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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

#571

Post by throwawaylinux »

janalsncm wrote: post #549
throwawaylinux wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a "frame trap", and why do people get irrationally upset by the US doing well at something or the EU doing poorly? This post is about GDP growth. What has life expectancy got to do with it, and how are you contributing to any discussion? Has anybody here said that "GDP is the most important indicator"?

The post is ostensibly about GDP growth. However, if you read the comments both here and on Twitter you’ll see that we humans are quick to jump from cold economic facts of GDP into more broad points about economic stagnation. My point is to suggest that maybe top line numbers don’t tell the whole story. Maybe in a society where wealth is hyper-concentrated, the heuristic coupling of GDP growth and social progress bre…

> The post is ostensibly about GDP growth. However, if you read the comments both here and on Twitter you’ll see that we humans are quick to jump from cold economic facts of GDP into more broad points about economic stagnation.

I can't seem to read the twitter comments but I don't really see that here, at least in top level comments it seems to be all people who are quick to jump from that to making excuses or trying to rationalize why these numbers are "bad".

I don't know what would be the problem with talking about economic stagnation though, significant differences in GDP growth between ~comparably advanced economies doesn't seem like a bad starting point for that, does it? I notice you didn't actually reply to such a comment, but even so I don't know why you would bring life expectancy into GDP stagnation either. There's certainly a fairly strong correlation and almost certainly causal relationship, but nobody seems to be confusing GDP with the sole driver of life expectancy or believe that GDP tells "the whole story". So it seems like a weird thing to bring up, you could also bring up wheat production and point out that it isn't fixed to GDP, because it also doesn't tell you that story.

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

#572

Post by fransje26 »

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.

I, too, would prefer monthly shoot-outs to help regulate my population. And low-paid wages below the poverty line. And fentanyl as a substitute to affordable healthcare.

Folks, please leave your notebook in your bag and search elsewhere for a role model.

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

#573

Post by fulafel »

dogma1138 wrote: post #129
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.

PPP isn’t a good or any indicator of that either, Guyana has a higher GDP PPP per capita than France or Canada, Bulgaria is below Russia and Kazakhstan.

Both are flawed proxies for QoL but PPP less so.

Canada and France have better QoL than Guyana at similar PPP GDP because of more equal distribution. They also happen to have higher non-PPP GDP but it's unrelated - it's accidental that in this case PPP normalization modifies the PPP GDP comparison to correlate less with QoL difference.

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

#574

Post by pas »

raverbashing wrote: post #526
nonethewiser wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> 20% of Americans consumed more goods and services than the average people from affluent countries I wonder how much of those are things like "credit protection fees", "check printing fees", CC anual fees (of multiple CCs) or just paying hundreds of dollars for a medical consultation even after copay, etc > everything being smaller in Europe, people owning less Your car does not need to be a d*ck measuring contest,…

those fees go somewhere though. of course apparently almost all of that goes into the pockets of the upper 10%, and they then spend it on PACs, country club memberships, golf carts, boats, etc.

but then even those go somewhere, and apparently almost all of that goes back to the US economy through underpaid semi-legal wages. (and then some of that goes back to countries where the undocumented immigrants' are from, and then that goes to pay for plane tickets, so more people can try their luck in the US.)

circle of life!

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

#575

Post by nforgerit »

icelight wrote: post #555
Tade0 wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm not sure which university they are talking about, but both the universities I went to had both smaller (like weekly) programming assignments and large projects.

Sounds like a dream. They didn't have that at my time (2007) at Karlsruhe. Programming was negligible and could be overall circumvented by picking the according courses.

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

#576

Post by flangola7 »

vjjsejj wrote: post #509
flangola7 wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What a useless comment.

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

#577

Post by Wildgoose »

This tweet talks about the "Eurozone", (those countries sharing the Euro), rather than those countries belonging to the EU.

Furthermore, any EU figures will have been badly skewed by the UK having left the EU since 2008. Comparisons should take this into account.

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

#578

Post by pas »

caskstrength wrote: post #561
toyg wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All of this is deep in the political psyche that wants to cut down the tall poppies. What you call "cut down tall poppies" others call "correcting thousands of years of aristocracy-fuelled unfairness". European wealth has much older roots. In a few centuries, Americans will likely reach a similar political point.

> What you call "cut down tall poppies" others call "correcting thousands of years of aristocracy-fuelled unfairness". European wealth has much older roots. What does taxing _income_ of upper-middle class high-earners (who are probably coming somewhere from Eastern Europe and are not related to Habsburgs or something) have to do we dealing with _generational_ wealth of old-money families? In fact, descendants of well…

OP directly mentioned wealth tax though.

also wealth generates income.

plus taxing income is easier, less transaction costs. (no need to sell the house to pay wealth tax.)

of course non of these invalidate your observation about landed gentry, absurd housing prices, etc.

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

#579

Post by troad »

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…

> Here's a better comparison.

The moment I saw the article headline, I knew the comments would be full of people running defence with fuzzy claims of qualitative wellbeing.

"Yes, our economy may objectively be underperforming, but look at the Life Quality Index, invented at the University of Copenhagen, which divides the number of UNESCO sites in a country by the number of different pension schemes...

The hard truth is - less prosperity means less money for nurses, less money for teachers, less money for infrastructure. Worse health outcomes, worse educational outcomes, worse transport and logistics. A decreasing quality of life. Less prospects for children. Increasing emigration.

Europe devotes a disproportionate amount to social spending compared to the US, so it remains competitive despite its shrinking economy, but this won't continue forever. Eventually, Europe's economy will become so relatively small, that even its outsized social spending will begin to be dwarfed by the spending of US states. It's been the case for some time that Portuguese professionals are leaving to go drive trucks in the US, and now doctors in the UK are getting poached en masse by Australian states. How long until German engineers can have a better life working as taxi drivers in China?

I like Europe and I wish it would right course, but there is an aggressive myopia on this continent when it comes to how quickly the rest of the world is moving past them, and how very bad that will be for Europe in the mid-to-long term. Europe's slide into irrelevance will be a net loss for us all, but most of all for the quality of life of Europeans themselves.

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

#580

Post by capableweb »

Wildgoose wrote: post #577

This tweet talks about the "Eurozone", (those countries sharing the Euro), rather than those countries belonging to the EU. Furthermore, any EU figures will have been badly skewed by the UK having left the EU since 2008. Comparisons should take this into account.

And the link in the subsequent tweet talks about "Europeans", apparently not knowing that European Union != Eurozone != Europe

The following diagram might be worth sending to the author(s): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Supranational_Europe... ("Euler diagram of supranational European Bodies")

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