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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

#661

Post by ragazzina »

didntcheck wrote: post #544
amrocha wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consumption is a terrible proxy for quality of life. It's also terribly USAian of you.

Not really. Europeans aren't some superior noble ascetics. People want to consume, and their demand exceeds their ability in practically all situations. So USians are getting more of what they want while most Europeans would jump at the ability to do the same. For the record, I am European myself

> Europeans aren't some superior noble ascetics. People want to consume

How much you can consume is also linked to how much space you have to use and store stuff. In 2015, 40% of the american households had three or more TV sets. I don't know anyone who owns three TVs here in Europe.

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

#662

Post by pasabagi »

nvm0n1 wrote: post #654
pasabagi wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That depends on the kind of contract you have.

Comparing different legal systems and different practical implementations of those systems is hard - but I think the basic claim, that there's a inverse correlation between employee's rights and economic growth, isn't visible within the EU or elsewhere.

The UK is a good example because they have aggressively reduced the safeguards for workers (between 2014-2017 it was essentially a state with no safeguards if you could not afford the employment tribunal process), and is also an example of consistent poor economic growth.

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

#663

Post by chrisco255 »

geysersam wrote: post #627
karp773 wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With all due respect to Eisenhower, this is an example of incredible political myopia. A country does not exist in a political vacuum and has to be able to protect its freedom and the very right to exist. So freedom is not free but comes at a price. How high the price is depends on the situation. Sometimes it's very high, unfortunately. Complaining about this fact is as productive as complainig about gravity: if only…

It's not a fact that the US needs to spend 50% of the global military budget. If anything is myopic, that is. It can still be argued that it's worth the expenditure. But the cost should be weighted against the alternatives. Neither Russia or China can be said to threaten the US with their military, except with nuclear weapons, but no defence budget protects against those.

If there was a total war scenario with Russia and China, all bets would be off regarding U.S. military budget, as they would most certainly be a dire threat to numerous allies of the U.S.

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

#664

Post by gruez »

scaredginger wrote: post #505
nonethewiser wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

>The original claim was that "The way real wages are tracked also undersell this trend"; they are calling CPI into question.

The original comment makes no mention of CPI. It only mentions that certain categories of goods have outpaced wage growth. Of course you're going to get that result if you cherry pick your basket.

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

#665

Post by oblio »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #658
oblio wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Sources?

The data I've seen says the exact opposite.

Edit: Also my link has the Gini inequality index as the last column, where the US is literally sandwiched between Congo and Algeria, towards the bottom...

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

#666

Post by gruez »

Joeri wrote: post #618
gruez wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Refugees have a selection mechanism as well because you have to be enterprising and resourceful to travel all the way to the EU. The US became big by taking in the unwashed masses fleeing Europe, and I think much of its entrepreneurial spirit goes back to that origin story.

>Refugees have a selection mechanism as well because you have to be enterprising and resourceful to travel all the way to the EU.

I never claimed that refugees have no selection effects, but is that selection effect comparable to proper immigration screening?

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

#667

Post by oblio »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #659
oblio wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 waiti…

> 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.

Neither have you.

My anecdotes contradict yours.

I'll just drop this since I've seen your other comment about inequality where I literally provided numbers and you disagreed without providing any counter-data.

Let's call this a day and move on.

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

#668

Post by OfSanguineFire »

paganel wrote: post #489
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…

> I’d like to see a European brick and mortar house survive a Magnitude 8 earthquake, which is a requirement in San Francisco. Sorry to put it this way, but is this a joke? I do live in Bucharest, in Eastern Europe, on the 8th floor of an apartments building built in the early 1980s, and I sure do hope that this building can withstand a Magnitude 8 earthquake seeing that we've had a 7.5 earthquake back in 1977 and a…

The Richter scale is logarithmic, so I wonder how well a structure built to withstand an earthquake the magnitude of Romania’s previous earthquakes could withstand a Magnitude 8 earthquake.

When the huge construction boom began in Cluj in the first decade of the new millennium, the common opinion seemed to be that the old, ugly socialist-era blocks would survive an earthquake just fine, but people were less confident about the new buildings that private developers were constructing.

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

#669

Post by oblio »

cman1444 wrote: post #652
oblio wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Isn't Norway a massive producer of oil?

Yes, of oil and gas, and they're not producing as much as they could, for environmental reasons. They're holding off on production.

> And I think they're quite environmentally conscious.

They are, they could produce more.

Similar story for the UK and the Netherlands with North Sea gas.

> Also isn't Germany burning coal at record rates right now?

Not record rates, standard rates and declining very slowly (2023 is actually better than 2022, shown here):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Germany#...

They did mess up the transition with the early decommissioning of nuclear power plants, corruption is probably to blame.

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

#670

Post by gruez »

amrocha wrote: post #425
gruez wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>then you have no one to do manual jobs

And that's fine, because those jobs can either be automated, outsourced, done domestically (ie. driving yourself rather than getting delivery), or at worst case paying more. All things being equal I'd rather have a chemical engineer who can do chemical engineering and deliver pizza, than someone who can only deliver pizza.

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