How Europe crushes innovation

This happens because of bad incentives. Since the welfare state is on the spot to pick up the tabs via unemployment benefits they would rather have industries keep paying for as a long as possible even if it means killing the goose that laid the golden eggs in the long run.

But all of this is largely amplified by globalisation. The welfare is not compatible with a world where companies can decide to set up shop somewhere else in the world to benefit from cheaper labour cost and lower regulations and still being able to sell their stuff in the market they somewhat destroyed.

It ends up strengthening the state because workers defer to it and ask it to foot the bill. This all ends up being a vicious cycle where over time the state because massively obese and nothing moves because almost everything is dependent on it to some extent.

Now to be fair it is absurd that companies are allowed to make so much profit and keep most of it, not redistributing to the workers who are actually contributing the most. But it all starts with bad regulations and incentives. Companies cannot be expected to compete with foreign imports that benefit from much lower costs in every dimension, that is just unfair competition.

Free markets are an illusion that only benefits those at the top and this is largely where the problem lies. If imports were to be taxed appropriately, there would be less reasons to delocalize and the job market would be much more competitive for the demand side, rendering the layoff problem mostly moot. Who cares about benefits/compensation if the next job is right there?

Yes that's the point. They import cheap labor ready to take jobs at lower prices than the native population because they don't have to live in the same social circles. It's almost the same as delocalization, it's a form of social dumping and all of this is possible because governments are both incompetent and addicted to the tax money. The pension deficit is the result of an overly socialized system where governments promised unrealistic benefits to a generation who fully profit from it and now let their children pay for it.

This is the result of relying too much on politics. If parents where to ask their children to pay for their expensive retirement benefits directly, most who tell them to fuck off, rightfully so. But since politicians have placed a level of indirection in between, it's not the responsibility of anyone yet everyone pays for it.

Socialist systems have a way of self-destructing after a while because nobody ends up being accountable for anything. Currently the politicians are good scapegoats but really the people who put those politicians in place bear as much responsibility.

If it had been about their own money, things wouldn't have turned out this way. Funnily enough since most people don't trust governments that much, they have double dipped, saving on top of retirement benefits and "investing" in real estate that they now rent at a high price to their children. This has created an obscenely well-off generation, that is now voting for immigration in order to keep their obscene retirement benefits, furthermore fucking their children.

> Even if this is completely correct, you would be paid more in California, right?

Correct, at the time it was about a 50% increase. However, given my food & shelter costs it would have ended up being more expensive for me to live in California.

The post I replied to was about high levels of taxation, which exist in the US also (the treatment of capital gains would have been much more favourable to me).