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How Europe crushes innovation

economist.com

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Re: How Europe crushes innovation

#31

Post by Scarblac »

jstummbillig wrote: post #20
knowledge-clay wrote: post #10

I'd rather live in a society with strong labor protections than one that is "more innovative", whatever that means.

Do you really? Or do you actually want to sustain your standard of living as safely as you can? Because then the question arises: What if the current way of handling labor protection in the EU (as one of many components) leads to destroying yours and everyone elses standard of living, simply because it's unaffordable? Would you still argue that this is the way to go? Everyone going down with the ship together? I don'…

Our standard of living is destroying the planet and it needs to go down a lot anyway.

Re: How Europe crushes innovation

#32

Post by bojan »

jstummbillig wrote: post #20
knowledge-clay wrote: post #10

I'd rather live in a society with strong labor protections than one that is "more innovative", whatever that means.

Do you really? Or do you actually want to sustain your standard of living as safely as you can? Because then the question arises: What if the current way of handling labor protection in the EU (as one of many components) leads to destroying yours and everyone elses standard of living, simply because it's unaffordable? Would you still argue that this is the way to go? Everyone going down with the ship together? I don'…

> Because then the question arises: What if the current way of handling labor protection in the EU (as one of many components) leads to destroying yours and everyone elses standard of living, simply because it's unaffordable?

It's quite an assumption that it's unaffordable. In the last decades efficiency has been only increasing, but working hours per week aren't significantly going down nor are the salaries noticeably higher.

Where does all the extra efficiency go to? It's pretty ok in my book if it goes to social security.

Re: How Europe crushes innovation

#33

Post by cc81 »

Sweden is relatively good at creating innovative companies but is pretty friendly towards small companies especially.

Europe does lag behind though for many different reasons. One big is that the single market of EU is on paper large but in practice it is a lot of different countries with very different cultures and languages.

Re: How Europe crushes innovation

#34

Post by rich_sasha »

s0sa wrote: post #14
rich_sasha wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does the cost of the Brussels administration compare to, say, the US federal administration? A spot-checked LLM answer tells me, as fraction of GDP: - EU: 1% - US: 24% - China: 35% That is quite a favourable comparison for Europe, I'd say. EDIT if anything, staring at these numbers, one might conclude the EU is not spending enough in general, in particular on innovation. Quite the stark contrast to being a money…

How are you arriving at these percentages? Show your work.

How nicely you ask. I arrived at them by division.

Since you ask so nicely, it gives me pleasure to provide further details:

- This link discusses the 2025 EU budget: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/eu-annual-budget... there are two numbers. It is unclear if the budget is the sum, or if one number includes the other. But let's add them for an annual budget of approx 250bn EUR

- EU GDP is around 20tn EUR according to this Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_European_Union (the nominal number)

- using division I arrive at 1.25% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_(mathematics)

For the US:

- This webpage: https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder... puts the federal spending at $6.66tn (hmm)

- Wikipedia again puts US GDP at around $30tn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_States

- We arrive at federal budget spending of 22%

I'm not claiming these are the best or most up to date statistics, but this is a roughly 20x difference between US and Europe, and I understand the 2025 EU budget is particularly large.

The notion that EU bureaucracy is particularly expensive has no foundation in fact, AFAICT.

Re: How Europe crushes innovation

#35

Post by rich_sasha »

rs_rs_rs_rs_rs wrote: post #16
rich_sasha wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does the cost of the Brussels administration compare to, say, the US federal administration? A spot-checked LLM answer tells me, as fraction of GDP: - EU: 1% - US: 24% - China: 35% That is quite a favourable comparison for Europe, I'd say. EDIT if anything, staring at these numbers, one might conclude the EU is not spending enough in general, in particular on innovation. Quite the stark contrast to being a money…

Comparison does not work, EU does very little compared to what the US/China administrations do, you'll have to add the cost of all the countries administration too.

The claim was that the EU is a money grab for Brussels time wasters. The cost of the EU bureaucracy is minimal.

What the member states spend, and if they do it well etc. is a totally separate question.

Re: How Europe crushes innovation

#37

Post by brendoelfrendo »

This article is so facile as to be meaningless. All it says is "making it easy to fire people is better for innovation," and then barely backs that up, as if it should be taken as writ that the author has found the one simple thing that Europe needs to fix. It talks about the "European model," but only really specifically mentions Germany (with a brief shout out to France in perhaps the only worthwhile section of the article, where it focuses on actual numbers) and doesn't really discuss anywhere else. It's certainly an opinion piece in that it showcases the author's opinion, but it doesn't do anything vis-a-vis persuasion.

Re: How Europe crushes innovation

#38

Post by jstummbillig »

Muromec wrote: post #27
jstummbillig wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really? Or do you actually want to sustain your standard of living as safely as you can? Because then the question arises: What if the current way of handling labor protection in the EU (as one of many components) leads to destroying yours and everyone elses standard of living, simply because it's unaffordable? Would you still argue that this is the way to go? Everyone going down with the ship together? I don'…

Why would it become unaffordable?

Because labor protection costs money. If you get something from that, that's net boosting your economy, you have no problem. If not, you get social cohesion, at a price.

Somebody is paying that price. If it's companies they are disincentivized to employ people in your market. If companies go somewhere else to employ people, jobs disappear from your market. If the jobs disappear, so does the money.

Re: How Europe crushes innovation

#39

Post by nomel »

bojan wrote: post #32
jstummbillig wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really? Or do you actually want to sustain your standard of living as safely as you can? Because then the question arises: What if the current way of handling labor protection in the EU (as one of many components) leads to destroying yours and everyone elses standard of living, simply because it's unaffordable? Would you still argue that this is the way to go? Everyone going down with the ship together? I don'…

> Because then the question arises: What if the current way of handling labor protection in the EU (as one of many components) leads to destroying yours and everyone elses standard of living, simply because it's unaffordable? It's quite an assumption that it's unaffordable. In the last decades efficiency has been only increasing, but working hours per week aren't significantly going down nor are the salaries noticeab…

> efficiency has been only increasing

Through innovation.

Re: How Europe crushes innovation

#40

Post by VirusNewbie »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #17
knowledge-clay wrote: post #10

I'd rather live in a society with strong labor protections than one that is "more innovative", whatever that means.

You can have your cake and eat it too. It's called the Danish model, although Denmark does not completely implement it. Make it cheap & easy to both hire & fire people, but then take care of people who are fired through a generous safety net. High taxes pay for the safety net. Explicit taxes are better than implicit taxes. Forcing companies to provide social services such as employment guarantees or health insurance…

How does that work with immigration? Does Denmark allow anyone to receive these benefits?
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