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

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

#281

Post by Kapura »

nemo44x wrote: post #279
janalsncm wrote: post #158

This is a bit of a frame trap. Here’s another metric: ==2021== Life expectancy in EU: 80 Life expectancy in US: 76 ==Rolling back to 2008== Life expectancy in EU: 79 Life expectancy in US: 78 What’s the point? Maybe GDP isn’t the most important indicator. The US can double it’s GDP by making healthcare more expensive and extracting every last dime from the elderly, but can it actually improve quality of life for peop…

That’s a poor metric. The USA offers you more potential. It’s up to you. The USA also has a higher percentage of young people and more of them are dying from drugs. That skews a metric line that. Do it by cohort and it’s different.

What, specifically, do you mean by "The USA offers you more potential?"

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

#282

Post by crote »

Alupis wrote: post #70
mepian wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, the good ol' trickle-down economics.

It's very difficult to argue in good faith "trickle-down" economics was/is a failure. A rising tide obviously raises all ships, including the nation's poorest. To create vast wealth generally requires vast resources, which requires vast amounts of people. Behemoths the size of Amazon, Walmart, Microsoft, Google, et al employ significant chunks of the population - and not just directly. Trickle-down doesn't mean every…

Amazon has workers pee in bottles and literally walk around the corpses of their dead coworkers. Walmart famously pays their employees so little they rely on food stamps to survive.

The nation's poorest are not provided with a fairly-earned living. They are working themselves to death while not even earning enough to survive, and they can't get any other job because those "smaller companies" have been killed by the behemoths outcompeting them by using exploitative labor practices.

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

#283

Post by duxup »

lnsru wrote: post #49
Aperocky wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In CS at university they didn't teach programming That's quite alarming.

There is a myth at German universities, that programming is too practical. So basically you brew there computer scientists with couple internships where they see how programming works.

My career coding was a product of a bootcamp. Bootcamps have a well deserved reputation for pumping out unqualified candidates.

Having said that the bootcamp I was a part of was hosted at (not really run by...) a local US university. I've worked with computer science graduates from there, good people, capable ... but man many of them should have had a semester of a bootcamp IMO, on top of their more traditional comp sci education.

I would jump at the chance to get a formal comp sci education, but I think all universities could use a heavy dose of “practical application” type courses.

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

#284

Post by junofan »

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…

> What that means is that the prices of goods are inflated in the US compared to similar goods in the EU. That's all.

Other way round. PPP is a consumptive measure.

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

#285

Post by csmiller »

dougmwne wrote: post #113
rafaelero wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the US, the immigrant labor does not stay low skilled for long or was never low skilled in the first place. See: tech company CEOs

I assume they were referring to seasonal farm worker types, who don’t seem to experience as much social mobility.

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

#286

Post by scaredginger »

gruez wrote: post #235
alfalfasprout wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way real wages are tracked also undersell this trend. In theory since 2008 real wages have been increasing... in practice, housing and other costs like childcare have increased astronomically during that period negating any real gains.

>In theory since 2008 real wages have been increasing... in practice, housing and other costs like childcare have increased astronomically during that period negating any real gains. That's categorically not true. Adjusting for inflation, wages today are up 6.8% compared to 2008. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q

Do you understand that you've just linked the numbers that are being criticised without addressing the criticisms?

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

#287

Post by aerio »

coeneedell wrote: post #134
flangola7 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't care about size of economy, we care about aspects of daily life of the average person.

We care about both, so we use different measurements for both.

>We care about both

[ X ] Doubt

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

#288

Post by crote »

Alupis wrote: post #148
sangnoir wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> You're not supposed to earn a living wage doing zero skilled work.

If you are not "supposed" to earn a living wage, then the job should not exist. It's a simple matter of supply and demand: if you can't afford to pay your laborers a living wage, you have obviously failed as a company because you are unable to exist without slave labor.

> This misses the reason so-called McJobs don't pay a "living" wage.

Yes, this reason is called "profit". They pay so little because it is legal to do so, and people would rather work three jobs than see their kids starve.

> You're supposed to develop skills and move up in the working world.

If everyone moves up, who is going to do those jobs? And how exactly are you supposed to develop those skills if you have to work three jobs just to survive? There are only so many hours in a day, you know.

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

#289

Post by rayiner »

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.

I think Americans would disagree with the implication that the US has done particularly well over the last 15 years, even though going by nominal dollars that seems to be the case.

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

#290

Post by nemo44x »

hsuduebc2 wrote: post #153

As a European I have sometimes feeling that we are skanzen of the world. Don't get me wrong. It's much better than to be battleground like before.

What is Europe’s purpose in the world today? This was easy to answer for hundreds of years but I have no idea today.
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