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Europe needs to escape providerism

loeber.substack.com

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Re: Europe needs to escape providerism

#31

Post by lordnacho »

missedthecue wrote: post #11
askonomm wrote: post #4

And yet Europeans have vastly higher life quality than Americans ... I wonder why that is ...

Yet 3x more Europeans immigrate to the US than Americans going the other direction. People vote with their feet and I feel like the EU vs US online discource is mainly based on vibes rather than facts.

Not sure this means anything. Almost every European country has a huge number of English speakers. Few Americans speak one of the local languages of Europe well enough to live there. Plus, we'd have to assume people were well informed in general about living conditions in various places.

Re: Europe needs to escape providerism

#32

Post by [deleted] »

lucideer wrote: post #27

I really like HN: the posts are on deeply interesting topics, & the userbase rarely fails to follow up with in depth technical analysis & insightful context in the comments. It's a pity that every once in a while a post like this comes along & slaps you back to reality by reminding you that there's still a significant contingent that fit the stereotype of brain-dead growth-hacker valley types. --- Reluctant as I am t…

[deleted]

Re: Europe needs to escape providerism

#33

Post by askonomm »

missedthecue wrote: post #11
askonomm wrote: post #4

And yet Europeans have vastly higher life quality than Americans ... I wonder why that is ...

Yet 3x more Europeans immigrate to the US than Americans going the other direction. People vote with their feet and I feel like the EU vs US online discource is mainly based on vibes rather than facts.

Well firstly there's about 2x more Europeans than Americans by population, and secondly 44% of Americans don't even own a passport.

Re: Europe needs to escape providerism

#35

Post by dm319 »

So someone who reaped all the benefits of living in a social system where education is of a certain standard for all then moves to a deregulated country with huge wealth, education and health inequalities, but has ended up on the rewarding side of that, is now wondering why things are so different.

Re: Europe needs to escape providerism

#36

Post by missedthecue »

bequanna wrote: post #5
woodruffw wrote: post #2

For some definitions of wealth, surely. By most quality of life metrics, the average (Western) European is doing as well or better than the average American.

Can you cite some specifics? I’ve travelled to quite a few places in Europe and coming from the American Midwest, we are beating much of Europe in most/all QoL metrics by a mile. Much larger and nicer homes, larger properties, mincer automobiles, more variety of all consumer goods, higher incomes, more wealth and social mobility to name a few and I live in “flyover” country.

Based on conversations I've had, it seems most Americans who think that way took a vacation to a ritzy area of Barcelona, Nice, or Florence, and and deduced that 100% of Europeans, must live like that.

Re: Europe needs to escape providerism

#37

Post by Alcatros552 »

The old european countries understand that education invested in the young results in taxes for the long run. Every soul without healthcare could just die along the way and all the investments are gone including the workpower

I find it wrong to call it lack of creating wealth of providerism its neither of those things. Its a fine balance to understand what is best for the entire population

Re: Europe needs to escape providerism

#38

Post by woodruffw »

dividendpayee wrote: post #6
woodruffw wrote: post #2

For some definitions of wealth, surely. By most quality of life metrics, the average (Western) European is doing as well or better than the average American.

The article suggests heavily that, the way things are going, that's not going to be the case in the future. Right now, Europeans are still living off past prosperity, but if they don't build a real technology industry and innovate, then future Europeans will be much worse off.

> Right now, Europeans are still living off past prosperity, but if they don't build a real technology industry and innovate, then future Europeans will be much worse off.

As an American, I've heard some variant of this for literally my entire life.

Europe is technologically conservative in ways that the US is not. It's unclear that this has, is having, or will have any impact on the actual material wellbeing of the people who live there.

Compare life expectancy[1], or just about any self-reported QoL metric[2] (where the US doesn't perform badly, just not better!).

[1]: https://www.ined.fr/en/everything_about_population/data/euro...

[2]: https://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/

Re: Europe needs to escape providerism

#40

Post by atoav »

throw__away7391 wrote: post #12
askonomm wrote: post #4

And yet Europeans have vastly higher life quality than Americans ... I wonder why that is ...

Cars. Americans spend a ton of money on having cars and building car-centric infrastructure. Most European countries could not afford to do this.

I am not sure you are very aware of european infrastructure projects. The current tunneling projects alone won't find ongoing equivalents in the US as far as I know.

But maybe we should talk about rail, because that is apparently going splendidly in the US.

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