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The US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the US is now nearly 2X

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Re: The US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the US is now nearly 2X

#41

Post by seydor »

fvdessen wrote: post #15

And yet with all that money you can’t buy European quality of life in the USA

you can move to europe, buy real estate easily and live above the local's means because US income is so much higher. In fact thousands of americans are doing it in the past few years

EDIT: Also, a large part of "quality of life" has more to do with the structure of european country populations. They are old , cohesive and mostly conformist societies that tend to help each other in times of need, something that the US, which is individualistic country made of immigrants can never do. This creates a more safe environment to live, but it is not an excuse for lackluster economic performance.

Re: The US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the US is now nearly 2X

#43

Post by derstander »

I don’t like this figure, nor the article it was copied directly from in the WSJ (which I believe was recently discussed here, archive link = https://archive.li/nzdtv).

Why don’t I like it? “Source: International Monetary Fund” !! Fantastic. That’s like quoting a scientific breakthrough and saying Source: MIT. Which of the many artifacts they’ve recently released did it come from? I scrolled through the first three or four pages of IMF pubs, checked all of the titles that I thought may have contained the figure or similar data but no dice.

Is it too much to ask for a standard citation including the publication title and date, too?

I went looking because another comment suggested that maybe Brexit made the Eurozone numbers look particularly bad. But I don’t think that’s the case: the WSJ article particularly calls out UK citizens as similarly being worse off.

But after all that looking I couldn’t ultimately tell you whether or not the Brexit hypothesis is correct.

Re: The US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the US is now nearly 2X

#44

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

midasuni wrote: post #5

All “growth” in gdp seems to go to rich people. Normal people have seen stagnant wages and increased costs from the owners. Why should I care if gdp isn’t increasing when I don’t see any gains whether it does or not?

I hear this or something similar all the time and I don't get it. Everyone with a 401k, IRA, etc. sees these gains.

Re: The US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the US is now nearly 2X

#45

Post by Alupis »

notfromhere wrote: post #34
slibhb wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economy doubling in size helps most people even if the resulting wealth is unevenly distributed. Goods, services, technologies, jobs, etc are good.

No it doesn't. Growth in the economy has to increase real wages, and real wages need to keep pace with housing, food, healthcare, etc increases in order to be meaningful. More jobs are only good if they actually provide a living wage.

> More jobs are only good if they actually provide a living wage.

This is false if you spend even a few seconds thinking about it.

Not all jobs are intended to "live" off of. Most of your entry-level jobs were supposed to be for highschool and college kids working part time.

The problem is we have more and more people never graduating out of entry level positions, and today we have folks demanding those entry level positions support a comfortable lifestyle.

You're supposed to graduate out of entry level work after you acquire skills, training, and/or education. Why are people not "moving up" is the real problem...

Re: The US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the US is now nearly 2X

#46

Post by mrtksn »

IMHO the west as a whole will need to re-consider its metrics.

Europe, not only Eurozone, lag in absolute numbers of economic activity but the life quality is not that different from the US and arguably it’s even better depending on what is important for you. An appendicitis generates more economic activity in the US but Europeans die les from it.

On the other hand, Europe does lag on post soviet era tech(that’s anything seen mainstream adoption since 90’s) and the contenders for US are China, Taiwan an India.

China, Taiwan, and India might be at the frontlines on some tech but their societies are facing political and demographic problems in much different ways than the west.

I’m afraid our world is poised for a dramatic change as every country is screwed in a different way and people see no easy way out.

Re: The US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the US is now nearly 2X

#47

Post by troupo »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #32
midasuni wrote: post #5

All “growth” in gdp seems to go to rich people. Normal people have seen stagnant wages and increased costs from the owners. Why should I care if gdp isn’t increasing when I don’t see any gains whether it does or not?

What about: - Your access to mRNA vaccines - Your access to cleaner air due to electric car adoption - Ditto for energy security and renewable sources of electricity - Your chance of dying in a car going down due to new safety features - Your access to crazy advanced cancer treatments that are making progress at almost miraculous paces - Your much improved ability to work from home, cutting out ~2 hours of commuting…

The world is dramatically better, but it already was dramatically better 10 years ago, and in the developed countries a lot of those improvements stagnated or are slowly rolling back due to stagnant wages, insane costs of living etc.

Re: The US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the US is now nearly 2X

#48

Post by monero-xmr »

badpun wrote: post #35
monero-xmr wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My sister in law is from Spain, had a guaranteed government job at a state run hospital (or some affiliated org) for life, and could retire in her 50s. She chose to bail and come to the US. She hated her boss (who could never be fired), the work was boring, the take home pay was awful, and she lived in a village where she grew up in a tiny apartment. Sure she had enough to eat and wasn’t going to be homeless. But she…

The stats look much better if you compare the number of hours worked. When accounting for that, US is at the level of Scandinavian countries. Obviously, Spain is still seriously lagging.

OK, well how about we compare New England to Europe? Or just Connecticut and Massachusetts?

If you start cutting out this and that country from the EU then you need to cut out Mississippi and Idaho from the US. People always compare the US holistically but conveniently pick and choose which part of the Eurozone they want when it benefits their argument.

Re: The US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the US is now nearly 2X

#49

Post by lnsru »

Aperocky wrote: post #38
nforgerit wrote: post #30

German here. Austerity? Over-regulation? An oligopoly of tech-incompetent local enterprises? Just guessing here. As a student in 2007, I started being an avid follower of what Big Tech was doing and was flabbergasted that local tech enterprises didn't seem to notice or change anything. In CS at university they didn't teach programming (only as an aside) but all the funny theoretical OOP fluff that the community right…

> In CS at university they didn't teach programming That's quite alarming.

There is a myth at German universities, that programming is too practical. So basically you brew there computer scientists with couple internships where they see how programming works.

Re: The US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the US is now nearly 2X

#50

Post by mepian »

slibhb wrote: post #23
midasuni wrote: post #5

All “growth” in gdp seems to go to rich people. Normal people have seen stagnant wages and increased costs from the owners. Why should I care if gdp isn’t increasing when I don’t see any gains whether it does or not?

The economy doubling in size helps most people even if the resulting wealth is unevenly distributed. Goods, services, technologies, jobs, etc are good.

Ah yes, the good ol' trickle-down economics.
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