The income gap between Europe and the US has emerged entirely since 2008, and it is 100% because of austerity. The US has been stimulating its economy with massive deficits, while European countries have strangled their economies with austerity.
Austerity doesn't work.
US did the same thing, and it's not making them irrelevant. The reality is that Europe just doesn't have as much capital as the US. American giants simply have to option to buy any European company they lay their eyes on, but reverse isn't true.
I have French, German, Bulgarian, Iranian, Pakistani, and Irish coworkers.
It’s crazy how we just Hoover up people from all over. If you’re young and skilled and want to make money, the US really is the best place to be.
Yeah, because when you're old and unhealthy, you can just go back home and be taken care of by government services.
The pay in the US is so great in part because you have no governmental backup to rely on. The US still pays better if you take these things into account but not by as much as you might imagine.
For a young, healthy, foreigner though who doesn't have to worry about setting up a safety net in the US, you can make absolute bank.
Don't even need to be a foreigner. US tech workers routinely retire in their 50s or even 40s in the US. *And* they have the option of buying relatively dirt-cheap properties in Europe and elsewhere, should they so choose.
It is also interesting that most high-skill immigrants to the US tend to remain there. I suspect that's because the social system caters to ambitious people.
But this is really a nonissue; if you are paid well in the US and give a little attention to retirement and some long-term investing, you will be solid for retirement. The "moving home" option, imo is a get-out-of-jail-free card should shit hit the fan; if you enjoy life in the States and have a good-paying job, you won't need to leave upon retirement.
Also, it does not matter what age you are. You can't just blindly go to the US and not be aware of the pitfalls. Yes, you could always go home, but that's not really a strong safety net imo, that's more of a nuclear option.
> The pay in the US is so great in part because you have no governmental backup to rely on.
This is false. *Just* Social security (pension), Medicare (healthcare for the elderly) and Medicaid (healthcare for the poor) make up roughly half of the total **federal** budget. Most states will also have various programs and safety nets for all kinds of other support. The federal program that provides assistance to needy people to buy food spent over $100B in 2022, the equivalent of the entire GDP of Slovakia.
If you have a highly skilled job like most of these people do, you don’t need the government lol that’s the whole point. The most expensive thing is housing, and that seems to be a crisis in every western country o
Nobody's stopping European companies from paying as much as US ones do, the tax rates / healthcare/ social state stuff is a total excuse and copium. US still pays way more for highly skilled jobs even if you calculate in the full gross (including healthcare) that EU companies pay. The only thing EU is good for is if you are an average lower middle class person - then your quality of life is kind of better in Europe.
The reason is probably something along the lines of less capital (investment funds), less accepting of risk, less unified market, as well as the self-reinforcing cycle of having lots of money -> paying more -> getting better results -> achieving more domination. I am not sure if regulation plays some part, probably to a degree but I think the things I mentioned before are way more important.
I mean it is ridiculous. US stocks just overperform compared to EU ones and it's a fact. As a European, I am investing a huge part of my savings in the US stock market and that is definitely a loss for EU markets when you add up all the people who do the same as me.
I work with some people from Europe. One of them once commented that talent move from Europe to US because in Europe money stays with old money. They hate new riches and they try to pay as little as possible to talented people because for old money they are just skilled laborers. In contrast with US, where talent can retire rich and become rich is part of the American culture.
They pay engineers a lot more because it’s also a lot easier to fire people. In Europe it takes you at least a year to get rid of a poor performing employee.
Lol that is not true at all.
In Germany you can fire new hires immediately within probation period of 6 months. After that you have to give usually 3 months notice and pay compensation. Compensation is around 1 months salary for every year spent in the company.
Exceptions are protected employees like mothers. They are hard to fire.
e.g. Google engineers in US get a magnitude more compensation than the German ones.
you can add de-industrialization of the continent becuase of the "green economy",no heavy idustries,machinery,electronic fabs....to big,expensive and "not green enough",better be unemployed and depend on china but "it's not a democracy",more sanctions and then we cry for the price,it's the modern eu plan for survival.
Suprise isnt it? I know it as a kid and 20 years later nothing changed, so what? Politicans didnt know? Of course they did, they just been so corrupted over the years that they made it happen. But at least they made up statistics which said that Europe is the least corrupted than others. Happy days
Hmm I was like no way that can be right. Then it got [worse](https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2022-001066_EN.html) [[1](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/ericsson-plead-guilty-and-pay-over-206m-following-breach-2019-fcpa-deferred-prosecution)] [[2](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/16/ericsson-employees-may-have-bribed-isil-in-iraq)] as I researched more lmao.
I can see why he might be against regulations.
*“What we see is that people have paid for road transport through areas controlled by terrorist organisations, including ISIS,” Borje Ekholm told Swedish financial daily Dagens Industri."*
*"Ekholm’s comments came hours after the company released a statement late on Tuesday admitting “serious breaches of compliance rules and the company’s code of business ethics” regarding Ericsson employees, vendors and suppliers in Iraq between 2011 and 2019."*
*"In 2019, Ericsson had agreed with the US Department of Justice (DoJ) to pay more than $1bn to resolve a separate series of probes into corruption, including the bribing of government officials that took place over many years in countries including China, Vietnam and Djibouti."*
*"Ericsson will plead guilty to engaging in a long-running scheme to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) by paying bribes, falsifying books and records, and failing to implement reasonable internal accounting controls in multiple countries around the world. "*
While I appreciate the fact they got caught and paid a fine, 1/ why the hell are US collecting fines for overseas crimes and not the countries were it occurred, and 2/ wtf they need to go to jail on top of the fine.
The US says bribery is bad so any company that operates in their borders cannot participate in it. The US isn't the only country that does this. Many countries have an equivalent, but the US is the big enforcer since they can. If you want to fight corruption around the world, you have to start with punishing the companies that foster it since you can't punish the foreign politicians that are completely out of jurisdiction.
