261–270 of 767 posts
All “growth” in gdp seems to go to rich people. Normal people have seen stagnant wages and increased costs from the owners. Why should I care if gdp isn’t increasing when I don’t see any gains whether it does or not?
The economy doubling in size helps most people even if the resulting wealth is unevenly distributed. Goods, services, technologies, jobs, etc are good.
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A lot of what you mention is related to energy useage: smaller cars/houses, keeping houses cold in winter, less consumption overall. Perhaps the Europeans are on the right track here and we in the US are on the wrong track when taking climate change into consideration?
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" GDP PPP can increase whilst your economy contracts. " Still, if PPP GDP increases, with all else being equal (eg. stable population) it would imply the standard of living is increasing. That is why PPP GDP captures a more accurate measure of the real world. Said another way, what truly matters isn't "GDP growth", but changes in purchasing power/quality of life.
Despite a shrinking economy. If we’re measuring economy size we’re not measuring purchasing power. I cant tell if you recognize this and just think we shouldn’t care about economy size or if you are actually conflating PPP with economy size. Mainly because you keep presenting it as a rebuttal to claims about economy size.
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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 .
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> It was economical to buy the Russian gas delivered by pipeline. see I can understand this logic pre 2014, but post 2014 (i.e. Crimea), absolutely not the euros paid to putin were used to re-arm and those weapons are now being used in Ukraine and if he wins then Eastern Europe is next in line but yes germans saved 2% on their gas bills for 10 years
>"and if he wins then Eastern Europe is next in line" I doubt Putin is suicidal. Eastern Europe is in NATO, hence protected.
you've seen the playbook in ukraine twice now
there will be an russian speaking minority in estonia/lithuania/... that will that rebel against anti russian oppression, guerilla warfare against the authorities, then they'll hold an rigged referendum, then a decade later the Russian government will formally annex what they've effectively controlled for years
he won't send tanks across the border that will trigger Article 5
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> Even the poor do better when there's more jobs available Only if those jobs offer a livable wage. If instead they are McJobs that result in workers spending more than they earn (e.g. SNAP), then poor people are doing worse, and it's a net-negative on society.
This misses the reason so-called McJobs don't pay a "living" wage. You're not supposed to earn a living wage doing zero skilled work. You're supposed to develop skills and move up in the working world. Why are people stagnating instead of moving up? That's a really good question.
And most importantly, how do you account for the fact that in the U.S. there are about 53 million people in low wage jobs, but only about 33 million high school and college students? What are those other 20 million workers “supposed to” be?
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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.
The cutoff for 90th percentile in the US for individual income is $132k[0], certainly not >$200k. I'm guessing you looked at household income. [0]: https://dqydj.com/average-median-top-individual-income-perce...
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> 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 y…
> If you have a fulltime job, the minimum wage is intended to allow you to survive This is the issue - the idea that minimum wage is supposed to be "livable" is a modern notion. Unskilled labor probably shouldn't be livable. If someone can be trained to replace you in a few minutes (i.e. unskilled labor), then the truth is your labor is not worth a lot. We need more people moving up into skilled labor. It's really ha…
Here’s a better comparison. The thing that really hurt the Eurozone was the 2011 - 2013 recession that the US did not experience. Plus there’s a slower growth rate even in the good times. https://freedomandprosperity.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/... That said, these numbers are very misleading and do not show well what a person’s life looks like in the US. By my own anecdotal estimation, in the EU low and medium in…
Well here is an actual study that found the poorest 20% of Americans consumed more goods and services than the average people from affluent countries. Including Europe.
https://www.justfacts.com/news_poorest_americans_richer_than...
This matches my anecdotal observations of everything being smaller in Europe, people owning less, and energy being so expensive.
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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.