European Stagnation Is Real
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European Stagnation Is Real
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Re: European Stagnation Is Real
#2p t
Re: European Stagnation Is Real
#3And individual debt in America versus Europe?
Re: European Stagnation Is Real
#4> American technology companies bid workers away from haircutting and waiting tables to write code.
What?
> Europeans now work at all, and fewer Americans do. (In the authors’ view, the American decline is driven mainly by the expansion of government health benefits for the non-employed, especially Medicaid, which raised the value of not working.
Um, other than the confusing “now work at all” which I interpret “are all employed”, this is a strange coincidence that the author thinks hair cutters are writing code and a vast population aren’t working at all.
I have lived and traveled throughout Europe, I have to say despite the “grateful” comments there truly are deeper cultural issues than software pays good so Europeans should write more software.
Besides, American VC pumps enormous cash into those salaries, most of which FAIL (20% success is the ideal VC margin isn’t it? I’m an outsider looking in on this one.)
So huge segments of American software developer payouts are actually failed investments (how much did Meta blow on “metaverse”? How much did Twitter hemorrhage before the Elon buy out? Etc.)
VC cash transfusion life support is not exactly the healthy economic float that saves civilization.
And really, vanishingly few benefit from this dynamic, which I think the deteriorating tech roles due to AI infiltration exhibits.
American vitality is a bubble trend without societal stability.
Re: European Stagnation Is Real
#5> American technology companies bid workers away from haircutting and waiting tables to write code. What? > Europeans now work at all, and fewer Americans do. (In the authors’ view, the American decline is driven mainly by the expansion of government health benefits for the non-employed, especially Medicaid, which raised the value of not working. Um, other than the confusing “now work at all” which I interpret “are a…
>> American technology companies bid workers away from haircutting and waiting tables to write code.
> What?
The context is clear is you read the whole paragraph instead of that one sentence:
> Once a good is non-tradable, the wage is not set globally but in local markets. Newly productive American technology companies bid workers away from haircutting and waiting tables to write code. Since Americans still need haircuts and cannot import them, the wages of hairdressers increase, without it affecting wages for hairdressers in Germany. American software wages rise and so do American non-software wages. In Europe this does not happen, because there is no growing software sector to start with.
And the author is correct (while the phrasing is a bit weird.) American hairdressers aren't not better at haircutting than European or African hairdressers. But they still (mostly) earn more than their counterparts in other continents, because their customers, or the customers of their customers, are richer.
> So huge segments of American software developer payouts are actually failed investments (how much did Meta blow on “metaverse”? How much did Twitter hemorrhage before the Elon buy out? Etc.)
In other words, capital pays laborers. It takes a huge amount of mental gymnastic to frame this as a bad thing.
Re: European Stagnation Is Real
#6And individual debt in America versus Europe?
Household debt rates in America are better than most of Western Europe and comparable to Germany [0].
FYI the Nordic states and Netherlands tend to have the highest household debt rates amongst European OECD states [0].
[0] - https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/household-debt.html
Re: European Stagnation Is Real
#7> American technology companies bid workers away from haircutting and waiting tables to write code. What? > Europeans now work at all, and fewer Americans do. (In the authors’ view, the American decline is driven mainly by the expansion of government health benefits for the non-employed, especially Medicaid, which raised the value of not working. Um, other than the confusing “now work at all” which I interpret “are a…
>> American technology companies bid workers away from haircutting and waiting tables to write code. > What? The context is clear is you read the whole paragraph instead of that one sentence: > Once a good is non-tradable, the wage is not set globally but in local markets. Newly productive American technology companies bid workers away from haircutting and waiting tables to write code. Since Americans still need hair…
If you think there are more than zero writers of code who were drawn away from cutting hair and waiting tables, I’ll eat a hat!
* it must be an unused natural fiber hat.
HN, anyone among you who once cut hair and waited tables? Pizza delivery does not count!
Re: European Stagnation Is Real
#8Before salty Europeans downvote and ignore this substack, the author (Luis Garicano) was an MEP who was the vice-chair of the RenewEurope [0] coalition who also helped create CBAM to both mitigate climate impact as well as protect European industry and is a member of the pro-EU think tanks CEPR [1] and Bruegel [2].
If there is an academic you want to listen to in order to understand how to better reform the EU's institutions, it's definitely Luis.
Anecdotally, the (EU+UK)-to-America pipeline of founders remains red hot, and that brain drain hasn't reduced in spite of Trump.
The EU can remediate this, but the window is increasingly closing as a number of traditional industries that EU states dominated such as automotive, steel, instrumentation, etc are increasingly being pressured by competition from China, Japan, South Korea, and others which pushes early stage capital out of Europe to other markets.
> Europe looks great to Americans because Europe is great for people with American incomes to buy the nicest it has to offer. But the nicest it has to offer is not available to (young) people in Europe today.
This is something everyone needs to remember in comparisons.
[0] - https://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/197554/LUIS_GARICANO/...
Re: European Stagnation Is Real
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> American technology companies bid workers away from haircutting and waiting tables to write code. > What? The context is clear is you read the whole paragraph instead of that one sentence: > Once a good is non-tradable, the wage is not set globally but in local markets. Newly productive American technology companies bid workers away from haircutting and waiting tables to write code. Since Americans still need hair…
If you think there are more than zero writers of code who were drawn away from cutting hair and waiting tables, I’ll eat a hat! * it must be an unused natural fiber hat. HN, anyone among you who once cut hair and waited tables? Pizza delivery does not count!
It's really hard to comprehend how this comment is relevant to the original article or my comment. It seems that you didn't read the whole article, the whole paragraph, nor the whole sentence you quoted. You only read one single phrase ('bid away') and decided to nitpick it to death.
Re: European Stagnation Is Real
#10> American technology companies bid workers away from haircutting and waiting tables to write code. What? > Europeans now work at all, and fewer Americans do. (In the authors’ view, the American decline is driven mainly by the expansion of government health benefits for the non-employed, especially Medicaid, which raised the value of not working. Um, other than the confusing “now work at all” which I interpret “are a…
>> American technology companies bid workers away from haircutting and waiting tables to write code. > What? The context is clear is you read the whole paragraph instead of that one sentence: > Once a good is non-tradable, the wage is not set globally but in local markets. Newly productive American technology companies bid workers away from haircutting and waiting tables to write code. Since Americans still need hair…
> And the author is correct (while the phrasing is a bit weird.)
Right, that's just a description of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect