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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

#751

Post by amrocha »

gruez wrote: post #670
amrocha wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not that easy, because:

- not all jobs can be automated

- manual laborers make less money

If you see immigrants all around you doing great, while you clean toilets and struggle to feed yourself, that breeds resentment of your government.

And sure, it's easy to say the jobs should just pay more, but that's not the reality today, and if your choice is working a shitty job or starving then that's not really a choice at all.

I would also rather have the chemical engineer, but I think it would be even better to live in a society where both the delivery driver and the chemical engineer are net positives to society.

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

#752

Post by jopsen »

JackFr wrote: post #325
rayiner wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Americans would disagree with the implication that the US has done particularly well over the last 15 years, even though going by nominal dollars that seems to be the case.

That’s true, and it’s the point. The reality is that there American system sucks by some metrics, and yet by others which are real and not BS, the US economy crushes. In the end human flourishing, and life satisfaction are more important than GDP, but at the same time GDP is real and it does matter.

> at the same time GDP is real and it does matter.

At least such a huge difference will have practical effects.

Can we fund our welfare systems without growth? (Just imagine what we could do, if the budget was 2x)

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

#753

Post by oblio »

geysersam wrote: post #741
oblio wrote: post #737

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a valid reason since the US has had a large military since 80 years ago. Don't fall into that trap.

Are you saying that China doesn't have a valid reason for having a large military, but the US does ? That sounds like a difficult position to maintain...

I'm saying that China was extremely prosperous and growing from 1980 to the present day, without increasing the size of its army 10x-20x-or-however-much-they're-increasing-it right now.

They don't have a real need for a bigger army, they could for sure defend themselves against any neighbor, even India and Russia, with "just" the military from 20 years ago.

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

#754

Post by pas »

caskstrength wrote: post #608
pas wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> also wealth generates income. So tax income types that tend to come from wealth instead. Compared with regular salary income that is heavily taxed in Europe those usually incur significantly lower tax rates (long-term capital gains tax, dividend tax, etc.). > plus taxing income is easier, less transaction costs. (no need to sell the house to pay wealth tax.) You are confused about how wealth taxes usually work. The…

Yes, agree. (Egregious case of favoring rich people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beckham_law ... move to Spain and you get full exemption on non-Spanish income for 5-6 years.)

No, I'm not completely, that's what I meant. That wealth tax can force people to sell.

Yep, sounds similar. Inheritance tax was also terminated in Hungary, and you can give unlimited value to your parents/kids tax free.

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

#755

Post by codyb »

pastage wrote: post #630
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…

Tools created will be used, the cost of the US and Russian war arsenal is far greater than just the monetary cost to build them. One could argue that a weapons destructive force should be counted against it. To strive for peace is not near sighted, it is the only way forward.

The world’s more peaceful during the era of American Hegemony than it’s ever been. Odd how having a gigantic military with hundreds of millions of people under it’s umbrella seems to have stemmed regional conflicts from erupting.

You can’t prove that regional conflicts would erupt should the US become more isolationist but any history book should quickly show you human’s propensity for war.

It also turns out that human’s tend not to outright attack foes that will immediately decimate them.

The USAF is the greatest stabilizer this world has as far as I can tell, missteps and outright awful moves like Iraq taken into account in this calculation.

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

#756

Post by notfromhere »

Alupis wrote: post #45
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.

> More jobs are only good if they actually provide a living wage. This is false if you spend even a few seconds thinking about it. Not all jobs are intended to "live" off of. Most of your entry-level jobs were supposed to be for highschool and college kids working part time. The problem is we have more and more people never graduating out of entry level positions, and today we have folks demanding those entry level p…

You are fundamentally asking someone else to subsidize the cost of that labor.

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

#757

Post by notfromhere »

Alupis wrote: post #176
Supermancho wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most of your entry-level jobs were supposed to be for highschool and college kids working part time. This is some soft language hiding some bad assumptions. "supposed to be" - what does this mean? because it's a lot more interesting...low skilled jobs, are probably what we're going to be talking about. However, it's not the 1950s anymore. eg Staffing a movie theater is not a part-time job (which you would know if y…

> If you have a fulltime job, the minimum wage is intended to allow you to survive This is the issue - the idea that minimum wage is supposed to be "livable" is a modern notion. Unskilled labor probably shouldn't be livable. If someone can be trained to replace you in a few minutes (i.e. unskilled labor), then the truth is your labor is not worth a lot. We need more people moving up into skilled labor. It's really ha…

Someone still has to work those unskilled jobs. It's not exclusively staffed by high school and college kids, they're staffed largely by poor adults and immigrants, and it turns out they still need to live and eat.

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

#758

Post by lukas099 »

rafaelero wrote: post #699
lukas099 wrote: post #681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The immigrants will have children that will be better-acclimated and contribute more, no?

The graph includes the descendents.

Approximately how many generations of descendants are included? Is it possible that intaking non-western immigrants is an investment that will pay off in the future, but the payoff has not materialized yet?

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

#759

Post by lispm »

partiallypro wrote: post #738
lispm wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strange, I bought mine via an app and paypal.

The official Bahn and even the MVV require an IBAN. To get my ticket, I had to wait 3 days using the MVV app to get a person to approve it.

I used also an official app of a public transport provider and I pay via paypal. The ticket is immediately active.

'IBAN' is a bank account number. So you had to have a bank account - most people have one. The 'ticket' is actually a subscription.

There are now 11 million owners of a subscription of a Deutschlandticket. Start was 1st May 2023.

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

#760

Post by karp773 »

oska wrote: post #742
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…

> A country does not exist in a political vacuum and has to be able to protect its freedom and the very right to exist Do you think that Eisenhower, a professional soldier and 5 star general, doesn't understand that? You're not understanding / misrepresenting what he is saying in that quote. It's about the cost of a military and how it has to be balanced against the productive and social needs of a country. A country…

One can be a good general but a bad politician and vice versa. I don't see any contradiction here.
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