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The Future of European Competitiveness

commission.europa.eu

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Re: The Future of European Competitiveness

#31

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

moi2388 wrote: post #18
Mistletoe wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is though that I want to move to Europe precisely for all these same reasons. And I want to do it with my USA dollars and wealth that enabled it, so I do recognize the dissonance there. Are Europeans happier due to all of the reasons you listed? Do you enable wealth to grow at the expense of the happiness of its residents if you implement the reforms needed to “move fast and break things”? Are Americans hap…

I suppose the truth/ideal situation would be somewhere in the middle. But the inability to capitalise on the tech sector, difficult regulations as barrier to entry, and a lot of changing rules regarding innovation, making things “green” and environmental and consumer safety does give a high burden to industry when competing with entities like China and the USA which do not have these restrictions. I think a long-term…

It's a shame that the EU is painted as a failure unless they have low taxes and industrious go-getters trashing their system.

Their awesomeness doesn't show on a balance sheet so it might as well not exist.

Re: The Future of European Competitiveness

#32

Post by AlchemistCamp »

lapcat wrote: post #8

As an American, what I've seen, and what the statistics appear to show, is mostly stagnation for the majority of the population. Any modest post-pandemic wage gains have been offset by consumer product inflation. What we experience in the United States is the continuation of a trend going back 40-50 years: disparity of wealth, concentrating at the top. Of course those at the top have experienced spectacular growth in…

I’m curious what statistics you’re looking at. If you look at media real (inflation-adjusted) earnings, they’re considerably higher than one, two or any number of decades ago, even with the cost disease that medical and schooling sectors suffer from. Not only that, but wage growth has been faster for those earning below the median income than for those earning more. Absolute poverty rates have also fallen dramatically.

From all I’ve read, it looks like Americans are doing better than ever but are less satisfied due to ever-increasing expectations. My hunch is that for the vast majority of people, social media fuels this.

Re: The Future of European Competitiveness

#33

Post by [deleted] »

Mistletoe wrote: post #15
frankjr wrote: post #5

> Europe largely missed out on the digital revolution led by the internet and the productivity gains it brought: in fact, the productivity gap between the EU and the US is largely explained by the tech sector. The EU is weak in the emerging technologies that will drive future growth. Only four of the world’s top 50 tech companies are European. > Europe is stuck in a static industrial structure with few new companies…

The thing is though that I want to move to Europe precisely for all these same reasons. And I want to do it with my USA dollars and wealth that enabled it, so I do recognize the dissonance there. Are Europeans happier due to all of the reasons you listed? Do you enable wealth to grow at the expense of the happiness of its residents if you implement the reforms needed to “move fast and break things”? Are Americans hap…

[deleted]

Re: The Future of European Competitiveness

#34

Post by aziaziazi »

clarionbell wrote: post #22
Mistletoe wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is though that I want to move to Europe precisely for all these same reasons. And I want to do it with my USA dollars and wealth that enabled it, so I do recognize the dissonance there. Are Europeans happier due to all of the reasons you listed? Do you enable wealth to grow at the expense of the happiness of its residents if you implement the reforms needed to “move fast and break things”? Are Americans hap…

Problem is that it's not sustainable. We can't defend ourselves, our economies are de-industrializing, we have right and left radical taking over political spectrum all the while our pension and healthcare systems are moving ever closer to a breaking point. The careful approach may have brought as pretty far. But isn't working anymore. It hasn't worked since 2008 at least.

Your concerns are legitimate but the dream of an ever growing production isn’t sustainable either. But that is ok: not being the most powerful within a group is totally fine.

Re: The Future of European Competitiveness

#35

Post by throwaway48540 »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #31
moi2388 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose the truth/ideal situation would be somewhere in the middle. But the inability to capitalise on the tech sector, difficult regulations as barrier to entry, and a lot of changing rules regarding innovation, making things “green” and environmental and consumer safety does give a high burden to industry when competing with entities like China and the USA which do not have these restrictions. I think a long-term…

It's a shame that the EU is painted as a failure unless they have low taxes and industrious go-getters trashing their system. Their awesomeness doesn't show on a balance sheet so it might as well not exist.

I live in EU. What awesomeness? There are places with better social and health services while having less taxes and regulations. The regulations are making actual day to day life hard for everyone, directly as well as indirectly. EU is surviving, but I definitely wouldn't - and don't know anyone who would - say it's thriving. Most of my friends who work in software and other hitech are planning their move to US.

