Because they could care less about anything else.
Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals
721–730 of 1001 posts
Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals
#722Us 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…
It really is an eternal September.
Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals
#723Earlier 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…
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)
Okay how much do they pay? Is it closer to 5K or 500K?
Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals
#724Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 t…
Interesting that you call this a problem of marketization and not of the governments callous immigration policy and the racism/nationalism of the average brit.
If people can't afford a house then they can easily look to other markets, they just don't want to because they feel entitled to "their county". The largest culprit after mass immigration is the unwarranted fear of bodily harm from living "poor countries"
Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals
#725Us 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…
> 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…
> There is freedom of movement for workers which means it's easy to recruit top talent across the continent.
It might be possible, but it’s not easy and is rarely done outside a few select countries, such as Switzerland. I’ve received offers from recruiters in Poland and Germany, but most of them seem to be trying to cut labor costs since hiring a foreign worker is often cheaper than employing a domestic one. However, when factoring in cost-of-living adjustments, these opportunities aren’t very appealing. The same principle applies in reverse; for instance, a German wouldn’t move to Lithuania for work because the wages there are significantly lower.
> Remote work is also much simplified.
If I’m employed in Lithuania and want to work remotely in Germany, I can only do so for less than 50% of the calendar year. Otherwise, I’d need to be employed in Germany. As far as I know, this restriction doesn’t apply in the United States.
> The regulatory environment is significantly unified under the EU so there are few regulatory risks for companies growing outside their country within the region.
The same applies to the United States, which is the point of comparison for the EU in this case. Additionally, this is highly dependent on the industry you’re targeting, as the requirements can vary significantly for certain products.
> Every EU company also has access to the entire continent's consumer base – 450 million residents, which is 50% more than the US.
In theory, Germans will buy German products, and Poles will buy Polish products. This used to be true for digital services too, such as contracting, until companies started cutting costs by looking for cheaper labor in Eastern Europe.
Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals
#726GDP 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…
> It feels like much like defense spending, it create jobs, but it doesn't create value.
This is the safest period in human history by a huge margin. It may not feel that way given the ultra connected, headline consuming nature of most people these days. But it is true.
Global trade has lifted more people out of poverty than anything else, and that was first enabled by maritime trade which was implicitly secured by the US Navy post WW2. The Internet is the second coming of that, the invention of which was a result of US military spending.
You may think that US defense spending is too high, or take other faults with the US military industrial complex. But to say that it provides no value is uninformed.
Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals
#727Earlier 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.
> introduce English as main language of schooling
Good idea - wrong language. English would make EU less European. German would be a better choice, or French or . Not that I believe in the idea.
Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals
#728Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals
#729Us 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…
> 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. [citation needed] because I think this is extremely false. It is easy to underestimate the pain caused by having all the pre-euro currencies and pre-EU tax laws (yes there was the Schengen zone and EEC, but the EU uniformity…
The current EU laws (especially tax laws) aren't helpful for businesses. If you want to do business in every EU country you basically have to register a business in each of them.
Sure, you can sell goods for €10.000 - €20.000 to another EU country without much trouble, beyond that you need to setup a business in each country, sometimes you even need employees or at least an office in a country to be able to do so. I worked for a company that shipped to a number of EU countries, from an EU country. It has taken them 15 years to expand from shipping to three countries to nine. Every time they want to enter a "new market" it is years of planning and insane fees or doing business in a supposed "single market".
The current situation is better than before the EU, but it's by no means good. Certainly no where as good as a Nebraska company wanting to sell their product in New Mexico. EU business will never grow to the size of American companies if they cannot bootstrap themself in a true single EU market. An American business immediately have a potential customer base of 350 million consumer, an EU business have at most 80 million if they start in Germany and will have to add an insane bureaucracy if they want to expand.
EDIT: My information is out of date: In 2021 a solution was introduced where you can pay your VAT locally, and the tax authority in your own country will handle the transfer of VAT to the other EU countries.
There are still some taxes (e.g. taxes on tobacco or alcohol) you may need to handle for each country, and to do some you may need to be a registered business.
Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals
#730I've given the strength of the US economy a lot of thought recently and it comes down to 8 main reasons. The two obvious ones are:
- Liberal labour and corporate laws
- abundance of resources (fossil fuels + fertile soil)
The other 6:
- Low housing prices due to vast land reserves and cheap construction. leaves more capital available to invest into the stock and bond markets
- An excellent system of highways. reduces transportation costs for companies and allows for high labour market flexibility (+ high willingness of Americans to commute large distances)
- Coherent labour market that spans roughly 330M people
- A nation wide well established 401k system that funnels a lot of the retirement savings into US stocks and bonds - incl. venture capital.
- higher affinity for risk taking. Americans are in large parts descendants of risk taking expats
- Large maritime borders and only two (friendly) neighboring countries