doubled.

Completely depends on what you’re measuring.

To me, economy isn’t an abstract thing to be measured without taking people’s quality of life into perspective. That just feels too much like stats for the sake of stats.

The PPP based measurement is way more interesting.

Re: The US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the US is now nearly 2X

#108

Post by rafaelero »

futureshock wrote: post #89
tinus_hn wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I’d like to point out that the open door policy to refugees came because Europe was trying to escape the demographic trap and the collapse of the social safety net. The hope was that young refugees would become net positive GDP contributors for decades, an idea borrowed from the US. If that has failed, it’s due to a failure of integration. Europe can actually be quite a racist place and in many ways the US is better…

In a developed country, low-skilled labor will be a net negative even if well integrated. That's the definition of being below the average of the recipient country.

Re: The US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the US is now nearly 2X

#109

Post by selectodude »

midasuni wrote: post #86
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about: - Your access to mRNA vaccines - Your access to cleaner air due to electric car adoption - Ditto for energy security and renewable sources of electricity - Your chance of dying in a car going down due to new safety features - Your access to crazy advanced cancer treatments that are making progress at almost miraculous paces - Your much improved ability to work from home, cutting out ~2 hours of commuting…

35 year olds on 90%ile income jobs can’t afford to live on their own. Millions are worse off compared to even the 1980s because the productive gains are going to the wealthy.

That must be unique to Europe because in the United States, a 90th percentile income is >$200,000. I don't make that and I live extremely comfortably on my own.

Re: The US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the US is now nearly 2X

#110

Post by rafaelero »

kryptiskt wrote: post #40

The economic engine of the Eurozone, Germany, keeps stepping on the brakes because they are so obsessed with their competitiveness and running huge trade surpluses. If the German consumers would finally be allowed to a bigger share of all the gains from their productivity it would be good for the whole of Europe as the biggest problem is weak demand. But no, we can't have that because then their trade surplus would s…

US wages have not followed US productivity for the last 50 years as well.
Post reply on HN