Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

601–610 of 905 posts

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#601

Post by Applejinx »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #451
tovej wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US upward social mobility is among the worst in the world. US workers are stuck in a rat race that simply doesn't exist to the same extent in Europe.

I beg to differ. The fact is hard working immigrants in the US have a much higher chance of becoming successful than in Europe. Pretty much all the US tech companies are now run by immigrants of minority backgrounds while, for example, Eastern European and Turkish immigrants in Germany are still regarded as cleaners and kebab salesmen, with the only notable exception they can name being the Turkish CEO of BionTech.

If the 'higher chance' we're talking about is the chance of becoming CEO of a tech unicorn, established by the fact that there are CEOs of tech unicorns, is this not entirely a moot and meaningless point?

Effectively the difference between a chance of 0.0000001% and 0.0% is not important…

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#602

Post by mattlondon »

knolan wrote: post #268
mattlondon wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes this is something I have been really surprised by too - people spending 50,60,70+ USD a month on a mobile service. WTF? Even in the UK there are numerous providers (some virtual networks I admit but they still price differently) and you can get perfectly decent service for less than 10GBP (typically unlimited calls, but data is the thing you pay for now, so 5GBP might get you 500mb of data 10GBP gets you 2gb a mo…

I haven’t had data allowances that low in years. I pay €10 per month for an ‘unlimited’ SIM only plan. The fair usage limit is 120GB per month.

Yeah you are right - I don't know about unlimited but I had a look and it seems like 8-10GB a month is now possible for about 6-8GBP a month so it is getting cheaper. I've not updated my contract in a few years since it is pretty cheap already.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#603

Post by joelbluminator »

dieortin wrote: post #470
joelbluminator wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My kneejerk reaction was to say you're wrong and of course EU citizens are happier, but thinking deeply about it that's nonsense. North Europe yes, happier by a lot. But if you consider the EU in its entirety, the South (Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece) and the East (Poland, Romania, Bulgaria) bring down the average by a lot. When the economy is down and corrupt no amount of safety nets will help you be happy, you sim…

Are you seriously saying people in the north of Europe are happier than in the south? I beg to disagree. Countries in the north have, for example, much higher suicide rates. I’d actually argue people in the south are happier than in the north. Of course, their economies are weaker. But that doesn’t have to translate directly into unhappiness.

I think unemployment will usually translate to unhappiness. If you are unemployed 30-40 year what do you do? Start a family? Can't. Travel the world? Can't. Find consolation in religion? Very few people in Europe do that. Jobs are very very important for self esteem and mental well being.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#604

Post by JumpCrisscross »

pydry wrote: post #352
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Europe had iPhone precursors before iPhones were a thing That’s the point. Where are they? They couldn’t compete due to lack of scale. They couldn’t scale due to structural restrictions on scale. The next iPhone isn’t going to come from Europe. It may be first developed there. But an American or Chinese copycat will rapidly advance upon them.

The previous range of state of the art smartphones did come from Europe. They couldn't compete but not because of structural restrictions on scale - just because of a series of bad decisions that were independent of the continent they were developed on. It's more likely the next generation will come exclusively from China - not because of structural restrictions on scale but because it's deliberately built up its ele…

> previous range of state of the art smartphones did come from Europe

Right, but where are they now? The article says in just its third paragraph that "Europe used to pack a punch." Up to 2000, "nearly a third of the combined value of the world’s 1,000 biggest listed firms was in Europe, and a quarter of their profits." That aligns with the state of the art having a home in Europe around then.

But something changed over the past 20 years. It's apparent from the outside looking in. But it remains--as made apparent by this thread--shockingly controversial within the Continent.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#605

Post by j_wtf_all_taken »

varjag wrote: post #581
j_wtf_all_taken wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the Trump government was really really diverse, and so are the boards of the large companies.

Sebastian Gorka is an immigrant, from the EU no less. So are the many notorious alt-right figures that are baked in your consciousness as ur-American.

