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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

#581

Post by Qwertious »

dmurray wrote: post #458
0xcde4c3db wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of an old "ad" (not sure it was ever placed anywhere) questioning a similar tendency [1]: > For years, economists have defined the economic health of a country by its gross domestic product. Trouble is, every time a forest falls, the GDP goes up. With every oil spill, the GDP goes up. Every time a cancer patient is diagnosed, the GDP goes up. Is this how we measure economic progress? Economists must l…

This is usually called the broken window fallacy, from an essay by Bastiat in 1850. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

More specifically, some valuable types of activities are not even measured in GDP - if you build your own table out of roadside scrap, then you might be immensely satisfied by the table, but it will contribute $0 to GDP. If you follow free instructions online (and look various stuff up on Wikipedia), that will again improve your life but not GDP.

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

#582

Post by sgt »

Wildgoose wrote: post #577

This tweet talks about the "Eurozone", (those countries sharing the Euro), rather than those countries belonging to the EU. Furthermore, any EU figures will have been badly skewed by the UK having left the EU since 2008. Comparisons should take this into account.

But if the tweet is about the Eurozone, then the UK would surely not have been included in the first place? They never had the Euro.

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

#583

Post by KingOfCoders »

NikxDa wrote: post #423
KingOfCoders wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany has slowed down because the productivity gains from 20 years ago ("Agenda 2010") have run out of steam (Merkel didn't do anything for productivity for 16 years), more recently consumer demand has decreased because Germany was hit by high gas costs (everyone heats with gas) and the current government increased costs for consumers (e.G. everyone needs to replace their gas heating - driven by the minister for th…

Just to be clear here, the law you are referencing has been stopped and isn't passed yet. Mentioning it as if it were a fact is misleading, in my opinion.

Consumer consumption is not based on reality but on perceptions by the consumers. If they fear the future, they don't buy. It is not important if the law has passed or not (if passed it would have gone into effect in some months), the damage - beside many other things - is done.

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

#584

Post by KingOfCoders »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #379

Does this take Brexit into account?

If the "EU" mentioned in the tweet in 2008 does include the UK and the "EU" mentioned in the tweet in 2023 does not include the UK, then the EU is smaller by ~15% - the size of the UK economy.

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

#585

Post by misja111 »

modo_mario wrote: post #529
misja111 wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just plain wrong. The millions of refugees came from Syria. The US was hardly bombing Syria at all, it just bombed Libya. Actually it was mostly EU countries, in particular France, that pushed for fighting the Assad regime at the time. The Obama government didn't even want to be involved at first.

I think you got things backwards. France wanted to bomb libya (as well as the UK) whils the US was a reluctant partner. The US went for Syria/Assad leading the intervention and whilst France picked up it's involvement against ISIL & the like particularly after the Paris attacks it wasn't as big on it as Libya.

France was also eager to bomb Libya, that's true. But the US really didn't want to intervene in Syria at first.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/why-the-united-states-has...

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

#586

Post by pas »

kalleboo wrote: post #519
gruez wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I’d like to point out that the open door policy to refugees came because Europe was trying to escape the demographic trap and the collapse of the social safety net. This sounds like post hoc justification. If you want immigrants, wouldn't you want to pick the best and brightest, rather than whoever washes up on your shore?

Immigration is unpopular in the polls. If you're doing proper, structured labor immigration, it needs a political debate on who we want and in how many numbers. With refugees you can just pull on the heart strings, "how can we turn away people fleeing from war?" The US has something similar with its illegal immigration from Mexico. Every politician since Clinton has pledged to stop illegal immigration but nobody actu…

it's not always unpopular, it's unpopular when the integration costs (as in both actual budget but also cultural/psychological) become bigger than what the population expected.

for example look at Hungary. immigration is very unpopular at the polls, yet now the same government that created this sentiment through endless propaganda passed laws to allow more immigration of laborers, because the new Chinese battery factories that are under construction will require a lot more unskilled labor than which is available. they try to limit any kind of anchoring, no family unification, no visa for non-working spouses, etc. but it's not clear that this will actually attract enough workers...

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

#587

Post by misja111 »

yodelshady wrote: post #535
misja111 wrote: post #440

Does this take into account that the UK left the EU in the meanwhile?

It either does not or mislabels the chart. The chart refers to Eurozone.

Oh I missed that. If it's really about the Eurozone, then the UK was never in it in the first place.

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

#588

Post by nforgerit »

anticodon wrote: post #399
partiallypro wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany is an economic lion held back by its inability to digitize (even when it does it's half measure still attached to the past) and its development of deep relationship with untrustworthy countries (Russia being the prime example.) Trying to buy the 49 Euro Ticket can be done online but still requires approval by a human and an IBAN. That's my current favorite recent example of Germany making absolutely no sense…

Yeah, this kind of article would never fail to mention Russia and Putin. But what is never mentioned: 1. Germany has no energy sources. USA had blown up the pipelines delivering cheap energy from Russia that German industry needs badly (so, German industry has been closing and has declining output since), also in just as brain-dead move Germany closed all its nuclear plants. 2. USA is deliberately suffocating German…

German here.

> USA had blown up the pipelines delivering cheap energy from Russia

Well, did they? I know this theory but AFAIK they could trace it back to some people in Ukrainian military. Western secret services (afair from Netherlands) even warned them twice that this was being planned but they didn’t react.

> USA is deliberately suffocating German economy.

Sorry, but those are ALL mistakes made by Germans themselves. They have been cheating, they have been lobbying the German governments to ease transformation cost for short-sighted profit, the (conservative) German governments acted to slow down renewables while quitting nuclear power earlier than planned. I think it’s not a coincidence that Putin started the war on Ukraine just at the time, Germany phased out its last nuclear power plants. It’s all stupidity on the German side, esp. when Merkel is still claiming that “she always knew who Putin really was”.

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

#589

Post by misja111 »

genocidicbunny wrote: post #63
readthenotes1 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if you are poor and United States, just don't be to disorganized to be able to make use of all the government programs to support you. Sadly, there are a large number of people who cannot do that whether from drugs, trauma, natural inability, etc.

Have you ever actually tried to make use of those programs? You're not going to be living a comfortable happy healthy life on those programs. Relying on them for your survival is a pretty miserable existence.

Same is true for most social programs in Europe

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

#590

Post by nforgerit »

RandomLensman wrote: post #247
partiallypro wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany is an economic lion held back by its inability to digitize (even when it does it's half measure still attached to the past) and its development of deep relationship with untrustworthy countries (Russia being the prime example.) Trying to buy the 49 Euro Ticket can be done online but still requires approval by a human and an IBAN. That's my current favorite recent example of Germany making absolutely no sense…

The Bahn app has a human approver in the loop when buying the 49 Euro ticket?

I didn’t hear about this certain case but I’d not be too surprised here. Given Germany has been unsuccessfully trying to digitize their government services, there’s been many cases where people filled out PDFs online, which got printed on paper on the other side, sent by fax to another authority, there scanned and then worked on to finally send paper mail to the initial requesters.
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