Of course, if the average person is not 2x as rich in the US (or 0.5x as rich in the EU) then that would indicate this is a terrible measure for actual wealth. Let alone happiness etc. And that is the average person, since people naturally get richer as they age, any individual trying to decide needs to have gotten much much richer (4x plus) just to have gotten an average share...
The US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the US is now nearly 2X
651–660 of 767 posts
Re: The US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the US is now nearly 2X
#652Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US is self-sufficient in oil because it developed the tech to do fracking of the oil sands, it's nothing to do with Iraq.
Europe could be self sufficient in oil and gas (we're constantly finding new reserves in EU/EU associated territory), it just doesn't want to dig those up because it's hugely destructive for the environment.
Isn't Norway a massive producer of oil? And I think they're quite environmentally conscious. Also isn't Germany burning coal at record rates right now? I'm not totally buying the argument that Europe is just abstaining from easy production for environmental reasons.
Re: The US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the US is now nearly 2X
#653Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That GDP does not increase my quality of life It sure as hell does for the millions employed thereby, as well as those who catch their spending.
Most negative things have an upside for someone, that doesn’t mean you have to like it.
That’s my point. It wasn’t a comment about economic merit. OP just listed things they don’t like.
Re: The US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the US is now nearly 2X
#654Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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 growt…
They aren't that similar. US has at-will employment, it's very straightforward. In the UK that's only true for a short period, then Euro-style worker protections start kicking in.
Re: The US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the US is now nearly 2X
#655Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is the advantage of using stronger building materials? Say brick vs wood frames.
It's not necessarily about strength but brick buildings will survive both fire and water much better than wooden buildings, they don't burn or rot. Brick buildings generally last hundreds of years with minimal maintenance (assuming no earthquakes). Wood buildings can last hundreds of years but require far more upkeep.
This argument kind of falls apart when you start trying to maintain or improve plumbing, HVAC, and electrical through the house. It's much easier to do that through the wood and drywall of a typical American house.
Re: The US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the US is now nearly 2X
#656I have written about this before on HN. Forget about GDP or PPP. What really matters for quality of life is local currency median income. If it is rising at a good rate above inflation levels, then your quality of life is getting better. Nothing else really matters at the ground level.
I understand that "at the ground level" that's all that matters. But these statistics are very useful for examining the economic heft of an entire country in the context of geopolitics. Of course if you don't care about things like that (like most people don't and have no reason to in their everyday lives) then you're correct it doesn't matter.
Every once in a while big things happen though (world wars break out, trade deals are signed, etc.) and in those cases it can pay to have the largest GDP.
Re: The US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the US is now nearly 2X
#657Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, this kind of article would never fail to mention Russia and Putin. But what is never mentioned: 1. Germany has no energy sources. USA had blown up the pipelines delivering cheap energy from Russia that German industry needs badly (so, German industry has been closing and has declining output since), also in just as brain-dead move Germany closed all its nuclear plants. 2. USA is deliberately suffocating German…
German here. > USA had blown up the pipelines delivering cheap energy from Russia Well, did they? I know this theory but AFAIK they could trace it back to some people in Ukrainian military. Western secret services (afair from Netherlands) even warned them twice that this was being planned but they didn’t react. > USA is deliberately suffocating German economy. Sorry, but those are ALL mistakes made by Germans themsel…
> Well, did they? I know this theory but AFAIK they could trace it back to some people in Ukrainian military. Western secret services (afair from Netherlands) even warned them twice that this was being planned but they didn’t react.
Such operation can't be performed by amateurs from a rented yacht. It requires experience and resources available only to few countries on Earth.
Also, it was just a version published by Western media without any hard evidence.
> Sorry, but those are ALL mistakes made by Germans themselves.
It's not possible to tell if they are unless there's an investigation, but there would be never such an investigation because Germany is an occupied country for 78 years.
It's quite clear from the consequences, that Olaf Sholz, Annalena Baerbock, and other German politics do things that affect German industry and economics negatively at the same time improving US economy and making Germany more dependent on US.
Re: The US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the US is now nearly 2X
#658Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Not really. Europeans aren't some superior noble ascetics. Indeed. In my town center, on the weekends, the streets are full of Teslas, luxury cars and SUVs of the well off people from the suburbs with nice houses, coming to the city for shopping and indulgence in various forms of consumerism and showing off (mostly inherited) wealth. Europeans are just poorer and more unequally wealthy than Americans, with fewer peo…
> Europeans are just poorer and more unequally wealthy than Americans, with fewer people owing most of the wealth, not more righteous. Europeans are poorer but the US generally has higher inequality, whether you look at Gini, IHDI or mean versus median wealth. Especially the wealth comparison is jarring for the US (about 6:1, most of Europe is at 2:1 or 3:1). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_…
Wealth inequality is higher in the richer EU countries than it is in the US, so is upwards mobility. You Wikipedia link does not disprove that.
Re: The US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the US is now nearly 2X
#659Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe if you can stomach the waiting times but then the private medical sector wouldn't be growling so rapidly for procedure the state also does.
Anecdotally many people in Europe find waiting times comparable in the US and EU. Unless you have studies to back this up, I'd drop the waiting time argument.
Who are those people in Europe who find waiting times comparable to the US?
Anecdotally I have to await much longer than my colleagues in the US (same field, same company) to see a specialist (months vs weeks). Also, the my public insurance doesn't cover my physiotherapy for my back pain, while the insurance my US colleagues get through their employer does.
>Unless you have studies to back this up, I'd drop the waiting time argument.
Maybe you should drop it until you can provide any kind of argument or evidence, because you wrote some words but said nothing of value.
Re: The US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the US is now nearly 2X
#660Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nobody said GDP equals quality of life, what are you talking about?
What is the point of GDP as a metric then? Who is the economy serving? Why have an economy if it's not improving quality of life to some extent. GDP is most often used by the government of a single country to measure its economic health. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_domestic_product
Just because GDP isn't a direct measure of quality of life doesn't make it a useless statistic. It's also useful to measure the economic heft of a country which is important in a macro context. Sometimes things need to be viewed from the top down, not just the ground up.