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

Europeans Are Becoming Poorer

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 166 posts

Re: Europeans Are Becoming Poorer

#71

Post by whyever »

jefozabuss wrote: post #19
remarkEon wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've spent about a month in Europe for the last three years on vacation and travel there for work semi-frequently. I've considered moving (wife says no, for now). I agree with you on the finance part. I'd need to accrue some significant coin to make this move make sense financially (plus finish becoming fluent). What I'd tell you is this "cope" isn't really cope. Americans just don't have many options for cities that…

Speaking of Vienna: is anyone here who work from there remotely (for a non-Austrian company)? I heard it's a bit complicated due to you need to have an in-country representation of the company or similar.

It's possible, but complicated for the employer: they have to found a branch in each employee's flat unless they have a permanent establishment in Austria.

Re: Europeans Are Becoming Poorer

#73

Post by [deleted] »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #62
ramblerman wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Swiss cities are consistently among the most expensive in the world. Food is bad. Very xenophobic society. It has a lot of great things too ofc. But I wouldn’t consider it representative of the nicer parts of Europe (vs pure financial optimization) mentioned above such as working less, walking, biking in the city.

>Food is bad. Very xenophobic society. Where did you get your info? Swiss food quality is some of the best in the world, well regulated and mostly organic, that's why it's so expensive. How did you measure xenofobia?

[deleted]

Re: Europeans Are Becoming Poorer

#74

Post by defrost »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #69
WA wrote: post #55

Don't believe any article that uses AVERAGES instead of the MEAN when it comes to wages, because average wages are worthless to consider and are more easily skewed by extreme outliers. Since Jeff Bezos moved to our village, we're all multi-millionaires on average.

>Since Jeff Bezos moved to our village, we're all multi-millionaires on average. Funny anecdote, but realistically how many ultra-wealthy like Bezos live in neighborhoods poor enough to significantly, distorrt the localc market? I think you'll find the ultra wealthy generally live in similar locations, seme as the poor, same as the middle class, and that goes in every country, from the US to France.

FWiW there's at least one person on the planet with a personal wealth > $10 billion that still lives on their multi generational station surrounded by native title lands populated by first nations people with no income or assets (other than an embedded 'nation' their family has held for at least 10K years.

Re: Europeans Are Becoming Poorer

#75

Post by FirmwareBurner »

defrost wrote: post #74
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Since Jeff Bezos moved to our village, we're all multi-millionaires on average. Funny anecdote, but realistically how many ultra-wealthy like Bezos live in neighborhoods poor enough to significantly, distorrt the localc market? I think you'll find the ultra wealthy generally live in similar locations, seme as the poor, same as the middle class, and that goes in every country, from the US to France.

FWiW there's at least one person on the planet with a personal wealth > $10 billion that still lives on their multi generational station surrounded by native title lands populated by first nations people with no income or assets (other than an embedded 'nation' their family has held for at least 10K years.

There's many more Europeans who still live and own land worth billions inherited across generations, from centuries ago, than there are Americans in the same position.

In Austria, the top 100 richest families own 2/3 of the country's wealth, and spoiler alert, non of those are recently minted tech billionaires, but wealthy heirs from land and 100 year old businesses.

Re: Europeans Are Becoming Poorer

#76

Post by veave »

ramblerman wrote: post #49
hcks wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europeans have a strong ability to cope for their declining standards of life. They’ll mention how about they have great cities/safety/etc but you’ll notice they never say which city/country exactly they’re talking about (as in let’s pretend all of Europe is Switzerland)

Swiss cities are consistently among the most expensive in the world. Food is bad. Very xenophobic society. It has a lot of great things too ofc. But I wouldn’t consider it representative of the nicer parts of Europe (vs pure financial optimization) mentioned above such as working less, walking, biking in the city.

>Very xenophobic society.

Maybe that's why it works so well.

Re: Europeans Are Becoming Poorer

#77

Post by landoftheice »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #62
ramblerman wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Swiss cities are consistently among the most expensive in the world. Food is bad. Very xenophobic society. It has a lot of great things too ofc. But I wouldn’t consider it representative of the nicer parts of Europe (vs pure financial optimization) mentioned above such as working less, walking, biking in the city.

>Food is bad. Very xenophobic society. Where did you get your info? Swiss food quality is some of the best in the world, well regulated and mostly organic, that's why it's so expensive. How did you measure xenofobia?

[dead]

Re: Europeans Are Becoming Poorer

#78

Post by defrost »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #75
defrost wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWiW there's at least one person on the planet with a personal wealth > $10 billion that still lives on their multi generational station surrounded by native title lands populated by first nations people with no income or assets (other than an embedded 'nation' their family has held for at least 10K years.

There's many more Europeans who still live and own land worth billions inherited across generations, from centuries ago, than there are Americans in the same position. In Austria, the top 100 richest families own 2/3 of the country's wealth, and spoiler alert, non of those are recently minted tech billionaires, but wealthy heirs from land and 100 year old businesses.

In Australia (like Austria but with more letters and less culture) they have Vogon poets:

https://genius.com/Gina-rinehart-our-future-annotated

https://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2012/02/15/3431797.htm

estimated net worth > $27 billion.

Re: Europeans Are Becoming Poorer

#79

Post by motbus3 »

Garvi wrote: post #21
picadores wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let them eat environmental fanatics

The protesters were quite clear it wasn't about any misguided environmental policies, but political ones. We used to get a lot of cheap energy from Russia. Now that pipelines are getting blown up mysteriously, it's a different world. And before someone accuses me of not badmouthing "the enemy" enough, know that even Ukraine is still importing billions worth of Russian gas and petrol products and thus financing the wa…

War is the best seller of weapons. It promotes crisis and allow price inflation beyond reasonable. It also allow bizarre social movements to blame some enemy

Re: Europeans Are Becoming Poorer

#80

Post by seszett »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #60
code-blooded wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I do have A/C and a clothes dryer. Again, things like that are easily affordable if you work in the tech or professional fields in Europe.

>But I do have A/C and a clothes dryer. Again, things like that are easily affordable if you work in the tech or professional fields in Europe In which country do you live? In Austria you're not allowed to install an split unit AC due to building regulations. You could if you own your own single family house but you need to be very wealthy for that, beyond the average tech worker. Tech worker is blue-colar work here.

House ownership is very different among the European countries.

I think it's somewhat rare in Germany and Austria, but you don't need to be very wealthy to own a house in France or Belgium for example. And you are allowed to install A/C, in fact heat pumps are very much recommended for new builds, almost mandatory even given the tight energy requirements today and it's becoming common enough to use a reversible one.

Post reply on HN