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Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

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Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

#681

Post by oblio »

sajithdilshan wrote: post #644
pelorat wrote: post #632

Us Europeans are more 'detached' from the economy than people are in the USA. We basically coast along. We don't live on credit, but debit, and most people have zero investments outside their house. We're content and risk adverse and don't care much for the stock market (even though many people's pensions are tied to it). In places where higher education is cheap, or even sometimes free (like Sweden), there's less pr…

This is so true. I’m a software engineer in Berlin, and I’m from Sri Lanka. It amazes me how many young people are still pursuing bachelor’s or master’s degrees in business management or related fields instead of specializing in STEM fields, where they’d have a better chance of securing a high-paying job and making a meaningful impact. It seems like everyone wants to work for big four audit firms, but they often end…

> In essence, the EU is simply a massive tax burden on European citizens, benefiting only a handful of countries within the continent

Ummm... The EU budget and workforce is smaller than that of a big European city, let alone a country. If you look at the numbers, the actual EU machinery is very small for what is basically a government institution.

Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

#682

Post by mrtksn »

rdm_blackhole wrote: post #675
mrtksn wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, just looking at the examples of "stagnated and failing economies" like Japan should be a give away that this measure is total BS. In Germany a life saving brain surgery creates 5K USD of economic activity and the same surgery creates 500K USD of economic activity in the USA. True story, a YouTuber I'm following recently had her mother operated in Germany and then again in the USA and she made a video about…

Revolutions are neither good nor bad, they just are. It's what you do after that matters. If you keep on repeating the same mistake and never change the systems that led to the political instability in the first place, then you are bound to have the same results.

I agree. I'm not a fan of revolutions because the process itself is quite damaging - no matter what comes after it. I can definitely enjoy a good revolution if I'm not at the receiving end of it though.

Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

#683

Post by guappa »

clarionbell wrote: post #652
DanielHB wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking the same thing the other day. Like how much of the US GDP is tied to their suburb-living car-dependent lifestyle. What percentage of the GDP is all that infrastructure (sewage, heating, power plants, power transmission, car production, road maintenance)? Sure that create jobs, especially lower-skilled jobs which are important for society. But at the same time they didn't really need to exist. It feels…

Defense spending is necessary, if you want to keep your globalised markets and reasonable level of international security. Europe is now experiencing what happens if drop the "useless" defense spending too low.

Local conflicts get used by the USA as proxy wars?

Corrupt politicians going against the interests of their own nation to appease USA?

Can you be clearer?

Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

#684

Post by jasode »

DanielHB wrote: post #643
hunglee2 wrote: post #590

GDP is a measure of the marketisation of society. If I go visit my grandma over the weekend, my activities do not register on GDP. If I hire a care assistant for $800 per day to do so, that's $800 to national GDP. The encroachment of the market into society correlates with record levels of mental and physical health crisis. US life expectancy has declined over the past three years, even as 'the economy' has surged ah…

I was thinking the same thing the other day. Like how much of the US GDP is tied to their suburb-living car-dependent lifestyle. What percentage of the GDP is all that infrastructure (sewage, heating, power plants, power transmission, car production, road maintenance)? Sure that create jobs, especially lower-skilled jobs which are important for society. But at the same time they didn't really need to exist. It feels…

> much of the US GDP is tied to their suburb-living car-dependent lifestyle. [...] , but it doesn't create value.

The "value" is for the citizens that prefer suburbs style living.

People who prefer dense city living with mass-transportation and walkable errands like European cities or downtown NYC/Chicago are missing the fact that there's another group of people (possibly the majority) that actually prefer the suburbs. Yes, I know it seems illogical.

But don't suburbs have the dependency on cars, and those ugly "stroads", and the "parking lot deserts", and "soulless cookie-cutter housing", etc, etc?!? Yes, all of that is true and detractors can keep piling on more derogatory labels but it still doesn't change the fact that many people really like the suburbs. A lot of USA college kids living in dorms in the middle of a "walkable city" have aspirations of buying a nice house out in the suburbs and hope they can land a high-paying job so they can afford that dream. Why do so many of these young people who have actual experience of living in the city want to get away from that and live in the suburbs?

Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

#685

Post by gizmo »

Retric wrote: post #678
TacticalCoder wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How's that related to the magnificent 7 and then SpaceX/StarLink and the AI revolution (which is nearly virtually only happening in the US: even if there are a few models in France, China, etc. it's a US game)? I don't think you realize what's going on in the EU (failing into a third world continent at an alarming rate) or in China (where "little" cities of 30 million inhabitants are all about tech and feeling like y…

You’ve got an overly rosy view of what’s happening in the US and underestimating Europe. AI is big in the tech world, but it’s hardly moving the needle on the overall economy. Every 1% GDP growth roughly requires the equivalent of adding a new Google sized company every year, or as actually happens a more widespread increase. Just as an example, Tesla’s 2024 Q1 deliveries where below 2023’s Q1 deliveries hardly a sig…

Tesla is suffering from Chinese EV competition, but the German car brands are suffering much worse. Just look at this UX disaster:

https://x.com/teslaxander/status/1864202319925035083

Is it any wonder that the German car industry is imploding?

