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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

#501

Post by ffhhttt »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #293
dogma1138 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> GDP PPP can increase whilst your economy contracts. So can GDP. > PPP isn’t a good measure for population’s wealth or quality of life especially for developed economies either. Why isn't it a good measure? Why is it worse than pure GDP? > The economy of the US is still twice that of the EU and its global purchasing power has also pretty much doubled. The GDP of the US is twice of that of the EU. How does paying $20…

> $2000 for a 50 sq. feet box makes your economy bigger?

Isn’t real estate generally cheaper in the US than in Western Europe in PPP terms?

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

#502

Post by walthamstow »

afterburner wrote: post #422
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.

Austerity means to spend less on public services and infrastructure. Doesn't that mean the US was in near-constant austerity prior to Biden and the IRA?

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

#503

Post by devjab »

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…

The economic engine of Germany was always sort of interesting to me. Where we in Scandinavia went full aboard the outsourcing of the production, Germany kept theirs. They did so in a way that was very “inflated” from a Scandinavian point of view, because it relied to heavily on very low paid labour, which obviously couldn’t be maintained forever. You can say the same about our outsourcing adventures now that the world has changed, but at one point it seemed reasonable to pool production together so multiple buyers of things like vaccines could contract the same factories. Well, maybe that was also kind of stupid, but anyway, Germany kept a lot of their industrial might going and unless you looked too closely at how they did it, it looked good.

It’ll be interesting to see how that strategy works now that we live in a new geopolitical reality. Unlike us in Scandinavia who will have to start from scratch, sort of, Germany already has the means of producing and an infrastructure in place to expand it rapidly. It’ll take some readjusting, but once the non-EU competition gets hindered political means, there is no reason the wages shouldn’t increase. Especially because the steam was already running out of the cheap labour schemes.

Maybe it’ll turn out Merkels bet on keeping industry was even further reach than we thought.

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

#504

Post by dereg »

ffhhttt wrote: post #479
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.

If you want to measure the standard of living there a much better indicators than GDP per capita for that. PPP is also a deeply flawed concept because comparing the quality of goods and services in the context of different consumption patterns. However if you really want to use you should look at median income (with social transfers etc.) rather than GDP.

Median income is not a better measure because it is blind to changes in population composition over time. Series of median income figures doesn't actually track anything.

For instance, a country that accepts more lower-skilled immigrants will see its median income figures grow less than countries that accept fewer of those immigrants. Is the immigrant-accepting country poorer as a result?

The only way that median income would be a valid measure of wealth or QoL would be if you isolated the cohort of those considered "median" in 2008 and tracked their wealth over time.

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

#505

Post by scaredginger »

nonethewiser wrote: post #388
scaredginger wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That doesnt seem to be the case. The original claim is there was no wage increases but he showed there is 7%. Please elaborate.

The original claim was that "The way real wages are tracked also undersell this trend"; they are calling CPI into question. Personally, I don't really have an opinion on whether CPI is effective here, but saying "CPI-adjusted wages have increased" is clearly a stupid argument when somebody questions the efficacy of CPI

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

#506

Post by ffhhttt »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #324
dogma1138 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So can GDP. No, not really as exchange rate fluctuations are avoided using constant international dollar benchmarks. > Why isn't it a good measure? Why is it worse than pure GDP? This been explained multiple times in this thread already including a link to the OECD FAQ on GDP PPP. Nominal GDP isn’t a measure of individual wealth either, it is however a very good indicator of national economic growth. >The GDP of th…

> No, not really as exchange rate fluctuations are avoided using constant international dollar benchmarks. There are ways for GDP to increase while economy contracts. As the simplest example, an informal sector may become formalized and be partially reduced in the process due to new bureaucratic obstacles. > This been explained multiple times in this thread already including a link to the OECD FAQ on GDP PPP. I don't…

> I don't think any EU city can compare to the US juggernauts such as NY and SF in terms of housing shortage and inflated prices.

Zurich, London, Paris and Munich

Also median income in SF and NY is much higher (with the exception of Zurich) so it should be much easier for an average person to afford a home in NY than in Munich.

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

#507

Post by networkchad »

anonzzzies wrote: post #441
selectodude wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even though I can afford it, I mostly do not need new imported stuff and second hand you can get a lot of things (mostly everything besides Apple stuff) at bottom prices. Many people unfortunately dump stuff after new shiny comes out and some even give them to me for free. My iPhone was a gift from a friend who bought the latest. It’ll go for many years still. My nreal (xreal) now was a gift because another friend di…

[flagged]

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

#508

Post by hooli_gan »

Tade0 wrote: post #442
lnsru wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> There is a myth at German universities, that programming is too practical. Am I understanding this correctly that students don't get programming assignments?

This is false. In Germany there are Universitäten and Hochschulen. Hochschulen are more practical, at one of these you have programming assignments or projects in nearly every subject. Universitäten are more about the theory but they still have some programming assignments, maybe one subject every semester. At some Unis CS is just a part of the Mathematics department so that is also a factor which makes them even more theoretical.

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

#509

Post by vjjsejj »

flangola7 wrote: post #390
_Parfait_ wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

..Ok but we're talking about the size of the economy you do know that right? Did you read even the headline?

The title of a headline does not dictate what I get to think and talk about. I'm not twelve.

> I’m not twelve

Not yet, anyway.

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

#510

Post by logicchains »

thomasz wrote: post #432
FredPret wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Unfortunately, we are not allowed to print the world reserve currency like there is no tomorrow, and we do not possess the qualities of the US that make them the natural haven for capital in times of global turbulence. That being said, the policy of austerity implemented during the Euro crisis was pretty catastrophic and arrested growth prospects for a whole generation.

>That being said, the policy of austerity implemented during the Euro crisis was pretty catastrophic and arrested growth prospects for a whole generation.

It was an austerity policy in name only given government debts have only continued to increase since then. There's a demonstrated correlation between high government debt and lower growth.

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