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Europeans Are Becoming Poorer

wsj.com

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Re: Europeans Are Becoming Poorer

#101

Post by lucasRW »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #70
lucasRW wrote: post #39

Western European are funding the eastern countries (tens of billions per year), plus, are accommodating hundreds of thousands of migrants per year. You'd have to be a full to think that at some point this does not translate into a serious dent into your economic health.

>Western European are funding the eastern countries No they aren't. Western European countries are getting access to the eastern european consumer market to sell their products, and to the cheep Eastern European resources, products and labor to prop up their shortages for industry, labor and social services at the expanse of their own, through the EU common market. It's why Eastern Europe now pays the same or more fo…

It is true that the West can use the East's cheaper resources: but the benefits made there go into the pockets of those who own those businesses.

However, the funding of the East is spread across the complete taxpayer via EU contributions, which is in effect, a tax.

Re: Europeans Are Becoming Poorer

#102

Post by WA »

MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #92
WA wrote: post #55

Don't believe any article that uses AVERAGES instead of the MEAN when it comes to wages, because average wages are worthless to consider and are more easily skewed by extreme outliers. Since Jeff Bezos moved to our village, we're all multi-millionaires on average.

Did you mean to say "instead of the MEDIAN?"

Yes, my bad. I meant the median.

Re: Europeans Are Becoming Poorer

#103

Post by nunez »

> NAME REDACTED, a 31-year-old anesthesiologist living in Manchester, England, earns about £51,000 ($67,000) per year for a 48-hour workweek. Inflation, which has been about 10% or higher in the U.K. for nearly a year, is devouring his monthly budget, he says.

That's insane. AFAIK, Anesthesiologists in the US make $400k/year MINIMUM.

(I redacted their name to prevent them from backlinking to this site.)

Re: Europeans Are Becoming Poorer

#104

Post by FirmwareBurner »

nunez wrote: post #103

> NAME REDACTED, a 31-year-old anesthesiologist living in Manchester, England, earns about £51,000 ($67,000) per year for a 48-hour workweek. Inflation, which has been about 10% or higher in the U.K. for nearly a year, is devouring his monthly budget, he says. That's insane. AFAIK, Anesthesiologists in the US make $400k/year MINIMUM. (I redacted their name to prevent them from backlinking to this site.)

And people on HN say that the wage disparity between EU and US is overblown.

Re: Europeans Are Becoming Poorer

#105

Post by pas »

stuaxo wrote: post #40
motbus3 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a non European, I can see some patterns that happen to my country 10-20y ago. There is a systematic de-funding of education and health care to prioritise the same private sectors. It is hard to explain in few words, but at least in my country we realised it too late.

Neoliberalism is fairly explicit that the government shouldn't do anything - everything is farmed out to for profit businesses with light touch regulation - enshitification of everyday services is the result.

That's the result of "lack of neoliberalism", which is about efficient market-based solutions. Of course it turns out that just as socialism neoliberalism also tends to fall into a pathological state (regulatory capture, oligopolies, etc).

In the end these labels are pretty useless, the underlying problem is pretty easy to describe, is the system sufficiently just and cost effective or not. It doesn't really matter if it's market-based or it's done through some magic lottery system.

...

That said, services are suffering from cost disease big time. Healthcare and education badly needs productivity increases, otherwise quality has to drop to get back to sustainable funding levels.

Re: Europeans Are Becoming Poorer

#106

Post by pas »

nunez wrote: post #103

> NAME REDACTED, a 31-year-old anesthesiologist living in Manchester, England, earns about £51,000 ($67,000) per year for a 48-hour workweek. Inflation, which has been about 10% or higher in the U.K. for nearly a year, is devouring his monthly budget, he says. That's insane. AFAIK, Anesthesiologists in the US make $400k/year MINIMUM. (I redacted their name to prevent them from backlinking to this site.)

Brexit is working as intended, yeey! More NHS funding ... oh what, wait, what... oh dear, the xenophobe conservative clowns were lying? Oh no! Never would have crossed my mind!

