Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

Do you have a source for this ?

Renewables are actually making it worse. We now have the "problem" that renewables cause spikes and saturation of the grid, and instead of causing low prices, the energy companies penalizes their customers. Claims it's due to renewables driving up grid maintenance costs because it was not built to handle the amount.

After all, energy produced _must_ be used or it will inevitably cause damage somewhere. For instance, you can't leave solar panels in the sun while they are not connected. If you don't use the energy, it will be turned into heat.

It's getting to the point where you actually are penalized for having rooftop solar. Most solar installations in the EU doesn't have a home battery, so either you have to give back surplus energy (electricity providers in some countries will actually charge you for this), or you can disconnect your solar if you overproduce but that will slowly damage your installation. Even if you don't plan to give back any energy, you still have to notify your provider that you have rooftop solar, if you don't it's a breach of contract, and if you do, they will charge you an extra maintenance cost.

It's funny because the government are pushing rooftop solar, but the energy providers are quietly telling their customers to fuck off with it.

But still even though the grid is absolutely full of cheap energy, and you should in theory pay very little, you still have to pay double or triple what those in the USA would ever pay.

Renewables are great, but also a shitshow because while we're building solar and wind installations, we're not building nearly enough grid storage.

Another aspect of these numbers is how much of the ordinary expenses are not luxury items but things like a car (because public transport is terrible), childcare (because people need to work to pay for it and the car that’s needed to shuttle kids around) and some healthcare (because public healthcare is nonexistent).

Americans pay a lot of money for things other developed countries would say is a basic human right.

Because young people are not taxed to pay for retired people vacations. And because there is less of a credential obsession for most jobs.

So you get people starting to work younger: they create value earlier instead of being a pure weight on the system.

They're taxed less so they keep more of their money so they're established (house, business etc.) earlier and can spawn a new generation earlier.

Most of the socialized states have become gerontocracies where most of the GDP is funneled from the young actives to the retirees. Be it from socialized healthcare (old people use the majority of it), cushy retirement benefits or the simple fact they own most property and can rent it and lobby to keep prices high.

In France, median retirees have enjoyed better revenues than median working people for multiple years already. What was created so old people who can't work would not be destitute has become a life goal because it's "when you can start to enjoy things". 50 years ago, we had 3 active people paying for 1 retiree. Now those 3 people? We only got 1.7 active people paying for each of them.

Either the current working generation decides to stop the cycle and sacrifice themselves by continuing to pay for baby boomers and they forego their own "end of life vacation" so their rare grand children can benefit from their own work. Or the country is a third world economy next century.

It's far more likely to be that teensy-weensy COVID-19 pandemic, both in terms of direct damage and also reduced care for everything else.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/21/cdc-us-life-expecta...