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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

#791

Post by caseyy »

vv_ wrote: post #725
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…

> 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…

I’ve worked all over Europe in the games industry as did some of my long-term friends. Relocating for employment is a broader discussion but from a regulatory perspective, it just involves driving a car. No visas, no national insurance registration, no right to work worries, etc.

Yes, salaries vary but not much in companies hiring at the global level.

The point of comparison was not the US, but pre-EU Europe as the claim in the comment I responded to was that the single market is a myth. It is not.

I don’t think Germans buy German, Poles buy Polish, etc. Many Europeans drive German cars and many play Polish games like Cyberpunk 2077, French games like Dishonored and what Ubisoft makes. Many use Scandinavian banks and so on.

Regarding employment, you are right that it is still not effortless, but you can often be employed in one EU country and live in another. This used to be called being a frontier worker I believe. With remote work, that label isn’t used anymore. But yes, living in Lithuania you’d want to be employed in Germany probably in your situation. Before Brexit, I lived in England and was employed in Italy — no problem aside from getting a taxpayer ID of sorts in Italy which was a minor hassle (mostly slow process).

I really didn’t face much of the issues people present in this thread while moving around in the last few decades. Nor have my friends. One year they work in Oslo, the other in Lisbon, then in Warsaw. Some start their own companies to contract all over Europe as supplier agreements are relatively easy from a tax perspective. I think this whole moving around Europe concern is something solved by filling out some forms for 8 hours every year and maybe paying a local accountant sometimes to sort out taxes.

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

#792

Post by Jensson »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #686
Guthur wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Trade balance shows US doesn't produce that much others wants to buy while others produce a lot of things US wants to buy. You almost never see "Made in USA" outside of USA, except some agricultural products like almonds from California.

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

#793

Post by Jensson »

adammarples wrote: post #777
valval wrote: post #744

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also like the example where if you break someone’s window and they fix it for $300, that’s at least an extra $300 in GDP.

But they would have spent the 300 on something else

No, many people save their money.

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

#794

Post by naming_the_user »

data_maan wrote: post #557
naming_the_user wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like a huge generalization to me. The US, UK, EU and realistically most developed countries I would say have fairly similar quality of life within margin of error. I've travelled a fair amount and everywhere is basically the same. For an individual it's really going to come down to lifestyle and what you prefer. Some people like urban living and walkability, if that's you then you probably want Japan or ol…

> The US, UK, EU and realistically most developed countries I would say have fairly similar quality of life within margin of error. Ahem... Have you seen the standards in the UK get diluted year after year post-Brexit? There's more to the story than the listed examples. Environmental standards dictate your risk of developing various diseases later in life so are a big difference in quality of life. E.g., if you drink…

I guess I have a physicist mindset but basically I feel that these things are within margin of error. We're talking 20%, 40%, whatever. And because the lifestyle is so different it's hard to compare directly, it depends on your personal vision of what you want in life, as I mentioned some people want Paris, some people want the mountains.

I do think that if you're going to live in a Big City(tm) then the old world just does cities better. Then again I haven't visited SF, just NYC.

Job security isn't something I've ever cared about in my life. Starting from zero (no parental wealth), beyond about age 20-22 I've always had a minimum of six months savings, who cares, just find another job. It's business, you're not married. If you're an actual adult and you need a job continuously to get by you've fucked up somewhere.

It kind of just feels like a leverage decision, anyone middle class or above has a net worth in the x00k's, it's just about whether you have anything liquid vs locked up in home value etc.

If you have 0 in the bank then unless you're in North Korea or something you have bigger issues than "which country has better QoL" in my opinion, you need to work on yourself first.

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

#795

Post by mym1990 »

gruez wrote: post #364
spaceguillotine wrote: post #350

I've never known more homeless people before in my life in America, seems like its only the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer and less healthy.

>seems like its only the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer and less healthy. At least in the past decade, the opposite has been happening. >[...] Even after taxes and transfers, the average real income of households like his grew by 110% from 1990 to 2019, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). But most of that growth took place early in the time period: in 2019 he was probably doing worse…

Percentages are not enough to get a full picture. If I make 100k a year, the person making 50k will need to see a 2x increase in their percentage gain to see the same amount gained in currency. I would take a small bump of a large number over a large bump of a small number any day. And the reality is that the disparity is much higher when you’re talking about the bottom 20 and top 20, and just gets exponentially worse from there.

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

#796

Post by jumping_frog »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #686
Guthur wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

US is the very reason why there is instability around the world. US touts security for itself as reason while causing insecurity for other nations, (either through military adventurism or social engineered coups) so that they can't rise.

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

#797

Post by shskdnxnxj »

dlkf wrote: post #593
sriram_malhar wrote: post #545

I like Vinod Khosla's take (on Twitter): Stop measuring GDP and instead measure the total income of the bottom 50% of the population and optimize policy for that. Additions and exits from this group can also be tracked. We get what we measure. Will this raise income inequality?

If we did this fifty years ago, we’d be having this discussion by snail mail.

No, we might be having this discussion on mars instead of iPhones.

None of our elites care about: a) 99% of us living a meaningful life b) technologically moving humanity forward (supports bullet a)

Install elites that care about those and then you can use any measure you want, any system you want, etc. Instead we’ve replaced god with money. Only an upgrade for the 1%.

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

#798

Post by blibble »

Slartie wrote: post #651
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…

> 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…

the fact there is no EU single market for services is why I was not concerned on a long term basis for the UK economy as a result of leaving the EU

the UK is a service based economy, all growth from the next century is going to come from services, not by increasing cheese exports or trying to compete with the Chinese on battery production

almost all UK startups branch out to the US before they try the continent

no single market legislation is ever going to change this

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

#799

Post by Lionga »

sharpshadow wrote: post #625

The DAX reached this year a new record of over 20000. Is Germany doing good right now? On the news reports they even have to mention that it’s how the investors predict the future market, because everybody here know the economy is shit atm. If I’m not mistaken most of the growth in the capital market comes from the continuing money „printing“ right?

DAX companies make 90% of the money outside of Germany. Thinking the DAX reflects the german economy is uninformed at best.

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

#800

Post by Arkhaine_kupo »

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?

> How does the election tell you anything about the economy?

He didnt say it said anything about the economy, just the perception of it.

Now to answer that question, there is the simple old adage of "its the economy, stupid" that won Clinton his campaign. But the reality is that economy perception is always asked in polls, all year round. So trends can be established wtih decades of data. Secondly, voting attitudes can be understood through economic perception, when people perceive the economy is thriving incumbents do better seeing Biden's poll numbers anyone could tell that the economy perception was not good.

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