51–60 of 136 posts
Why US Fails to Distribute Wealth?
Because equal distribution of wealth takes away all motivation for hard work and innovation. There's no point to work hard just to have your profits taken away in taxes and distributed to lazy bastards that didn't bother to finish high school. America is a land of opportunity: you either win big or lose terribly. Europe is for people who want to play it safe.
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.
> most quality of life metrics This is what we refer to as "europoor". Sure they have taxpayer funded "healthcare", council "housing", public "transportation" but it's not really what i would want for myself. Those things only exist because the middle class in europe is foced to give up a lifestyle of freedom/autonomy to average it out so the folks below them can get (1 + 0)/2. It won't stand on its own otherwise. Th…
But you also can't see regulation as a kind of mass, as in "lots of regulation bad". You can make good rules and you can make bad rules, it's not a question of "there's a lot or a little".
Finally, regulation is also a kind of value system. Like a garden, if you have no rules at all, things will grow. If that's all you care about, then you'll be happy with weeds growing all over the paths. In practice, you will care, and you will cut out some of the growth because you don't like it. There are plenty of businesses this has happened to, like tobacco and gambling. Your GDP will be lower than if you just allowed it, but that doesn't make it worse.
And yet Europeans have vastly higher life quality than Americans ... I wonder why that is ...
They certainly have vastly greater smugness about their current situation warranted or not.
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
But those taxes will go to IRS, because the best and brightest Europeans will emigrate to US, where there are best opportunities for them.
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.
If you're considering not just tech, but the general mindset of being somewhere that builds/produces things that other people use, as opposed to just industries of middlemen who skim off the top, then I'd argue India also has that mindset, maybe a few other SE asian countries too, and furthermore that nowhere is quite as bad as Europe in terms of having the opposite mindset.
It is precisely the mindset of needing to make "stuff" that is keeping Europe back, because then software doesn't count.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It doesn’t really succeed in making that case though, there’s a lot of invective but few facts. If you used the same criteria as the author for the US outside of SV how does it compare? And as for AI DeepMind is HQ’d in Europe!
Supported by something also said by others [7] https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/02/26/europe-is-the-fr...
The underlying issue seems to be an incompatibility between egalitarianism and inspiration to individual exceptionalism.
Why be great in Europe, if the rewards to being great elsewhere are better, and you can afford to relocate?
To benefit from European social benefits? If you're that successful, you've far exceeded that standard from personal wealth!
Consequently, you're stuck in a weird middle ground with misaligned incentives papering over a fundamental incompatibility.
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.
I, like many Americans, would take a strong safety net, sustainable urban development and a smaller home over the US's mess of a safety net, socially devastating suburban sprawl, and a 4000 sqft McMansion.
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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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well firstly there's about 2x more Europeans than Americans by population, and secondly 44% of Americans don't even own a passport.
Only 41% of Germans have a passport. I don't see your point. We can adjust for population and the data is still clear. EU citizens would rather be in the US than the other way around. And the EU is only about 30% larger not 100%.