Ok yeah the Nazis building your moon rockets were also immigrants, true ;-)

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#606

Post by bennybob »

sdoering wrote: post #329
bennybob wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also wages in tech in the EU are laughably bad compared to USA. I'm in the UK, same problem. Yet everyone seems to think that a couple weeks more holiday makes up for it.

What is the overall cost of living associated with the respective salary. Amd of people proposing a free market, why is it a problem that suddenly the same job is paid more for in a more competitive job market? As others pointed out, CoL is also way lower in most parts were there are relevant jobs to be had. I am working a job that would pay at least double in SF. I can afford to pay the mortgage on a 130 square mete…

I worked with contractors based in Denver, their salaries were 3 times mine. I don't think cost of living in Denver is insane? Property prices were I am are insane

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#607

Post by oytis »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #586
oytis wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First one that I could find. https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/arbeitsmarkt-fluechtlin... It says that by 2020 half of them has found a job, which is way higher unemployment rate than is average in Germany though. But even if they don't find jobs themselves, at the very least they have children which is critical for sustainability of a country with inverted population pyramid.

> by 2020 half of them has found a job, which is way higher unemployment rate than is average in Germany though Half of immigrants being unemployed after half a decade is bad, especially compared with America, where immigrants are more likely to find themselves employed than the native born [1]. > if they don't find jobs themselves, at the very least they have children Sure. But I'd hate to do the math on how much ea…

Half of refugees, not half of immigrants. Most immigrants are employed of course, that's how you normally get in Europe.

And it's not like refugees were allowed to look for jobs immediately, getting work permit for a refugee takes awfully long in Germany.

Cost of their children is pretty much the same as for German children. And it's a necessary expenditure, otherwise the said taxpayers are going to have a pretty rough time when they retire.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#608

Post by MomoXenosaga »

gjhh244 wrote: post #519
oytis wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Denmark legally discriminates agwinst "non-western" immigrants and officially aims at not taking any refugees at all. France is ruled by a rather right-wing government and has a chance to have a far-right one next. Germany hasn't seen a left-wing government for 16 years, will likely not see it for 4 more years (if ever). The rest can be easily compromised by economic stagnation, to have good social security you need…

Mass migration from developing world is mostly a burden to European welfare systems these days, since a lot of it is humanitarian and most humanitarian migrants lack skills to do well in our job markets.

When I look at my own country we want the doctors and scientists but NOT the wretched refuse of teeming shores.

Americans think it's racist but actually it is just business.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#609

Post by simonh »

j_wtf_all_taken wrote: post #596
simonh wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's about the distribution of economic activity between large and small businesses. It's got nothing to do with wealth distribution between individuals. All that the Economist is pointing out is that there are some businesses in which you have to have massive scale to be competitive. In those specific businesses, you either scale up or you can't compete at all. Europe is giving up competing in those areas.

Sounds like a really unhealthy market so maybe we should regulate that so this massive upscaling is not required? Like enforcing interoperability between platforms, privacy rules etc.?

You can't legislate away practical constraints like economies of scale or basic economics. The Soviets and Maoists tried that and it doesn't work. Also at this sort of scale, of big international business, they are, well, international. Europe can legislate itself into an artificially divided, segregated, politically engineered economic corner as much as it likes but that won't help it's companies compete in America, or China, or anywhere else.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#610

Post by Applejinx »

j_wtf_all_taken wrote: post #411
jmkerr wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "(Europe has over 100 mobile operators, compared with a handful in America or China.) These lack the economies of scale and opportunities to grow quickly enjoyed by firms plying the American or Chinese markets." This is such a bad example, I count 6 European carriers with more subscribers than AT&T. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_network_operato... > "These internal barriers mean Europe has many small…

Also, don't Americans complain all the f**ing time how bad their broadband internet is?

Rightly so. It's absolutely pathetic, and it's because of the lack of competition through the scale of those who own and control the market, combined with the government keeping their hands off the market-controllers.

Purely rent-seeking and stagnant. Pathetic. Damagingly awful.

Post reply on HN