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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

#711

Post by kranke155 »

jhgfjhgfjhfgjhg wrote: post #607
midoridensha wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Good for them, I know plenty others who didn’t including my entire family. There's a YouTube channel where an interviewer talks to people in various Russian cities today about the war and other topics. Loads of middle-aged and older women and men (esp. women it seems) say they want the Soviet Union back. Your family was one of the malcontents that left. The people still there really do miss the authoritarian Soviet…

What percentage want the old Soviet Union back? I don't think you know what you're talking about.

A decent percentage of people from former communist countries liked it. You had full employment; full housing; low crime and 21 days of paid vacation.

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

#712

Post by inpdx »

karp773 wrote: post #619
HPsquared wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eisenhower put it well. "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick sch…

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…

The way to look at it is these are the tradeoffs, so we understand the ramifications. Do we need defense? Sure. But every $ we spend on it should be spent wisely, understanding that tradeoff.

We spend far more than we need to, and Eisenhower is 100% correct in the things we are giving up when we overspend on military.

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

#713

Post by scythe »

pasabagi wrote: post #428
scythe wrote: post #322

Earlier 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…

Due to some recent mishaps in the UK's foreign policy, it probably isn't a great index comparison for economic growth in the 2010s. However, prior to 2016, it was a high performer among European nations.

>If you look at the employment protections of the UK[0], and compare them to the US[1]

I think you meant to include citations at the bottom, but I don't see them.

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

#714

Post by piaste »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #705
piaste wrote: post #697

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To me wealth inequality is how much of the country's wealth the top % own versus the bottom % That's exactly what the GINI formula is, though. (Pedantry: the formula can be applied to any measurement, be it income or wealth or blueberries. We'll assume wealth.) The reason some of those numbers look weird to you is that the most common form of wealth is house ownership. In Germany, Benelux and Scandinavia house owne…

>Or someone who must rent because he cannot afford a house, but earns a much higher salary and has more disposable income? Poverty is relative. What use is it earning a high salary than someone from a poorer country if you can't afford to live in your richer country?

No, I mean after expenses, rent/mortgage (if applicable) included.

To simplify it to the absolute extreme:

- A earns 100 and pays 25 in mortgage, or even 0 if he inherited

- B earns 300 and pays 100 in rent, but a mortgage would cost him 250, or perhaps he can't get one at all

What does it even mean to ask "who is better off" here?

On a daily basis, B obviously lives better, that part is simple at least. (I personally moved from A-like to B-like quite recently.)

Now when it comes to long-term financial plans, A has a massive illiquid asset, while B has a smaller stream of liquid assets. A is more protected against financial catastrophes - he won't end up homeless, and can keep going with a minimal salary - however B does not have any assets tying him down, so he can more result move to a more prosperous area if needed. And so on.

But you look at a wealth map and it'll just tell you that A is "richer"; or you look at an income map and it'll just tell you that B is "richer".

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

#715

Post by dctoedt »

karp773 wrote: post #619
HPsquared wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eisenhower put it well. "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick sch…

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…

> With all due respect to Eisenhower, this is an example of incredible political myopia.

I'm curious what you know about Eisenhower and his career — it's hard to imagine anyone in the past century whose background and experience made him less myopic than he.

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

#716

Post by nvm0n1 »

pasabagi wrote: post #662
nvm0n1 wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 es…

It's silly to claim British companies were flouting employment law on a massive scale just a few years ago. That wasn't the case, especially as even pre-2017 legal costs were awarded to the winner and you can get a year's wages as winnings.

There's a big gap between the US and UK in this regard. The UK has and enforces the concept of an unfair dismissal as distinct from being fired due to discrimination. The US has the latter but not the former. In the UK you can't lay someone off if it would be unfair or if your dismissal process was unreasonable, where unreasonable can mean purely bureaucratic reasons like not following your own dismissal checklists.

In addition British employment tribunals are very worker friendly, resulting in frequent bizarre outcomes [1] like:

- "A worker who was absent for 808 shifts over a 20-year career – costing the firm an estimated £95,850 in sick pay – has won tribunal claims of unfair dismissal against his former employer." (employee won because employer didn't follow their own absence management procedures).

- "An office manager was discriminated against after she was told she was not allowed to work remotely from her son’s hospital bedside", deemed unfair because the boss "gave her views no credit" and "had a closed mind".

- "Worker unfairly dismissed for complaining about boss on Facebook, tribunal rules"

- An NHS worker who resigned won an unfair dismissal claim, because her workers had played a practical joke on her at one point and didn't like it when she complained.

- A lecturer accused of sending “aggressive” messages to colleagues was awarded £15,000 for unfair dismissal after an employment tribunal ruled there had not been a proper investigation into the allegations made against him, whilst also concluding that he had indeed sent aggressive messages.

The idea that this is a country that's "aggressively reduced safeguards for workers" will seem blinkered to the Americans on this site, who can be fired with zero notice and for any reason at all, with recourse only available if it can be proven to be sexism/racism/union organizing/etc. Winning huge awards because you weren't allowed to work remotely hardly exists there.

[1] https://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/article/1747159/worker-ab...

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

#717

Post by smolder »

slibhb wrote: post #65
notfromhere wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it doesn't. Growth in the economy has to increase real wages, and real wages need to keep pace with housing, food, healthcare, etc increases in order to be meaningful. More jobs are only good if they actually provide a living wage.

I don't agree: having more stuff makes people's lives better even if that doesn't show up in terms of real wages.

It very much depends on what stuff you're talking about. Consumption and QoL are only loosely correlated. If we have a culture that values status signalling, everyone may might work harder to afford status signalling without any real benefit to their quality of life. Efficiency of consumption matters. The relationship between dollars spent to degree of life improvement is nowhere close to 1:1. Some purchases pay dividends in that sense while others come with hidden costs and fleeting benefits.

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

#718

Post by flangola7 »

_Parfait_ wrote: post #709
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.

You seem emotional about these facts. I'll let you get on with your day.

I didn't say anything about emotions. Are you confused?

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

#719

Post by xp84 »

pphysch wrote: post #694
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…

This is true, but it is also true that USA is perhaps the most geopolitically-secure state in world history and should be spending among the least on national security (per capita). Americans don't even know what genuine "national defense" feels like. Instead, we have a world-class propaganda complex dedicated to rationalizing our unnecessary overseas military adventures and proxy wars. The idea that blowing up a gov…

> USA is perhaps the most geopolitically-secure state in world history and should be spending among the least on national security (per capita).

I think it glosses over too much complexity to simply state that, because part (not all! Geography is the other part) of the reason why we are so secure is that people know that we have that strong military. If the US were known as a soft target, who had neither the will nor the means to defend itself, we would probably see other actors much more willing to do things to us, such as piracy, etc.

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

#720

Post by dmoy »

miguelxt wrote: post #455
dmoy wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example in some parts of Spain the wealth tax is high enough that it would be impossible to live off investments as the safe withdrawal rate is so low that you would need millions to fund a modest income. What are the numbers there? I heard of the wealth tax above €3 million, but is there more?

The €3 million one is a new "temporary" tax since this year from the central goverment. "Impuesto al patrimonio" has existed for long and it depends on where in Spain you live. It's not applied in the region of Madrid, and the it kicks from a net worth of €400k in Aragón. In all regions your main residence is exempted. For a net worth of €4m, you'll pay €60k in Aragón to €22k in Vizcaya to €0 in Madrid.

So like 1.5%? With US&International based investment returns that means like 40% more money is needed above what's normally required, or say 23 years instead of 19 years of investing.

So that hurts the whole FI/RE thing, but doesn't sound like it would be the primary blocker.

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