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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

#701

Post by jack_riminton »

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…

The problem is that countries who don't want to compete on the marketisation of everything will lose out eventually.

In your example of elderly care, an extended family in Italy may care for their own grandmother (and they'd probably live longer). But the market in Italy isn't so bouyont so the younger generation can't get high paying jobs and move out even if they wanted to.

The high spending and marketisation in the US skews the game for everyone whether they like it or not.

(no moral judgements here, just observations)

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

#702

Post by refurb »

mrtksn wrote: post #623
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…

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…

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.

It doesn’t because the insurer doesn’t pay $500k.

Not to mention that if something costs $10k in the US that costs $5k in Europe, that $5k that doesn’t get spent on something else (which would also increase GDP)

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

#703

Post by foldr »

vasco wrote: post #646
_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 of the economy being bad is really pervasive as demonstrated by the last election How does the election tell you anything about the economy? Are you injecting a bunch of your reasons why you think people voted for X or Y or is there a factual argument behind that sentence?

Exit polling asking voters their reasons for voting the way they did.

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

#705

Post by ak_111 »

jack_riminton wrote: post #701
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…

The problem is that countries who don't want to compete on the marketisation of everything will lose out eventually. In your example of elderly care, an extended family in Italy may care for their own grandmother (and they'd probably live longer). But the market in Italy isn't so bouyont so the younger generation can't get high paying jobs and move out even if they wanted to. The high spending and marketisation in th…

You highlight and try and predict the eventual problems of non-marketisation but you don't seem and try and do the same to the eventual problems of marketisation.

These things are difficult to predict, but already for example we notice some problems with ultra-marketisation in the UK where house prices are now 10-12x average annual salary (it used to average 6-8x for the last two decades), and all the social strife this is causing in society. For example it can eventually lead to mass violent protests against migrants or electing extreme political parties.

Another example is that it has seriously degraded public services, since nurses can barely survive on their salary there is huge shortage of medical employees leading to huge waiting list for medical, even critical, operations.

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

#706

Post by atq2119 »

mathverse wrote: post #679
caseyy wrote: post #655

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. This is simply not true. There is freedom of movement for workers which means it's easy to recruit top talent across the continent. Remote work is also much simplified. There's no friction moving goods and company assets acr…

This is absolutely not true. Moving across Europe is significantly harder than in US. On top of that companies hiring across Europe need to go B2B or EoR. The countries are absolutely not harmonised in terms of regulations, labor law or employing people. I am sorry but you absolutely have no clue what you are talking about.

Moving across Europe may be harder than moving across the US. But moving across Europe (at least the EU) today is much easier than it was 40 years ago, pre-EU.

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

#707

Post by amtc80 »

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…

It isn't illogical. Americans move to suburbs because there aren't enough affordable cities. Then they complain about the cost of gas, energy, housing and taxes which are inherently worse with lower density.

Suburbs aren't for standard of living, but affordability. You take the most available labour, the most available construction, and connect it with the most available transportation and you get suburbs. All without the need for much effective planning, organization or innovation.

But eventually someone else does those things. And then suburbs are expensive in comparison.

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

#708

Post by wezdog1 »

jaco6 wrote: post #534
joejohnson wrote: post #493

One of America’s biggest rivals is in fact the EU and a unified Eurasian continent. But luckily the ties connecting this continent literally blew up, the price of energy in Western Europe skyrocketed and it sent Germany (and thus the whole EU) into a recession. Even better, these “allies” are being forced to fund their own demise.

You’re right. If I were European I’d be wondering why we don’t team up with Russia in our own alliance and leave NATO to the Anglos.

An undemocratic despot nation? Keep up the great ideas.

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

#709

Post by rdm_blackhole »

kergonath wrote: post #676
sajithdilshan wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. The tax burden is absolutely not "massive", either in relative or absolute terms. Money going to underdeveloped parts of the EU is by design. Helping them helps everyone. It creates a huge internal market and companies and people benefit, even from net contributing countries. There su…

> Money going to underdeveloped parts of the EU is by design. Helping them helps everyone.

That is your take on it. But is it true? How does a French/German person benefit from the money from their taxes being sent to another country when their own economies are in the dumpster?

> It creates a huge internal market and companies and people benefit, even from net contributing countries.

Maybe for big companies. I don't think a plumber in Spain cares that they can sell their services to someone in Latvia.

> There sure are issues to solve, but in pure monetary terms, the EU is a no brainer.

Then why is it that we are having this conversation?

If the EU is a no brainer, we should be swimming in cash, shouldn't we?

Even the most ardent supporters of the EU have finally admitted the truth (such as Mario Draghi), the EU is falling behind on many fronts including but not limited to AI, EVs, economic output, industrial output, defense spending and so on...

> Just look at the UK

That's a bit disingenuous. There are many countries in Asia or elsewhere that are doing just fine without being part of a union such as the EU.

What about Germany currently? What about Greece after 2008? What about France which had a 10%++ unemployment rate for the majority of the 2010s?

The UK is not doing well at the moment, that is a given, but let's not pretend that the countries in the EU are doing any better either.

At least the UK has a functioning government whereas France is in a deadlock and will soon go through it's 4th prime minister/government of the year.

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

#710

Post by jdblair »

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…

Indeed, many people prefer living in the suburbs, but a big reason for this is the hidden subsidies the US provides for suburban development.

When housing units are close together (town-homes, multi-unit buildings) the cost of infrastructure (sewer, water, roads, sidewalks, etc.) are shared by more units, and thus by more taxpayers. If the houses are farther apart, the cost per unit goes up.

So its fine if you want to live in the suburbs, be we should have an honest accounting of the costs so suburban households are paying the full price of their spacious lifestyle.

See this StrongTowns post about this issue: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2023/7/6/stop-subsidizin...

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