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Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

economist.com

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Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#121

Post by User23 »

underwater wrote: post #29
okareaman wrote: post #9

The opening paragraph: In 1984 a besuited 20-something American executive on a visit to France offered Europeans a few tips for corporate success. Entrepreneurs needed to be given a second chance if they failed and government bureaucrats made for lousy investors, he told a television interviewer. His advice was sage. But European companies ruled the global corporate roost alongside those of America and, occasionally,…

On the other hand, Steve Jobs rejected conventional medicine when he became sick, which may have contributed to his premature death.

There is a great article about Steve Jobs and Genentech waiting to be written, but so far nobody has done it.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#122

Post by vmception »

> Half of Europe’s richest ten billionaires inherited fortunes spawned long ago; in America nine of the top ten are wealthy solely because of companies they founded.

Note the two differences in these regions. Specifically, population size of the respective country.

There is an old quip that suggests family fortunes are squandered by the third generation, but a greater force of this would simply be how many people are there to an inheritance?

France, for example, only doubled in population size from 1790 to 2021.

The United States, on the other hand, went from a population of 1,000,000 to a population of 330,000,000 from 1790 to 2021.

Its more likely that people aren't irresponsible with fortunes en masse, and that it simply dilutes when people pop out too many babies.

Maybe you would like to compare to the entire European subcontinent, be my guest. I don't think thats necessary as the United States region was basically empty as it expanded west. The people that were already there had already been undergoing a multi-century decimation by the time the union expanded.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#123

Post by brainless »

systemvoltage wrote: post #100
brainless wrote: post #95

I am from India and for the first 8-10 years of my post-college life I drank all the "glory" reporting of the American style of doing business. I tried doing it myself. I fell apart, suffered silently for years. Moved to Germany, went through counseling at the end of that period. Learnt that life is a lot more than silly startup games. No matter what anyone tells me, I have seen it myself first hand - I want a happie…

I am sorry you had such an experience. Startup life has pros and cons, and situationally varied. I've worked on several startup ventures of my own and nothing in the world is more satisfying than "skin in the game". It feels real and impactful. I didn't work more than 8-10 hours a day. People using your products and gratification of the fact that you/your-team built is so much more real to me. Friendships I've formed…

I think you do not understand. I have more "skin" in the game than you might think. I am a founder who understands business, finance, talks to users, takes support tickets, can talk to investors, and write in 3 different programming languages, setup the entire software pipeline myself.

I am more hands-on than you might have seen around. Trust me on that.

Your definition of "skin" does not need to be mine. I want to have impact, for those who are not being taken care of. I am tired of investor led companies making the rich richer. I do not belong in that world.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#124

Post by wrnr »

TMWNN wrote: post #107
wrnr wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Belgium, Flanders

>Belgium, Flanders Does pillarization help or hurt here? I'd have thought that having multiple universities when there might otherwise be just one (University of Leuven being one obvious example), for example, might encourage competition. Or does it just take away potential advantage of scale without compensating benefits?

Pillarization isn't a thing anymore, politics is still a thing but doesn't revolve on party lines, if that makes any sense. More like hyper-politics, it isn't politics until it is.

For research IMEC is huge, the people working their are generally good, mix tungsten with silicon and get better chips due to quantum effects. Non semiconductor stuff is a lot weaker, some stuff bordering on academic fraud. Semantic web this and that, sir Tim Burners Lee saving the internet again. Bureaucrats just love how consensus focused that stuff is, like catnip.

When I have meetings with government officials they are lead by consultants from PwC that talk about the need for more competition. I'm better off working for EY that just gets the contract.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#125

Post by gimmeThaBeet »

dv_dt wrote: post #86
oneplane wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, billionaires are just concentrations of wealth and power which hardly helps the masses. That is a general pattern in the USA anyhow, a few concentrations here and there but everyone else seems to be screwed in various ways (be it basics like healthcare, education, safety).

Sure, mainly I wanted to point out that, there is no conflict between providing a strong social safety net policy and having billionaires. The only reason to avoid the safety net would seem to be a myth that somehow others have to suffer for success to be possible.

