41–50 of 136 posts
Why US Fails to Distribute Wealth?
America is a land of opportunity: you either win big or lose terribly. Europe is for people who want to play it safe.
This applies for literally every country except the US and China. It's not like any of the other G20 countries (not to mention the entire rest of the world) have anything close to "a US tech sector" or anything approaching the level of engineering/science/product/manufacturing capability of the US. California is where the entire world population goes to when they wanna make stuff.
And yet Europeans have vastly higher life quality than Americans ... I wonder why that is ...
I hope you’re not basing this on news reports, because that’s never going to give you an accurate picture.
In the US, I was blown away by the amount of wealth even “poor” Americans have, and how friendly, optimistic, and happy everyone is.
In Europe, I only saw this in the richest few countries, and even there most people seemed to be stuck in some sort of constrained, nice-but-middle class mode of life.
To be clear, I really loved Europe - and Europeans - and it does better with some important things - healthcare, walkability, baking bread, no mass shootings.
But there’s a clear difference overall, and it goes the other way.
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.
It's tempting to read just the headline and see an opportunity to express your views on the great Europe vs US online debate (everyone has a take), but the article does have an interesting thesis. > If you wanted to regulate AI, I think you’d want to regulate somewhere at the production level, not at the consumption level. Why is it that the EU regulators are focusing entirely on the consumption level? > Well, becaus…
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.
[0] https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-disposable-income.htm
[1] https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-net-worth.htm#indicator-...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
And yet Europeans have vastly higher life quality than Americans ... I wonder why that is ...
This sort of snarky comment adds nothing to the discussion. In many ways, European countries are coasting along on wealth exploitation resulting from centuries of colonialism. North America is similar but the US in particular is absolutely dominant at the modern knowledge economy. This is where Europe in general lags behind. Europe’s glory days are behind it. The glory days of the US are ahead of it. Europeans have a…