I also don't share your pessimism about Starlink. Right now it's unclear what the killer application for Starlink will be, but it's awesome technology and even if it's only used in very remote areas it will still be worth it. When you only invest in technology that is immediately valuable you lose out on the technological revolutions that take a while to play out. Imagine having the capability of building something like Starlink but not doing it because the bean counters don't see the point.

Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

#686

Post by lotsofpulp »

Guthur wrote: post #641
hunglee2 wrote: post #590

GDP is a measure of the marketisation of society. If I go visit my grandma over the weekend, my activities do not register on GDP. If I hire a care assistant for $800 per day to do so, that's $800 to national GDP. The encroachment of the market into society correlates with record levels of mental and physical health crisis. US life expectancy has declined over the past three years, even as 'the economy' has surged ah…

And if you borrow that money is even better because they just created the money for you to add to the GDP, and now it will have lots of sweet service fees and interest in top of that. And on a side note because US dollars are the reserve currency and only created in one country they can go shopping around hovering up every asset and resource.

The US produces a lot of things others want to buy, including stability and security, and that is why non Americans want USD and hence others give Americans purchasing power.

Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

#687

Post by KK7NIL »

anovikov wrote: post #674
Slartie wrote: post #651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The EU single market is largely a myth from the perspective of wanting to start a successful company that can compete internationally. It's not any easier now than it was before the EU existed. That's not exactly true. The single market has been a great thing for companies producing physical products. That's also what was in mind of the people who designed the single market. They wanted to unify standards for physi…

Simple way to eliminate language barriers is to introduce English as main language of schooling, thus making all next generation bilingual. It's done by middle and upper classes anyway so idk why commoners are intentionally left in the dust by the System. Let's face it: our culture (all across the EU), is American, anyway. It's stupid to pretend otherwise.

> idk why commoners are intentionally left in the dust by the System.

There's extreme wealth inequalities between EU countries (we're talking about one order of magnitude in the extreme cases), language barriers are the main things holding back the demographic crisis that would come from mass economic immigration within the EU.

> Let's face it: our culture (all across the EU), is American, anyway. It's stupid to pretend otherwise.

EU is a big place (and so is the US). Perhaps you've mainly visited major urban centers of both and so don't see the rather unique cultures both hold.

Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

#688

Post by RobotToaster »

ithkuil wrote: post #606
_1tem wrote: post #588

If you go to the doctor with a problem and get a blood test and they say that everything looks fine, but you don’t feel fine, then you don’t say: “well the numbers are right, I should feel fine”. Rather you try to find what the numbers aren’t capturing, because you know something is wrong. Same with the economy. The perception of the economy being bad is really pervasive as demonstrated by the last election, and perc…

Perception can be manipulated in many ways. People get used to things and give for granted things that used to be luxuries a few generations back (see "hedonic treadmill") Combine that with active participants who control the media landscape and have a vested interest in painting a bleak picture so they can be the ones fixing it. And then of course there is the fact that things are of course objectively hard for many…

> not everybody can be the average person.

Averages are often misleading.

If one person is a billionaire, and 999 have nothing, the average person is a millionaire. That average is of little comfort to the 999 however.

Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

#689

Post by scrollaway »

jasode wrote: post #684
DanielHB wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking the same thing the other day. Like how much of the US GDP is tied to their suburb-living car-dependent lifestyle. What percentage of the GDP is all that infrastructure (sewage, heating, power plants, power transmission, car production, road maintenance)? Sure that create jobs, especially lower-skilled jobs which are important for society. But at the same time they didn't really need to exist. It feels…

> much of the US GDP is tied to their suburb-living car-dependent lifestyle. [...] , but it doesn't create value. The "value" is for the citizens that prefer suburbs style living. People who prefer dense city living with mass-transportation and walkable errands like European cities or downtown NYC/Chicago are missing the fact that there's another group of people (possibly the majority) that actually prefer the suburb…

How much of this preference is genuine, versus just taught or forced?

I live in Brussels and every time I welcome new American friends here and show them around, their mind is blown that it’s even possible to live in a city center at an affordable rate within walking distance to groceries, restaurants and activities.

Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

#690

Post by madeofpalk »

luizfzs wrote: post #255

But is the majority of the population thriving? It is very misleading (at best) to say the economy is strong when a good chunk of the population live paycheck to paycheck. A handful of companies are thriving, but barely any of its employees.

If you could live in any country, but you don't get to pick who you are or where you live in that country, which country would you pick?
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