I feel like the conflict in the spirit of the article is to create billionaires, not just have billionaires. 'Create' is not a great word, but 'create an environment that allows for creation of new wealth' is a bit verbose. Granted, I'm sure in the US, very few of the billionaires grew up in meager means, but quite a lot became billionaires under their own endeavors. Admittedly, it is largely secular (i.e. technology), but I think that dovetails.

But out of the top 10 richest in the US, only the Waltons are heirs. I would say it's a bit of a distortion, since the all of them combined I think is still larger than any other US individual.

Looking at Sweden, it looks like a lot of it is inherited, certainly most of the top 10. And like 1/4 are H&M, Tetra Pak, and Ikea alone. The new 'household names' are spotify and minecraft.

Norway is obviously smaller, but surprisingly, quite a lot of them got the three commas from their own businesses. The last-ditch cop out there is the typical Norway is in general an outlier due to being a highly developed nation with oil money. However, most of the billionaires are not there due to energy.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#126

Post by fy20 »

TMWNN wrote: post #98
oneplane wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, people here don't tend to go bankrupt and lose their house, healthcare (ironically) and life (from a social aspect) in general when they don't have a perfect health. They don't have to hide their state of wellbeing from their employer in the hope of not getting fired, and they don't have to worry about living on the street because they don't have a job for a bit. Businesses are fun and all, but in…

>On the other hand, people here don't tend to go bankrupt and lose their house, healthcare (ironically) and life (from a social aspect) in general when they don't have a perfect health Only 4% of US bankruptcies are because of medical bills https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2018/0... >. A tipoff that [insert large percentage here] of bankruptcies aren't actually because of medical costs is that on…

> The biggest cause of bankruptcies is lack of income, which health insurance doesn't affect.

Maybe that 4% is correct, but for sure how to deal with paying for medical care is a big worry for many people in the US.

There was a post a few days ago (or comments at least) discussing how many people working low wage jobs in the US are working 29 hours or fewer specifically so their employer doesn't need to provide health insurance. Are there social programs that cover those people, or do they just not go to the doctor when sick?

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#127

Post by deertick1 »

nodemaker wrote: post #90
238475235243 wrote: post #43

I've lived in a few different parts of the EU, and couldn't imagine a worse idea than starting a company there (which I did, once). Starting is hard enough without the general negative attitudes, the government insanities, the insane taxes, the low work ethic, the 8 weeks of vacation every month (I exaggerate, slightly). And I was in one of the two best EU countries, God only knows how bad it is in Spain or Italy or…

Hmm so 1) the corporate tax rate and other tax benefits in many EU countries is much lower than the US (I imagine you must have heard of US companies using their European operations to dodge us taxes) 2) The quality of labor you can hire is generally higher in europe (for example its common knowledge that facebook london has better engineers) I think what the us has is access to venture capital which i agree is diffi…

I have a really hard time believing theres higher quality talent in Europe in general.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#129

Post by poopypoopington »

238475235243 wrote: post #43

I've lived in a few different parts of the EU, and couldn't imagine a worse idea than starting a company there (which I did, once). Starting is hard enough without the general negative attitudes, the government insanities, the insane taxes, the low work ethic, the 8 weeks of vacation every month (I exaggerate, slightly). And I was in one of the two best EU countries, God only knows how bad it is in Spain or Italy or…

Lack of national healthcare really puts a damper on free labor movement in the US. You want to start a company but also have health insurance for your family? That'll be $12,000 with a massive deductible... Gets in the way of a lot of would be entrepreneurs

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#130

Post by ouchithurtsma »

Renaud wrote: post #28
chrisseaton wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hopefully we can improve at that while keeping worker protections This is how Europeans defend their system - better worker protections. But I get far better pay, conditions, and work-life balance at a North American company than I could possibly expect working for a local company. I'm not sure this defence really works anymore.

It's not just better worker protection. It's the whole system that has more social safeties for everyone. You might be better off with better conditions working for a top American company but you are not most people, you are part of a privileged few who had the capacity (opportunity, financial, intellectual) to be part of a a select who can enjoy this position. You're also dependent on your company to provide these b…

People have too much social net, there's little incentive for the lowest class to improve themselves. Sometimes they earn less after taxes taking a low paid job than just receiving government money. Social nets are bad. Nature has no social net either, works just fine. It's an unnatural system they build, no wonder its slowly crumpling and failing
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