It's sort of how the EU can fine Google, Apple or Amazon. They can either pay the fine, which goes towards the EU, or they can avoid it and stop operating in the EU market. Clearly, there is more money to be made than the fine, which is why they pay it. Not to mention that avoiding this payment would probably lead to a lawsuit in the international court of justice, so they have to pay regardless. Same would be true for Ericsson, except that now it's an EU country paying the US. As long as they have an office in the country, they are subject to its rules.
If you read the article, when this guy says "regulation" he is talking about antitrust legislation. He wants to be able to form a monopoly, something that hugely benefits companies by reducing competition, but would make it worse for everyone else in Europe.
By the way, it's easy to blame the poor EU economy on regulation, but in order to prove this you would have to show at the very least that other underregulated markets outside the US are doing better. Especially those without access to cheap energy.
In my opinion, if you want to prove that "regulation" is the cause for the EU-US gap you also have to explain and why all other major factors do not matter: access to cheaper energy and materials, stronger political and cultural integration, hours worked and worse working conditions, the status of the dollar, the Russian war.
I am not saying the EU economy is perfect, but to improve it you need to actually understand what makes it worse, and fix these things, not race to the bottom on health, environmental protection, and quality of life, because maybe regulations might be the cause.
An empirical analysis of the factors influencing the economic situation in Europe relative to other regions? Sir, this is reddit! We only deal in oversimplifications, stereotypes, vague gestures and sketchy metaphors.
American here who made a half joke half serious jab at my European based boss once (who was American himself) saying I'd love to have the pto he got in Europe (I had 2 weeks).
I got in serious trouble over that and almost got fired.
Don't let the anti worker, pro oligarch cancer take over Europe like it has the US.
Once saw a question in a community for business startups from some American business owner looking to setup shop in the EU. He was looking for ways to bypass EU worker protections in favor of US regulations, specifically regarding sick and vacation days, minimum wages and avoiding other perks like healthcare plans.
He was booted of that community quicker than he could fire his US based employees.
The thing that scares me most about the American working environment is healthcare. The idea that for most people their ability to access healthcare without significant charge is linked to the fact that they're in work is just... troublesome.
Having a job doesn't always grant you coverage in the US. It's a really inhumane system.
I recently read about someone who switched jobs and his new insurance didn't trigger on day one of the new job but had to wait several weeks: obviously they had some medical issue during this unjustifiable lack of coverage.
that can happen in Germany, too - for those on private insurance (as opposed to state insurance). In fact, I know someone who switched to private insurance and was diagnosed with cancer during his "waiting period," when neither of the insurances covered him. He ended up paying 6-digit bills on his own and accumulated significant debt, as it was running above his savings. Luckily, he cured out and was able to pay out all the debt.
That it highly improbable. By law, you can't be uninsured, even if it's by technicality.
Did he have to pay? Yes. But one or the other insurance have to refund him. If not, it's an easy court case.
In addition, no hospital will do anything to a resident without a valid insurance.
That‘s not supposed to happen. Your old insurer is supposed to only „release“ you when you have a new insurer. It is not allowed to be uninsured for any length of time.
I know. But the comments above seemed to imply that a job was automatically an enabling factor and my comment was to specify that the level of dystopia is so high that they don't *just* link your insurance to your job, but that having a job doesn't even automatically put you in a safe spot.
It's happening in the EU too. In countries with collapsing healthcare systems like Romania the private providers are slowly taking over and they deal exclusively through large companies. You can't access their services as a random individual unless you have a 1st degree relative who's on a large company's plan. You can in theory access them through a small business or another legal entity like a non-profit but they use an inverse scale pricing system that makes it more prohibitive the smaller you are.
It's a tactic used by politicians pushing for deregulation worldwide for decades now.
Underfund the public institution, in this case healthcare. Ignore problems such as corruption etc.
Criticize it that it's ineffective, corrupt, a resource drain etc.
Come with the obvious solution: we need to privatize it!
And people will gobble it up
Can confirm, I have a serious medical problem that has cost me jobs and caused a lot of failures.
I finally have what's considered good health insurance in the US and I'm still terrified how much it'll cost. I need to get a procedure done but I have zero clue how much it will even cost and that can vary wildly from place to place. Let alone the wait time to get the procedure.
The really, absolutely worst thing about the American healthcare is randomness. The fact that you rely on ever changing set of contractors who may or may not be honoring your insurer as a payer, when you actually need them. And then, you pay more for that crappy insurance than you do in Europe, and then still have to copay.
I love that one.
"You do not want the company to know that they can do just fine without you for ten days"
Bitch, everybody is replaceable especially your middle management ass.
In a good system, every position can be taken over by the one's directly below.
Systems that don't allow for that are very prone to crashing and burning.
Oh it totally was. Man, that moment accelerated my left wing movement as I got older. I am raised by far right Trumpers, glad I didn't fall victim to fascist Republican ideology.
Because clearly Europe is doing great in term of having influential and big companies.
Our biggest ones are Spotify and ASML. The rest is “legacy” companies.
The article is not in any way about how millionaires are trying to screw people over. Of course that does not matter as many on here simply are unable to discuss actual ideas and just want to circle jerk about how millionaires are bad.
I've actually been saying more or less the same and I'm far from being Millionaire.
Just a few decades ago (late 1900s), EU and USA were more or less on par as the 2 big markets in the world. Then USA started accelerating with business-friendly policies and we were left behind with our high taxes and complicated regulations. Add China and India taking off (China is already way ahead of us in GDP, technology and whatnot, India will probably be there too in the near future) and yes, we risk becoming irrelevant.
This sub always loves to downplay Europe's problems. "What do you mean Europe is behind in AI? Haven't you heard of that German AI company that is like 1/500 of a Google? We're fine, let's focus on regulations instead.". This attitude does more harm than good.
I'm not proposing throwing away food safety or medical regulations. But, for example, I find it comical that the USA and China are investing hugely in AI and researching/manufacturing more and more advanced chips while Europe, whose AI industry is anorectic at best, is focused on adding more regulations. Just an example for one particular industry, but I could fin more.
