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

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

#791

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are produced in Europe (Bosch, STM, Infineon etc.. have way more factories in Europe then outside it) and pay taxes there.

Intel, Nvidia, AMD and Apple M1 chips are (mostly) not made in the US but they generate more revenue for the US tech sector as they're high-margin products and their US based designers extract most of the value from their sales with Asian based manufacturers TSMC and Samsung being next in the food chain and quite recently announced building new cutting edge fabs in the US, instead of Europe. That should tell you some…

Intel chips are made in the US.

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

#792
post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So US social mobility is only slightly better (insignificantly) than the two worst countries in Europe. I think that article rather supports my claim. Italy is also rather a troublesome example, because northern and southern Italy are vastly different. Regional differences account for much of the inequality and the persistence of it there. Looking at the mean in Europe vs the US there is no contest. Other metrics in…

> US social mobility is only slightly better (insignificantly) than the two worst countries in Europe. I think that article rather supports my claim. Compared with the cohort of European countries, America fairs poorly (though not excessively so). The original claim, however, was that it fares "among the worst in the world." This is incorrect; it's roughly middle of the pack [1][2]. On the measure of the "number of g…

"Among the worst" is a bad qualifier, I'll admit. Not least because it is vague. However, the US is still worse than Europe when it comes to social mobility.

Going back to the original argument that something in the US's tax policy or job markets makes the US perform better when it comes to upwards social mobility, I think we can definitely debunk that.

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

#793

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And? What is your point? The Dutch is also one of the best. Singapore too. You can bring examples pro contra for both types. I think the regulation that makes a healthcare good or bad, not that it is private or public. Many public healthcares are in Eastern Europe are bad. Some private healthcares are also bad. I still think that a combination of private and public offering is probably the best with regulation being…

> The Dutch is also one of the best. Sure, once you get passed the useless home doctor (huisarts).

Well yes, but that is not a real problem.

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

#794

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And? What is your point? The Dutch is also one of the best. Singapore too. You can bring examples pro contra for both types. I think the regulation that makes a healthcare good or bad, not that it is private or public. Many public healthcares are in Eastern Europe are bad. Some private healthcares are also bad. I still think that a combination of private and public offering is probably the best with regulation being…

Holland spends 20% more on health per capita than the Uk

20% more of what?

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

#795
post #777

What grieves me most is the drain of talented software engineers from Europe to the US. There's a 'club' of Scottish engineers working is Seattle called the MicroScotts, and there's not a small number of them, but the are few opportunities for such people in Scotland itself. You can find top flight British, German and other European engineers at Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple. The cream of British CS and Software En…

From my experience a big part of it is just the absolutely dire comp. we have senior engineers in France, Italy and London who make about what a masters degree holder with 2yoe makes in a tier 2 like Dallas or Denver.

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

#796

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talk about moving the goalposts

How is that moving the goalposts? It is irelevant to the present that Nokia was a big player in the past. The fact that I was a top student in high-scool is irelevant to my current job where I underperform. Nokia is now a shadow a its former self both in money it brings to the EU economy and in the amount of tech jobs it provides. That's what's relevant now and there's no pride in this defeat.

Did the EU build an Apple? Yes, Nokia was a dominant phone manufacturer, so it clearly did. But it made a mistake and died (like Apple almost did in the 90s).

So you moved the goal posts by claiming that somehow it dying meant that it never counted.

Nothing is forever, just because the US has been briefly dominant in a field does not make it's approach right, especially as it's pretty obvious to the whole world there's a good chance it's going to become number two soon.

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

#797

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Silicon Valley is top, we all know that. But in terms of startup funding, after the SFBA and Beijing comes London. In terms of startup-friendliness, London typically beats every US hub except the SFBA, and occasionally ties with NYC. I'll give you places like Stockholm and Amsterdam don't quite hit those heights, but still have healthy ecosystems going for them. But it's difficult to describe the 'EU' way of doing th…

> in terms of startup funding, after the SFBA and Beijing comes London Do not believe this is correct. In 2016, London was No. 7, after 6 American cities; it was ahead of Beijing and Shanghai individually, though not collectively [1]. The next European city is Paris, in No. 16, after Chicago, Austin and Mumbai. [1[] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/globa...

https://technation.io/report2021/#key-statistics

I was slightly off, London comes 4th after the Bay Area, Beijing and New York, but handily wins out over Boston, Seattle, or any EU city.

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

#798
post #766

I've lived in a few different parts of the EU, and couldn't imagine a worse idea than starting a company there (which I did, once). Starting is hard enough without the general negative attitudes, the government insanities, the insane taxes, the low work ethic, the 8 weeks of vacation every month (I exaggerate, slightly). And I was in one of the two best EU countries, God only knows how bad it is in Spain or Italy or…

It used to indeed be the case that in Belgium to fire someone the notice period could be quite literally years. However, Belgium changed its laws in 2014. For firing someone it's now 1 week the first 3 months, and then it goes up more slowly. For example, for someone who's been there 4 years it is a 3 month notice period. As for free movement of labor inside the EU, it is mostly irrelevant how easy it is because of c…

China and Japan were both rife with incompatible dialects for a long time. Japan fixed this using a ruthless campaign that basically analogized non-eastern dialect speakers as hillbillies and through standardized education abd media. China did some of that. Both did language reforms.

The US also has a program like this, albeit much softer and mostly generational.

India is a massively polyglot nation that has used a program of education and incentives to maintain and grow English.

The fact that Europe has not nominated a cross-EU language and taken action to move toward linguistic unity is actually an outlier. Note that I’m not saying that this would be a good thing but it certainly would have upsides.

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

#799
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just better worker protection. It's the whole system that has more social safeties for everyone. You might be better off with better conditions working for a top American company but you are not most people, you are part of a privileged few who had the capacity (opportunity, financial, intellectual) to be part of a a select who can enjoy this position. You're also dependent on your company to provide these b…

Yeah, sure, but the US is basically an Oryx and Crake LARP at this point.

Not yet but I do dread this. China is a lot further along that path.

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

#800
post #59

Why are European companies so unambitious ? My whole civilian career I've had to work for North American companies because the European alternatives aren't even attempting to be competitive.

I have wondered this. I work at an American company with many European employees and it is just really hard to see a complete lack of ambition/competitiveness. At some point being on vacation so much must hurt, I know projects are delayed when folks just can’t be expected to be there and will randomly disappear for 4+ weeks at a time. But that really doesn’t explain the extreme cultural conservatism towards effort/am…

My exact experience working with Ericsson and Siemens. The employee attitude was basically “why try?”
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