Re: The Future of European Competitiveness

#36

Post by izacus »

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #32
lapcat wrote: post #8

As an American, what I've seen, and what the statistics appear to show, is mostly stagnation for the majority of the population. Any modest post-pandemic wage gains have been offset by consumer product inflation. What we experience in the United States is the continuation of a trend going back 40-50 years: disparity of wealth, concentrating at the top. Of course those at the top have experienced spectacular growth in…

I’m curious what statistics you’re looking at. If you look at media real (inflation-adjusted) earnings, they’re considerably higher than one, two or any number of decades ago, even with the cost disease that medical and schooling sectors suffer from. Not only that, but wage growth has been faster for those earning below the median income than for those earning more. Absolute poverty rates have also fallen dramaticall…

> From all I’ve read, it looks like Americans are doing better than ever but are less satisfied due to ever-increasing expectations. My hunch is that for the vast majority of people, social media fuels this.

Or maybe the numbers are heavily cherry-picked, averaged and grouped to doctor them into prosperous metrics that aren't experienced by the large portion of the population.

Re: The Future of European Competitiveness

#37

Post by electrozav »

lsy wrote: post #14

I suspect it is actually a great strength of Europe that the attitude towards regulation (to put it perhaps overly simplistically, favoring more intangible rights over economic growth) precludes hype and bubble phenomena like the mentioned "creation of large, integrated data sets" or "young, innovative tech companies". This means that business, at least to some extent, is forced to address real-world issues and work…

I agree wholeheartedly. There are many benefits still to be reaped from making this regulation more paperless and automated, while keeping it as a check against unsupervised growth.

Re: The Future of European Competitiveness

#38

Post by AlanYx »

izacus wrote: post #19
AlanYx wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The report is critical of both actually (the regulations themselves as well as fragmentation in compliance and enforcement).

It is, but pretty much every single takeaway from even other points (energy, defense, etc.) comes back much strongly to the fragmentation of interpretations, enforcements and laws across the member states than the existence of regulation itself. Of course, haters of regulation will probably ignore this part and focus on the "GDPR bad" narrative :)

That's a strong theme, but it's not the only one. For example, there are three main points made about the GDPR in the second document:

- frequent changes in interpretation over time;

- the extra burden added by national transposition and enforcement, including local "gold-plating"/divergence; and

- the proportionally higher regulatory burden faced by SMEs and small mid-caps compared to larger companies.

The second point is squarely about fragmentation but other two touch on more core issues. Fragmentation does affect the other two, e.g., with multiple local DPAs there will be an inevitable ratcheting effect of what's required by the GDPR if an org wants to operate across the EU, but some of it is not related to fragmentation. Privacy Shield was supposed to provide a pan-EU GDPR-compliant framework but got killed, now people are saying that the EU–US Data Privacy Framework is going to get shot down too, leaving data architects in the dark on how to comply. That uncertainty is going to exist even if all the DPAs get coalesced into a pan-national entity.

Re: The Future of European Competitiveness

#39

Post by pfannkuchen »

clarionbell wrote: post #22
Mistletoe wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is though that I want to move to Europe precisely for all these same reasons. And I want to do it with my USA dollars and wealth that enabled it, so I do recognize the dissonance there. Are Europeans happier due to all of the reasons you listed? Do you enable wealth to grow at the expense of the happiness of its residents if you implement the reforms needed to “move fast and break things”? Are Americans hap…

Problem is that it's not sustainable. We can't defend ourselves, our economies are de-industrializing, we have right and left radical taking over political spectrum all the while our pension and healthcare systems are moving ever closer to a breaking point. The careful approach may have brought as pretty far. But isn't working anymore. It hasn't worked since 2008 at least.

On the defense issue, I don’t really see where the threat would come from.

Russia isn’t in such a great place militarily either. It would be incredibly culturally strange for China to invade that far away and I don’t know that their military is configured for that anyway. They may influence and sabotage but would never attack Europe militarily IMO. Middle East and North Africa states don’t pose much of a threat still in an actual military conflict.

Who does that leave to defend against? America?

Re: The Future of European Competitiveness

#40

Post by telotortium »

izacus wrote: post #17
mxstbr wrote: post #3

Patrick Collison posted a summary of the results on Twitter in case you don't want to read the whole report: https://x.com/patrickc/status/1833127988512305352 TL;DR: "Mario Draghi's new report on EU competitiveness doesn't mince words."

It's also an American that cherry-picks a tiny part of a significantly more balanced report to drive their own viewpoint. As usual. Read the actual doc.

Is it actually balanced? With huge documents like these, the tendency is to add in artificial balance to placate various government factions, interest groups, etc. Often the document still has a preferred view that you can distill once you brush aside the filler.

Edit: just read the foreword (what would be called the “executive summary” in an American document). Seems like the Twitter thread describes that pretty well. And since the document authors know that the foreword is what most of the readers will read, that’s pretty indicative of their views.

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