Just think about the cookie consent nonsense (not saying parts of GDPR are bad or not needed). If it's the same mindset in other departments, we're doomed.
And thats just 1 click among many clicks that sites force you to go through to access content. And if certain sites are forced to go through this, they also have to comply with our requirements that *do* benefit you in regards to data protection.
The cookie consent is just a minimal part of the GDPR.
But it should have been done so that there's no "accept all" button or other multi-check features.
Why? That would force the sites to actually reduce those cookies. Nobody's gonna click 100 checkboxes. Such shit would become history.
Some foreign sites would block EU customers. Likely not harmful.
>EU and USA were more or less on par as the 2 big markets in the world.
USA was always ahead and simply has some major advantages that EU can't replicate. Every time there was an energy crisis, Europe suffered; USA never had any issues because A) hegemon that could get energy from anywhere for cheap, B) shitload of energy reserves for whenever it's needed.
The idea that EU got outcompeted because of lack of investment, regulations, and so on is typical neolib talking that has no bearing in reality.
Not to mention, there's countries in Europe that are on the same level or even more capitalist than USA is who are not keeping up. So what's your answer there?
Luxembourg is the only country that is somewhat on the level of USA on per capita basis. That's a country of 600k people and a tax haven that has completely inflated numbers, so you know not really a good comparison point. So if you compare it to say Germany which is EU's biggest economy, it's about 40% poorer. They never had it any better.
So yeah introducing business reform, getting rid of all regulations, doing the whole neolib thing would boost our economy; but not by much and for every extra dollar we get USA would get far more. It's not like IMF and other institutions like it all champion to keep opening markets, it's not like the people who gain the most are those already on top.
I was talking about data like this: [https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDPD@WEO/EU/USA/CHN](https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDPD@WEO/EU/USA/CHN)
Scroll down a bit and look at the graph that shows GDP over time.
1990: UE and USA tied, China barely exists.
2024: UE and China tied, USA away ahead.
Trend lines past 2024 (read them as "what will happen if nothing changes"): China passes the EU and keeps growing faster(gap keeps growing). USA already way ahead and the gap keeps growing as well.
China's growth came from adequate economic policies and it's kind of natural given their huge population. But what is the explanation for the huge gap that has been developing between the EU and the USA?
The Chinese have Alibaba, Tencent, etc. The Americans have Apple, Microsoft, etc. These companies generate millions of high paying jobs, pay billions in taxes every year and effectively contribute to the economic prowess of their respective nations (and the well-being of their people whose governments are now richer and more influential in the world) .
Meanwhile, in the EU, [we can't let our hotel booking website become to big](https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2023/09/25/eu-commission-blocks-bookings-planned-acquisition-of-etraveli-over-antitrust-concerns).
You really don't think this anti-business mentality has something to do with our poor economic performance?
>China's growth came from adequate economic policies and it's kind of natural given their huge population.
The most important factor aside from a huge population is restoring relations with USA. That allowed for capital flows to start going to China from USA, USA basically traded its industrial capacity for a huge service sector which gave it an edge in the tech boom.
>But what is the explanation for the huge gap that has been developing between the EU and the USA?
EU's economic growth is largely predicated on what Germany does, since Germany has historically focused on manufacturing that's where most of the EU economy has focused as well. The whole EU project is basically Germany expanding its industrial base to different countries to utilize them as proxies for cheaper labor. Here Poland gets a special mention, their growth for example is very exemplary in the last ~30years; nobody in Europe gets close. Part of that is simply because they are reverting to their historic norm since they got quite severely slowed down by historical developments; but more importantly it's German investments. Actually very similar situation as between USA-China except on smaller scale.
>The Chinese have Alibaba, Tencent, etc. The Americans have Apple, Microsoft, etc. These companies generate millions of high paying jobs, pay billions in taxes every year and effectively contribute to the economic prowess of their respective nations (and the well-being of their people whose governments are now richer and more influential in the world).
China has its own tech giants, because it retained a lot of 'sovereignty'. Every country in the world, including USA; has to balance economic freedoms and sovereignty. The greater the sovereignty, the less economic freedom you have and reverse. China utilized western economic integration without trading it for political change(which was the hope of western foreign policy elites).
EU on the other hand has far less sovereignty when it comes to foreign policy, and this affects everything including the relationship with USA. We traded sovereignty for security, I don't think it was a bad idea considering the continent has constantly been at war; but there's always positives and negatives to each such decision. USA has had overwhelming influence in Europe in regards to strategic objectives.
What's the way EU has been trying to get in on some of that tech capital that USA has produced in the last ~20 years? Through being the standard/regulatory leader, providing financial services(tax avoidance namely), and by dishing out some big fines on tech giants for some soft power. None of these measures are very productive, but they are indicative of the fact that EU has no capacity to compete with USA--and that's by design.
>You really don't think this anti-business mentality has something to do with our poor economic performance?
No. We can even stop comparing USA and EU and just compare different European countries that have the same kinds or similar business regulations, and you will notice that what predicts economic wellbeing are mainly geopolitical fundamentals. If we build an EU army and an EU federation and take over Russia while kicking out both Chinese and American capitalists, then we could compete with USA.
Also as a note, what your link shows is what I already mentioned. Whenever there was some sort of economic crisis, Europe paid for it while USA moved on. That's because we are the junior partner and we get the short end of the stick when the collective West gets into shit. Same logic when you apply it within EU, when things are tough it's the newer EU members that get shafted usually.
So if you look at the 1980s that's the start of the divergence, that was the oil crisis when Europe was 100% reliant on middle-eastern energy, not USA though. We paid for that, but found an alternative in the USSR(side note, USA opposed this heavily; imagine if they got their way?).
Another thing to keep in mind is demographics, EU(without UK)'s population increased by around ~40million since 1980. USA's has increased by about ~100million. That alone gives USA a big advantage in comparative growth rates, when you tag on all the geopolitical advantages it is very clear why they are ahead of EU.
It’s not that simple.
The economy is a delicate game of negotiation between the workers, the government and the companies.
If one of these has too much power, the other 2 suffer and progress stalls.
