House prices are out of wack anywhere desirable because the local income is irrelevant when non-locals are allowed to scoop up the local supply.
House prices are only "out of wack" in areas with poor social housing programs. Housing in Vienna is still affordable, only due to their very successful public housing programs. Public housing can be both beautiful and highly affordable if you want it to be, it's not like we don't know how to make good quality homes with lovely public amenities. It's mostly developers that want to skim on everything while selling it…
How does Vienna ration housing - social or otherwise - if not via price?
The insights on American and Chinese industry / tech are undercut by the generic stereotypical “Europeans are smug and backward-looking” comments. A bit disappointing that someone who spends a ton of time analyzing two complex societies (China and the US) falls into Reddit-tier caricature on a third.
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"Europeans are seething about it" lol bro cope harder. We're not the ones living under fascists or communists.
House prices are out of wack anywhere desirable because the local income is irrelevant when non-locals are allowed to scoop up the local supply.
Real estate prices are out of whack everywhere. Even in places with no good jobs, low population density, and rapid depopulation, real estate prices are increasing exponentially. There are no market forces in play anymore.
House prices in the U.K. have remained roughly the same multiple of wages as they have been since about 2005. That’s not really exponential growth.
I've lived in Silicon Valley for exactly 3 days now. Recently moved from the Midwest. There are two kinds of people in San Jose: locals who are normal folks you'd find anywhere, and techies with the AI brainworm. People who are astonished by the natural beauty of this place, and people who are astonished by an office park because there are Apple and Nvidia logos on it. It's all incredibly weird and I don't like it mu…
That’s right if the quote is net of income tax, but that wasn’t clear. While we’re on the subject we should include the 20% VAT (delta 5-10% sales tax in the states) which is the most regressive tax on the poor there is.
No vat on the majority of spending - from rent to food. But buy a £50k Rolex and yes there is vat.
Roughly the same with sales tax, it's just 1/3rd of that number.
> But buy a £50k Rolex and yes there is vat.
This is wildly ignorant of how less fortunate people live. They are hit with VAT on many daily expenses. Ignoring that fact and "tsk tsk"ing them for being frivolous is the [British] way.
No idea where OP is based but like most suggestions about the UK or London online it's bullshit. Most petrol stations have the same automated car washes they've always had. If you want your car hand washed there are lots of people doing that too, as there always have been. Like all places, the UK and/or London has plenty of issues including serious ones - but I'd still pick it over anywhere in the US regardless of sa…
Conversely, I've no idea where you or the parent has the idea that the UK is full of automated car washes and the OP is talking bullshit. I live in London and can think of a only a handful of the old fashioned automatic car washes. Whereas I can get a hand carwash at pretty much any supermarket car park I land on. From a guy with a bucket and trolley to a full team of four going at it with a power wash. Tesco, Sainsb…
London is a small part of the U.K. with a below average number of cars. It’s an anomaly compared to the 85% of the U.K. which is normal.
The beginning perfectly embodies the culture in Silicon Valley and touches on a crucial part that I notice when I visit: the complete lack of self expression or as I would put it ZERO drip. Remove the tech, what does SF contribute to the world wrt culture? Especially when compared to other metropolitan cities: NY, London, LA, Tokyo.
I think the tech unfortunately drives out the people who would contribute this
Income and wealth inequality! I don’t see a way out for the UK
Median wealth per adult in the UK is 176k. In the US it is only 124k. Source: UBS Global Wealth Report 2025 Of course US does has a much higher mean wealth…
The wealth inequality in the U.K. is very genratioanly skewed, mainly from the source of that wealth (housing and final salary pensions) which is no longer available to younger people.
>we see it is 5.5T for Western world vs 4.6T for China (according to my brief google searching). I would bet the unit volume of manufacturing with those 4.6T is more than double that of 5.5T. And those 5.5T likely have some very high value, high margin leading edge equipment. Not only is China catching up to those sectors, they are continuing their momentum to accelerate and expand in other low value market. They key…
> I would bet the unit volume of manufacturing with those 4.6T is more than double that of 5.5T. And those 5.5T likely have some very high value, high margin leading edge equipment. sure, and what's your point? My opinion is that high margin leading edge equipment is more interesting direction than low cost low tech produce.
They keep increasing and increasing the level of what they can produce. Within a couple of decades they will overtake TSMC, ASML, etc. If you're thinking about how the west still does all the design, they will produce their own computer architectures (Loongarch is outpacing RISC-V) and chips and operating systems. IIRC they're now able to make their own chips and chip-making equipment at a decade-old technology level and that's rapidly catching up.
As a Brit, I struggled to get much interesting out of this considering how many times he mentions "Europe" (in that condescendingly general way that only US folks seem to manage). He talks about "European" prospects and his trip to Denmark but then cites London as a representative example? This almost broke my brain it felt so incoherent. Never mind that (despite my personal wishes) we're not even part of the EU (whi…
Since I’ve lived in the UK before, I will say that yes it is not the same as continental Europe, but culturally, socially, and economically it is deeply tied into Europe, is Europe an . One could say the same thing about Ireland—except the majority of Ireland is in the EU. Does Europe stop at the border of Northern Ireland?
Northern Ireland is quite different to Great Britain, moreso than the difference between England, Wales and Scotland.