Re: Europeans Are Becoming Poorer

#107

Post by FirmwareBurner »

lucasRW wrote: post #101
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Western European are funding the eastern countries No they aren't. Western European countries are getting access to the eastern european consumer market to sell their products, and to the cheep Eastern European resources, products and labor to prop up their shortages for industry, labor and social services at the expanse of their own, through the EU common market. It's why Eastern Europe now pays the same or more fo…

It is true that the West can use the East's cheaper resources: but the benefits made there go into the pockets of those who own those businesses. However, the funding of the East is spread across the complete taxpayer via EU contributions, which is in effect, a tax.

No, it goes into the pockets of all consumers. Westerners enjoy the cheapest energy and supermarket prices on food pricelessly because the unified common market work in their flavor (of those with capital) while the consumers in the eastern block have to put up with competing with western consumer prices at eastern wages, because they can buy energy, raw materials, resources and labor from the eastern block.

They also can afford elderly care and nursing because they can pay Eastern European workers less to suplement their ageing demographics and the shortages in their social care system, along with other lower prestige jobs that the locals don't want to do but are still necessary for a functional society (cleaners, delivery drivers, plumbers, builders, landscapers, etc).

You're making it sound like the money going to eastern block EU is hand outs. It's not. You're just misinformed or delusional. The money going to the eastern block for their development means more eastern consumers buying more western goods and services, which means more tax money and jobs in western countries. It means more labor competitive manufacturing so stuff can be made competitively in the union instead of manufacturing being offshored to China.

If you don't see these benefits, why don't you vote to leave the EU, maybe you'll see them then? Because it seems like you only want to have your cake and eat it too.

Re: Europeans Are Becoming Poorer

#108

Post by polotics »

t8sr wrote: post #46

Most new GDP growth since the 90s has and will continue to come from capturing new industries, like large scale web tech, genetic technology, space flight and modern investment finance. For all of these industries, you need a critical mass of specialists and capital, and so they can only be captured by very large companies. (Although SMBs can survive in some parts of the value chain, which is where Switzerland seems…

You seem to be under the impression that companies are things that exist inside of countries. I put it to you that, except for mafia led places where the rule of law doesn't exist (cough, Russia... but not only) companies are quite separate entities.

Re: Europeans Are Becoming Poorer

#109

Post by Gud »

ramblerman wrote: post #49
hcks wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europeans have a strong ability to cope for their declining standards of life. They’ll mention how about they have great cities/safety/etc but you’ll notice they never say which city/country exactly they’re talking about (as in let’s pretend all of Europe is Switzerland)

Swiss cities are consistently among the most expensive in the world. Food is bad. Very xenophobic society. It has a lot of great things too ofc. But I wouldn’t consider it representative of the nicer parts of Europe (vs pure financial optimization) mentioned above such as working less, walking, biking in the city.

To paint Switzerland with such broad strokes… Switzerland is culturally very different, you cannot compare Zürich to rural Valais, for example.

I work for a small factory in Aargau and they send me across the planet to install their devices, but I live in Zürich.

It is genuinely one of the nicest place I’ve ever been and I would hardly describe it as xenophobic.

Re: Europeans Are Becoming Poorer

#110

Post by pas »

BillyTheKing wrote: post #64

There's a significant issue in that innovation isn't always at the forefront in Europe. The primary focus seems to be maintaining the status quo, particularly safeguarding pensions. Tbh this lack of innovative thinking is quickly becoming a pretty severe problem. I was visiting a med island recently with both Americans and Europeans, it was evident how wide the income gap was becoming. The American members of our gro…

There's a lot of innovative thinking, for example making healthier cities by getting rid of ugly roads and replacing them with bike lanes and public transit alternatives.

What's missing is investment to increase productivity of costly public services. Sure there are billions of funds spent every year on "economic activity encouragement", but as you mention it just ends up propping up failing businesses.

Basically the healthy nice cities are still in a big ugly messy transitory phase. Trains as still fucking expensive and slow, so people fly and drive a lot. (Integrated ride sharing and overnight train service would be nice, etc.) And of course there's the issue of housing.

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