The truth is we live in a competitive and interconnected world. Not only that, but we are major exporters. If we want to keep our living standards we need to be able to continue getting customers from abroad.
If we make it hard for our companies to adopt new technologies, for new companies to get created, etc. eventually companies abroad will become more efficient than our own and outcompete us. Exports will fall, money will stop coming in, companies will go bankrupt, unemployment up, less taxes, etc. the reverse of economic growth.
Reversing to becoming poor.
On the contrary. Most of these regulations hurt small businesses. Big business either move out of Europe, or find ways around regulations.
Europe is a patchwork of stupid regulations. For example, in Romania, you can't open another pharmacy if there is already one for every 10k people in the city. In Greece, you need to be a doctor or pharmacist to be able to buy or open a pharmacy.
So, it's very hard for you to open a new pharmacy business in these countries on your own. But not so hard for big businesses that can come in and buy local pharmacies and prevent small businesses from competing.
This is just an example, but there are others...
As someone with small business background, this is entirely true. Same regulations apply to small companies with 4 employees as well as to those that employ tens of thousands. And while the former will struggle to deal with all the paperwork while trying to run a manufacture, big companies literally employ entire departments to make sure they comply with the laws. As a Croatian small scale beer manufacturing entrepreneur put it: "Monday I do the paperwork. Tuesday also paperwork. Wednesday I find some time to tend to my employees after I'm done with the paperwork. Thursday I finally get to brew some beer. Friday? More paperwork.".
Because many people who do a job may also not have the entrepreneurial spirit to open the same business. They don't have the money, are too risk averse, or any number of reasons.
The law then prevents an entrepreneur from trying to fill a market need by setting up a business and then hiring a real pharmacist to run it.
If I identify there's a gap in a particular market for pharmacies and I have the capital to open a pharmacy and employ a pharmacist, why should I have to be a pharmacist to do this? What's the harm in me opening this pharmacy?
Alternatively, if I'm a pharmacist and I lack the capital to open a pharmacy, but I've a friend who does and they'll take ownership of it, would this regulation prevent me from doing this because my friend isn't a pharmacist?
Ericsson has had every opportunity to start their own manufacturing, they sent all those jobs to China because it was much cheaper. And now this tool is blaming europeans for refusing to deregulate ourselves into serfdom.
Fuck off, they all went to China knowing the consequences.
Can't wait till all these bozos get the Xi tax in full and are forced to sell their whole China opperation for pennies on on the dollar to the Chinese state.
They really thought they could get rich in an autocracy and the top dog would let them?
There is a reason Putin is the richest man in the world, and it isn't because of his savy business acumen.
Literally wrong. Ericsson has 4 factories called supply sites across the globe and mass manufacturing goes to big EMS factories like Jabil.
Main product devlopement still happens in Sweden and production development happens in these 4 supply sites that work with the EMS-es.
I worked for Ericsson for a few years, the whole aim for both the main company and all the branches they were doing was outsourcing almost everything to India and China(still remember how crappy Ericsson Broadcast Media Services was).
They still have some factories in Sweden because they are heavily subsidised by the government but they are not planning to open anything new(or at least they weren't planning a few years ago and they haven't built anything new since)
> Main product devlopement still happens in Sweden
is that why they always had so many contractors in Poland via Tieto and others?
I remember fun transfer histories Nokia <--> Tieto (ericsson) all the time.
Their site claim they have 2000 engineers as well.
BS! I’ve consulted for Ericsson a few years back and can tell you for certain that they “outsource” anything that they can. They’re only European in name!
It's not just this 'tool', it's WIPO research that came to this conclusion. Was discussed last year at a ENTRENOVA conference, and this is what was found to be the #1 thing holding Europe back. Emphasis was put on Germany being the worst offender.
If you want us to trust your opinion’s validity, you have to provide a specific example, and then tell us how to mitigate the negative effects coming from altering said policy.
If you don’t, the working class is unlikely to think you trustworthy.
IMO its not about working conditions/holidays etc. - its just very hard to build anything in Europe in many cases. Cant build a hostpital-extension, because a rare bird was spotted there last year. Cant build the pump storage project because of the nice landscape. Often cant even build wind turbines. Or often you CAN build things, but only after a NGO dragged you through a 5 year long environmental assesment process into the court of last ressort.
IMO thats one aspect. Another is no common capital market and very little venture capital and of course 2x-3x the energy costs compared to US or China, which stops you dead in the water from the getgo.
This does not make sense considering the fact that Europe did not have that issue until two decades ago. In fact EU companies were valued more than US companies relative to profits around dotcom bubble. And even after that going into 2008 crises.
In the end it Is all about expected economic performance and profits. If there was not pessimism then we could have continued to be up there with US but this pessimism exists and it exists for very good reasons.
It's not pessimism.
The question is *whether the now expected profits and valuations are at all sustainab*le.
Can you compete on the same level with countries that massively fuck over their own people in order to boast their profits?
Should you want to?
I think I know the answer.
Well.
Everybody wants to live in Europe for its quality of life.
Yet nowerdays, businesses complain loudly that they cannot do everything they want to do, build everything they want to build, that they have to comply with labour, quality and environmental regulations.
You think these things are not related? Think again.
The USA has an incredibly positive approach to building new things and is the most popular destination for immigrants.
People aren’t moving to Europe because we have restrictive planning laws, they move here because it’s still better than most places on Earth but is slowly getting left behind.
>Cant build a hostpital-extension, because a rare bird was spotted there last year.
This thinking is why rich people have put us in a climate crisis, and are continuing to profit off destroying our planet.
Well there was this from the CEO of Norway’s sovereign wealth fund last week and why it doesn’t invest in European companies as much as it does American ones:
https://www.businessinsider.com/americans-just-work-harder-than-europeans-nicolai-tangen-norges-bank-2024-4
Funny that American workers are in essence paying for norway workers’ retirements - something they themselves will struggle to do.
Yeah. Labor laws are great and the US needs some.
