71–80 of 136 posts
This article makes me sad, because: 1) It's completely true that the EU's economic outlook is dire . 2) Most Europeans (I am one) do not want to hear it, will not discuss it and will flag this article to avoid having to think about it. To an outsider it might be surprising that this isn't on the political agenda at all. People complain about the gradual deterioration of the economy, but the causes are only discussed…
Why US Fails to Distribute Wealth?
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.
Oh gosh, can we please not do national/regional bickering here? That's not curious conversation ( https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ). As a first step in a better direction, I've changed the baity title to a less baity, or at least more obscure, phrase from the article itself.
It's frustrating when some things can't be discussed on HN because they are insta-flagged as a way to silence them. Although this one is a touchy subject the article does raise some interesting points which could be debated.
And yet Europeans have vastly higher life quality than Americans ... I wonder why that is ...
Having been to both, this is… false. 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-mi…
Anecdotally, the Americans I talk to are saying things are worse than I've ever heard them say in my life. My parents used to have an unshakeable work ethic, but after my mom's company was bought up by private equity and squeezed for every penny, I've never seen her less happy to go to work. And she's far from alone.
[0]https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/11/opinion/economy-biden-vib...
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.
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…
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%.
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
> The old european countries understand that education invested in the young results in taxes for the long run. But those taxes will go to IRS, because the best and brightest Europeans will emigrate to US, where there are best opportunities for them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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!
> Today’s Europeans are not yet poor — they are still living off the prosperity created by prior generations, and that enables their passive consumption 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 rewa…