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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

#421

Post by failuser »

seydor wrote: post #402
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…

So they live less and STILL make twice the income?

Those are different people. The ones who die early don’t have disposable incomes that are high. At least on average.

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

#422

Post by afterburner »

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…

The EU has better social support.

However, the US dodged the austerity fad bullet in the 2010s. A lot of the EU really fell for it hard.

Austerity is a fantastic way to inhibit growth.

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

#423

Post by NikxDa »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #384
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…

Germany has slowed down because the productivity gains from 20 years ago ("Agenda 2010") have run out of steam (Merkel didn't do anything for productivity for 16 years), more recently consumer demand has decreased because Germany was hit by high gas costs (everyone heats with gas) and the current government increased costs for consumers (e.G. everyone needs to replace their gas heating - driven by the minister for th…

Just to be clear here, the law you are referencing has been stopped and isn't passed yet. Mentioning it as if it were a fact is misleading, in my opinion.

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

#424

Post by amrocha »

nonethewiser wrote: post #269
dougmwne wrote: post #73

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…

> By my own anecdotal estimation 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.

Consumption is a terrible proxy for quality of life.

It's also terribly USAian of you.

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

#425

Post by amrocha »

gruez wrote: post #355
8note wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on what you need -- chemical engineers can make for good pizza delivery guys, but that's not making the best use of them

But all things being equal, wouldn't you rather have an immigrant who * speaks the local language * is highly educated (eg. post-secondary degree) * is young * has expertise in an in-demand industry than one who is missing one or more of the above? For non-refugees, you can screen for the above factors and only admit the ones who are qualified, but for refugees you can't.

No, because then you have no one to do manual jobs because the native well educated youth won't take those.

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

#426

Post by beebeepka »

FredPret wrote: post #344
dogma1138 wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDP PPP in the US is identical to the nominal GDP in the US since the purchasing currency in the US is the US dollar. > What I meant to write is: if the PPP GDP increases in the EU faster than in the US, with all else being equal (eg. stable population) it would imply the standard of living is increasing faster in the EU than in the US. No it doesn’t mean anything of the sort in fact high nominal GDP to GDP PPP ratio…

US economic performance is all the more OP if you take into account that it's a huge country of 350m people and has a diversified economic base. For a tiny banking nation or petrostate to be rich is unsurprising. But when it's half a continent, the world really ought to take out their notebooks and go into full copycat mode - at least as far as economic policy and attitudes are concerned.

Are you suggesting the EU should start pillaging countries? What petrostate should we liberate to becone self-sufficient? As luck would have it, the US achieved that right after conquering Iraq

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

#427

Post by thomasz »

dogma1138 wrote: post #137
mrb wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" 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.

No it does not, PPP is calculated based on a basket of 3000 fungible goods and services as well as other costs such as major infrastructure construction projects. It has zero account for quality or outcomes. It doesn’t care if you have access to healthy foods, it just cares how much would X calories costs, it doesn’t care what is the quality of the housing stock or the outcomes of your healthcare system. You can very…

Despite all its shortcomings, the USSR did pretty well in areas they really cared about, like tank production. And it’s very difficult to compare the value of a t80 with the value of a m1, especially when there was little trade between both blocks. The USSR sold energy to Western Europe in order to get dollars which were then used to buy grain from the US. And that was just about it.

Your problem isn’t with PPP but with the Soviet societal tendency to falsify reports on absolutely every level and with the inherent incomparability between planned and market economies.

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

#428

Post by pasabagi »

scythe wrote: post #322
dougmwne wrote: post #73

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…

>The thing that really hurt the Eurozone was the 2011 - 2013 recession that the US did not experience. This is true, but understated in a crucial manner. By global standards, the greatest enduring strength of the US economy has been its ability to recover from downturns. More than anything else, that has pulled it ahead of competitors time and time again. When the early '80s financial crisis hit Japan with a lost dec…

I'm not sure about your 'iniquitous postulate'. If such a correlation existed, you would expect all countries with weak employee protection to enjoy economic growth that is better than their peers. That doesn't seem to be true. If you look at the employment protections of the UK[0], and compare them to the US[1], they seem fairly similar. And yet, the UK has very low worker productivity, worst-in-class economic growth, etc.

The problem with taking general economic lessons from the US is that the US is in a unique, and uniquely advantageous economic position.

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

#429

Post by themitigating »

hibikir wrote: post #420
jandrewrogers wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d like to see a European brick and mortar house survive a Magnitude 8 earthquake, which is a requirement in San Francisco. The US used to have lots of brick and mortar construction, just like Europe. After those buildings were all destroyed by strong earthquakes, they switched to steel and wood, which can survive a strong earthquake. Europe style construction is not allowed in much of the US because it demonstrably…

And yet, most residential construction is basically the same, whether it's going to be built in Palo Alto, upstate NY, Kansas, south Florida or Portland. Most of those don't have anything that even resembles strong earthquake risk. American housing is built the way it is not due to extra interest in safety, but because it's cheap to build under US prices. You can call it better or worse than Europe, but it sure isn't…

What is the advantage of using stronger building materials? Say brick vs wood frames.

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

#430

Post by omarelb »

evantbyrne wrote: post #306
habosa wrote: post #209

The US is the best place in the world to accumulate wealth. Unfortunately that does not make it the best place to live.

Quality of life varies significantly based on where you are in the US. There are definitely smaller cities that offer high standards of living–if that's your speed.

What cities would that be? Asking for a friend ;)
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