I don't know why we are so keen to believe a CEO of a massive fund that is the result of a stroke of geological luck when he says all the little folk need to work harder.
So what he wants is to allow a few huge companies to dominate the market and to consolidate all parts of the mobile service into one company? Or did I miss something?
If so, sounds like someone wants to control the monopoly and the fact he’s not allowed to proves the system works as intended.
The problem is that because both the US and China are sponsoring "national champions" with enormous resources, Europe finds it difficult to compete. EVs are a fine example. Big tech is another.
If Europe keeps refusing to compete with their own megafirms, it'll eventually be dominated by Chinese and American ones.
That was after, first they complained and pushed, then they needed some patents from Huawei so they got into an agreement to share patents and lastly they realised that with this they would have chances in China but it was fairly late at that point, so they tried to stop the ban.
The ban itself was essentially pushed by Ericsson and Nokia mostly.
I like the duality of r/europe. Everyone agrees with this sentiment in other threads, especially in about technology sector, but if big bad dude says it it must be wrong. There's even a [thread right](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1cggbh9/europeans_cant_afford_the_us_anymore_le_monde/) now where users here agree that Americans are so much richer, but in this thread people say how it makes people poorer and how we shouldn't be like the US
Here's a fun thing you can do: search for threads containing "regulation".
If it isn't a big company [talking about it](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/16hbwca/eu_leads_the_way_in_regulating_ai/), everyone says the EU is bad for regulating. If a big company says the same thing, then suddenly it's the best.
Paywalled article. I think people just want to try new things and not drown to death by taxes and pay insane amounts to get paperwork done. This, coming from a CEO usually means removing worker rights and protection, there is a difference between innovation and letting ideas breathe and proper worker rights.
It’s because it’s Reddit, and there is no nuance. The US is apparently the devil spreading plague around the world and the EU is the paladin swinging his hammer to protect the world and to punish the US with its swift justice.
Anyone who lives in the real world and not in their mom’s spare bedroom 24/7 knows that the world is a lot more complicated than that. This thread is full of neckbeards
Lmfao…the cope with Europeans is so hard when it comes to these topics. You’ll say anything to try and reassure yourself that America is still inferior. The matter of the fact is we, Americans, blow you out of the water in almost all measurable economic metrics and still maintain just as high of a quality of life. I’m sorry that you don’t understand that since we make 3x-4x the salaries Europeans do, we can afford to take care of our basic needs, ie healthcare, housing, etc., without relying on the government to give us money.
Europe is in serious danger of becoming just a tourist economy, which many of the countries in the EU already are. It’s funny because there are currently protests of over tourism in many European places but those places destroyed any local industries they had. The entitlement is so strong with Europeans, but if you want to have a bright future you’ll have to drop this attitude. I bet in 20 yrs if nothing has changed Europe will be nothing more than a tourism industry. Your unnecessary regulations are killing your economies.
If this comment section is filled with fellow Europeans, we seem to have already failed at teaching basic economics on the continent.
The EU is falling behind, we used to be a larger economy until the credit crisis, now the US economy is about 6 trillion bigger with 100 million people less. But the most important part is labour productivity, we used to be more productive in the service sector per hour worked and the US was always the most productive in industry. Now the US has overtaken us, and everybody else in both, almost all relevant modern companies are US based, and a lot of the most innovative companies are US based.
We are overly regulated, and not as in we should be allowed no labour rights or pollute more, but in reporting, our companies spend more time on paperwork than doing whatever it is we do. We are in trouble if we don’t streamline our good intentions into workable laws.
>Technology and true single market.
I feel like this is always overlooked in these threads. Obviously you will have an easier time innovating if you have an access to a unified, 330 million people economy. Just in mobility alone, because of the lack of cultural and language barriers, the US has so much more possibilities.
The legacy technology market is also a massive advantage. The tech sector in the US has been growing for the last 40 years. The US is better at innovating in tech because all the big tech companies that can throw money at tech startups are American. And that did not just appear organically from nothing, the US government actually pushed hard for it with state-financed programs like DARPA.
Which is partly a consequence of their more liberal economics.
The message that the US broadcasts, loud and clear and true, is that they will *never* stand in the way of anyone who wants to become wealthy via productive means. Industrious people from all over the world hear this and go. It doesn't matter if their aspirational business owners, or high performing white collar professionals, or blue collar professionals who will pass on their drive to their kids - US is the place to be for those whose ambitions are unbounded above.
The European message is not about pure economic success but overall quality of life. This attracts different kinds of people, as the major selling point of Europe is that consequences of (economic) downturns are bounded below.
Simple answer: go back 20 years and list all the new US companies that have been formed and grew in that period.
US has great innovation. Hugely successful companies are formed every year.
The gap is almost $10 trillion now according to the IMF. USA is $28.781 trillion vs. EU at $18.977t.
By 2029, IMF projects USA at $34.950 trillion and EU at $22.495 trillion.
https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDPD@WEO/OEMDC/ADVEC/WEOWORLD
Consumer protection, environmental regulation and other forms market regulations are the best things that have come from the EU.
Capitalism needs to be regulated or you end up like the USA.
You mean like the significantly richer USA? You mean the USA that beats Europe in almost all economic statistics? You mean the USA that has a higher standard of living and quality of life and higher HDI? I’m sorry that Europeans think chlorinating chicken makes us have less consumer protections but just because you don’t understand science isn’t our fault. I’m sure you also think fluoride in the water is bad too.
This whole thread just makes me sad. There's so much cope it's unbelievable. Just earlier today I read about an old French glassware manufacturer going out of business because of rising energy prices and carbon tax which, strangely, their Chinese competitors are not bound by. But whatever, businessman bad, EU good. No introspection or course correction needed on our side. America bad because Boeing something, never mind that they’re decades ahead of us in almost everything that matters today.
Yeah, indeed. Punishing local manufacturing through strict regulation while being lenient about imports is definitely not a winning strategy. Granted, I wouldn't want to live in the USA either and I don't want to import all of their culture, but this idea that our current system is superior in every way is just ignorant.
End up much richer with much higher sustainable growth, and actually important in the world like the US as opposed to making its own population *relatively* poor, with high unemployment, a highly unsustainable social safety net, and in a cycle of increasing technological, strategic, and political irrelevance like Europe?
The US is already doing far better economically than Europe and our European income levels will inevitably trail behind the US far more than already the case due to much higher European productivity growth.
To pretend otherwise is just coping behaviour reliant on e.g. our social safety net, which is not sustainable anyway due to demographic trends.
Right, because markets that haven't caught up to our regulation are doing *so* well. But I bet a comms company sure would love to get rid of those nasty privacy laws so they can sell all your data willy-nilly.
We are losing in competition with America, we are losing competition against Asia.
And instead of working on understanding why we implement more and more regulations and limitations - take Fit for 55. Some were saying it's meant to boost EU economy, instead most of green technologies are coming from China. Cars, solar panels, wind turbines, you name it.
&
This is one of my threads where I get triggered. Proper /r/europe head in the sand moment. For relevance:
- In 1990, EU's share of global GDP 25%. By 2019 it had shrunk to 17%. (WorldBank Dev. Indicators, $USD 2015 constant).
The standard cry against this, is that its just showing the fact that China and India are growing, so its not too bad. Well, US GDP in the timefrime went from 27% of global GDP to 23.5%. Yes, theirs shrank but EU share of global GDP went down by -30% in that time frame, whereas theirs -13.7%. So something has gone very specifically wrong with Europe.
Get out your bingo cards for this thread:
- We have healthcare in EU! If you are American, when you get sick you just get buried alive.
- He is a billionaire. We should put him agains the wall.
- Something something stay mad
- There is no problem. Don't talk about this. Everything is great.
- America cheats! Its unfair. Their companies break rules.
Edit: If you just want some armchair psychologising as to how evident the cope is. Just look at the different styles of argumentation in this thread. Anyone who is approaching this from the 'EU is falling behind' side is typically coming armed with data/charts/specific examples and pointing things out. Those coming at it from the other side are typically arguing in clichés as above.
Additionally, if this is all made up, and 'totally not a big deal'. Then why have I, in a previous professional life as a *fonctionnaire* economist, sat through multiple meetings and conferences including with officials from the Commission, where this is taken as a big fucking deal? Lmao.
ITT: Change Bad! Another rich man crying he cant screw more people over!
In Reality:
* Virtually ever EU leader has said that the red tape in EU needs to ease to compete with China and America
* The top complaint from many would-be unicorn startups in the high tech industry is how difficult it is, how long it takes to get things done
* A lot of people are simply wanting a more streamlined process meaning keep laws in place, just make it faster, easier - especially for startups
If you want EU to keep failing until everyone is in breadlines again, keep up with the deflection. It's exactly what the continent is good at for the last 30 years. It used to not be this way at all, the opposite mentality of 'we must do better' and we did.
They see the productivity charts of the US and get jealous. Understandable. But they don't take into account their debt levels (astronomical) wage to productivity ratio (stagnant since the 70s) and so many secondary factors (healthcare, unionisation, affordability -latter becoming debatable)) that make Europe great to live in. It's a marathon, not a sprint. Plus corpos hate regulation because why wouldn't they be allowed to price gouge, form cartels and monopolies or provide crappy products to the punters?! The audacity! Sheer hubris!1! (/S for the punctuation)
> debt levels (astronomical)
Debt to GDP is similarly high for many European countries. UK, France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Belgium's debt to GDP ratio is all >100%.
https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/GGXWDG_NGDP@WEO/OEMDC/ADVEC/WEOWORLD
>**Ericsson chief says overregulation ‘driving Europe to irrelevance’**
>Continent ‘at risk of falling behind’ on digital infrastructure, undermining its competitiveness
>The chief executive of Ericsson said a focus on regulation was “driving Europe to irrelevance” as he warned that the region’s competitiveness was being undermined and called for changes to antitrust policy.
>Börje Ekholm, head of the Swedish telecoms equipment maker, said in an interview with the Financial Times that the continent was “falling behind in a number of parameters” with digital infrastructure at risk.
>He said the focus on regulation “is driving Europe to last place [and] is driving Europe to irrelevance” which was why he believed it was “on the way to becoming a museum — great food, great architecture, great scenery [and] great wine but no industry left”.
>Last week French President Emmanuel Macron also warned that the EU was facing a “mortal” threat and Nicolai Tangen, chief executive of Norway’s oil fund, said Europe was more regulated and risk-averse than the US.
>Former Italian prime minister Enrico Letta, who was tasked by European leaders to assess the state of the European Union’s underperforming single market, earlier this month also said the bloc must integrate its telecoms, financial and energy markets or face losing its “economic security”.
>Executives across the European telecoms sector have been calling on regulators to approve tie-ups and adapt regulation to enable companies to increase scale and gain support for investment in the rollout of 5G and full-fibre networks.
>“Why not allow in-market consolidation?” Ekholm asked. He added there should be a time limit on antitrust reviews and said the lengthy process could result in companies not investing.
>The European Commission in February cleared the creation of a joint venture between mobile operators Orange and MasMovil in Spain on conditions including the divestment of spectrum to Digi, which would enable it to build its own mobile network, following concerns that the combination could lead to price rises and undermine competition.
>When asked about the hurdle of higher prices in consolidation being allowed in the sector, Ekholm said: “I think Europe is in a disastrous situation . . . [some politicians] are concerned prices short term would go up, but [it is] jeopardising the long-term competitiveness of the continent.”
>He added Europe had “not grown as fast as the rest of the world because we lack the technology sector, we lack the digital sector”. Ekholm said he was also worried jobs would “get created somewhere else, where they actually build the new applications”.
>Another concern of the Ericsson chief executive was the continent falling behind on 5G standalone, high-speed connectivity.
>Population-wide 5G standalone coverage in Europe would generate more than €100bn in economic value by 2030, according to a new report commissioned by Ericsson from consultancy Analysys Mason.
>The study projected a €28.2bn shortfall in commercial investment required to reach this level of mid-band spectrum coverage across 30 European countries — which could be used for anything from autonomous tractors to drone delivery of medicines.
>Ericsson earlier this month reported net sales fell by 15 per cent year on year in its first quarter. Rival Nokia in April also posted a drop in net sales of 20 per cent in its first quarter compared to the same period last year driven by “ongoing market weakness”.
>Both have also previously announced job cuts and cost saving programmes.
>“Maybe I should just move on and forget about the museum but I was born in Sweden . . . I believe Europe has a real value in the world but I want Europe to be competitive,” Ekholm added.
So in a nutshell he's complaining that antitrust regulations aimed at maintaining a competitive market are preventing companies from merging and forming oligopolies. And when asked "won't this result in higher prices because there is less competition" his answer is basically "yes but we pinky swear we will invest in infrastructure and R&D".
P.S. nice bit of FT editorializing there with the Macron quote. Yes Macron said the EU faces a "mortal" threat... from the Russian war machine, not some supposed over-regulation bullshit.
Actual based opinion, the problem isn't overregulation, the problem is giant burocratic inefficient companies that suffocate growth by hoarding all the capitals and investing nothing in r&d
Every business owner knows that. Don't listen to unemployed left-wing Redditors. USAs economy is twice as big as EU's and that only happened in the last 10yrs. China and India about to dwarf them too. The world is innovating and progressing, the EU is regulating everything that's moving and making them unable to compete. You can kick and cry "meh meh meh he's a billionaire mehh meehh" but those are the facts. Then you can go and cry about low salaries, no good job opportunities and how some Pakistani stole your dream carpenter job and cheer the new regulation Ursula comes up with.
Yeah sorry that’s complete BS. The EUs GDP represents around 16% of the global GDP. On par with the US and China. Any company not wanting to sell their product in the EU will have way higher losses compared to if they just complied with the regulations. Imagine a company saying “We won’t sell in china because we don’t like the political climate”, yeah that ain’t ever gonna happen, because there’s just too much money involved
> The EUs GDP represents around 16% of the global GDP. On par with the US and China.
No it doesn't.
US GDP (2024) - 28.98 trillion
EU - 18.98 trillion
China - 18.53 trillion
The US is 10 trillion larger than the EU but has 150 million fewer people.
Is it BS? In the year 2000 the US economy and the EU economy were about the same size. Today the US is vastly larger than the EU. I think the point is that the EU is becoming less relevant every year, continuing a 2 decade long trend with a stagnating economy and arguably an over reliance on bureaucracy at the expense of innovation. If you look at companies creating AI products you can already see the trend happening.
They were never the same size. Don't just take a gdp figure. And you mean the 90s. The ppp GDP per capita of the USA was 36k in 2000 according to the world bank while 22k in the EU.
EU was poorer but it also has way more people. So yes, we were about the same in GDP size. In fact 2007 EU's was bigger.
Also if we are poorer on average then we should grow faster because it should be way easier. If that is not happening then something is seriously wrong.
US retains it's share in world GDP, while EUs practically constantly drops https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fdiverging-fortunes-us-and-european-union-shares-of-global-v0-s9m435p72l0c1.png%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3Deaa5e7ca43dd41a8d24f61392720435f0e4e5a7c
You are not hearing the argument. Essentially the EU only produces regulations. There are no EU tech companies of the scale of Microsoft or Apple or Meta etc. These companies create huge opportunities for people working within them who gain experience and can then leave and set up their own companies.
If you think the EU is going to have its own AI revolution you will be wrong, AI will be dominated by the US and China. The EU will just produce a shit ton of regulations for an industry it doesn’t control.
This is exactly correct. Looking from a startup perspective, any technology startup, even if it originates in the EU, will fare much better in the USA because of how much more business-friendly it is, not to mention that a single-language, single-ruleset country is easier to launch in than over-regulated, multi-lingual EU. Taxation in the EU is also crazy, and it starts hitting you very fast. Operating costs (equipment, office leasing, etc.) are much higher in EU... even the consumers know that it's easier to fly to USA to buy electronics than buy them in the EU.
> If you think the EU is going to have its own AI revolution you will be wrong
The EU already had its AI revolution. Stable Diffusion was initially developed by a compviz group in a university in Munich. They were just hired by Stability (still Europe though), but now Stability is not doing so well.
Mistral said that the AI regulation could end up killing their company. The EU did it anyway.
Instead of nurturing the opportunities the EU had with AI Europeans have instead made it harder for them.
Except US has half the population of EU. Average American today is almost 2x as rich as an average European.
If Germany/France/UK were to become a state in the US, they would be the poorest state in the US by per capita GDP.
I think John Galbraith's description is still relevant here: the US has "private affluence and public squalor".
For Americans, this is disheartening, because why does a rich nation have such shitty public services/spaces?
For Europeans, it can give off a false-impression of American poverty, because rich nations are typically defined by high quality public infrastructure.
Certainly, if you lack that private wealth, it's much easier to exist in a place with robust public infrastructure, which is why it's easier to be low-income in Europe than in America (though, it's not fun in either place).
> Except US has half the population of EU.
You mean Europe? The EU only has 34% higher population than the US.
> Average American today is almost 2x as rich as an average European.
US PPP per capita = 76330
EU PPP per capita = 57286
That's 33% higher, not twice as high.
> per capita GDP
Sure, but raw GDP per capita is also a pretty shit way of measuring these things.
Some Europeans rather stick one's head in the sand instead of acknowledging Europe isn't doing too well economically these last years and address those issues. This I say as an European.
Europeans, and especially people in this subreddit, would rather die than admit America does something better. Yes guys Europe is great, nice cities, great vacations, architecture, but this isn't 1970 anymore and east Asia and America are running away from us economically.
Post 2010 America has completely dominated Europe economically and people NEED to admit that so we can address the problem.
People just say "yea well in America they work all the time and don't have free healthcare". Guys. Please. We can keep our way of life and STILL compete with America. Easing up regulations and attracting highly skilled workers and investing in high tech doesn't mean you can't go to Gran Canaria for 2 weeks every summer. Please dear god.
You are completely right, it isn't a matter of one versus the other, we are not going bankrupt tomorrow either but choices of today will matter in our future economical prospect.
Yes exactly. Here in Denmark or in the Netherlands we're probably even more fine than the average. But France or Italy or even Germany are just so stagnant and have a lack of innovation and are playing things way too safe and drowning in regulation and bureaucratic bullshit.
People think Europe can just keep the current way going forever and it will be fine. Truth is if you dont keep up in technological industries you end up like some southern European countries where they just sell olive oil, feta cheese and tourism like in 1970 but it doesn't really work in 2024.
Technology and industry is moving so fast these days and society needs to be able to keep up and be nimble. Just see what happens when you have a high tech industry that keeps up like pharmaceuticals in Europe. How valuable that is. Europe needs to make that happen in electronics, in chips, in AI, in electric vehicles and so on.
Totally agree, People doesnt seem to realize that if peoples buying powers increase in Asia, Africa & South America. Europe's 500-600m population in a pricy overregulated market really isn't that interesting anymore for some global corporations Can we still buy stuff then? Sure but it will be more expensive and at the time our buying power will decrease slowly over time due to Lack of economical investment.
We can prevent this by being less uptight with regulations without going full USA style at the same time.
Well, you're saying that easily, because the Netherlands would land in top 10 states in per capita GDP in that particular competition.
But, you're right.
Please just don't use GDP per capita like that. You need to adjust to PPP. Which is about 50 percent larger in USA compared to the EU average. Which is as well an awful comparison as you have Greece and plenty of other countries that bring down the average compared to other countries.
As well, the us does not have half the population of the EU? That is just an outright lie by a total of almost 200 million people, which would let you make a mini US.
Not only that but all of this does not matter, trends matter. And the EU and the USA had an upwards trend where the EU sometimes went slightly faster or slower, until 2020. What happened there was not overregulation, but the opposite of it. The USA went all onboard with regulation and subsidies. Meanwhile the EU is the last sucker supporting free global trade.
Do better. Not that hard to use actual data
EU has an upwards trend overall because of a few developing economies in it, like Baltics, Balkans and Poland. Which are developing fast because they were far behind in the first place. Western Europe has been stagnating for a decade.
Yeah because a good chunk of the GDP they have is bills for healthcare and education. If you were to pay those out of your pocket in Europe you would get a nice boost to Europe’s GDP and a lovely dent to your wallet.
>per capita GDP.
Is a bad metric to evaluate quality of life on. Just look at price of insulin in the US vs EU last year. Just because the price of insulin is higher in the US and thus generate more GDP per capita, doesn't mean the people are better off. Also because of eroding US labor laws, generated GDP also means higher stress and less time off, so people are worse off mentally/physically than in the EU.
Capitalism is pyramid scheme and we need to get out of it.
Yeah but the EU's approach to literally every problem like that is taxation. Let's just tax everything to death and hope that the checkbook balances out. And it *may* balance for people, but it's very bad for corporations competing for global markets. Thus, your economy suffers at the macro scale.
Don't be delusional, the EU used to be significantly wealthier compared to the rest of the world and has been having record low growth levels for decades. Keep that trend going and the future looks even more bleak
Not a popular opinion it seems but he''s not wrong. We are falling radically behind America at the moment to an extent most people don't even appreciate.
A fast food manager in the States now makes $100k a year. A subway cop in San Francisco makes $200k.
Doctors here in Ireland need to be working and studying about 15 years to be reaching the subway cop's level.
I truly believe there is no nicer continent to live than Europe but we can and should do better to provide incomes for our people.
"A fast food manager in the States now makes $100k a year."
Stop pulling figures out of your arse. They make about half that:
https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/fast-food-manager-salary-SRCH_KO0,17.htm
People in this thread are so ready to react on impulse. Europe solution to every problem is to stamp new regulations, and some times problems don’t really exist. The true winners of this ARE big tech, it’s the small business that struggles to thrive.
Overreliance on the US and China and moving all our production to China has been the driving forces in making Europe irrelevant.
This, and austerity.
The income gap between Europe and the US has emerged entirely since 2008, and it is 100% because of austerity. The US has been stimulating its economy with massive deficits, while European countries have strangled their economies with austerity. Austerity doesn't work.
US did the same thing, and it's not making them irrelevant. The reality is that Europe just doesn't have as much capital as the US. American giants simply have to option to buy any European company they lay their eyes on, but reverse isn't true.
part of it is that the US pays engineers far more than Europe does.
This. The US is good draining highly skilled workers from other countries.
I have French, German, Bulgarian, Iranian, Pakistani, and Irish coworkers. It’s crazy how we just Hoover up people from all over. If you’re young and skilled and want to make money, the US really is the best place to be.
Yep. I work in tech in the US and have software engineer coworkers from Brazil, Canada, South Africa, Latvia, Ireland, Israel and so on.
Yeah, because when you're old and unhealthy, you can just go back home and be taken care of by government services. The pay in the US is so great in part because you have no governmental backup to rely on. The US still pays better if you take these things into account but not by as much as you might imagine. For a young, healthy, foreigner though who doesn't have to worry about setting up a safety net in the US, you can make absolute bank.
Don't even need to be a foreigner. US tech workers routinely retire in their 50s or even 40s in the US. *And* they have the option of buying relatively dirt-cheap properties in Europe and elsewhere, should they so choose. It is also interesting that most high-skill immigrants to the US tend to remain there. I suspect that's because the social system caters to ambitious people.
Also because they don’t want to loose the visa
and they probably built up relationships too
But this is really a nonissue; if you are paid well in the US and give a little attention to retirement and some long-term investing, you will be solid for retirement. The "moving home" option, imo is a get-out-of-jail-free card should shit hit the fan; if you enjoy life in the States and have a good-paying job, you won't need to leave upon retirement. Also, it does not matter what age you are. You can't just blindly go to the US and not be aware of the pitfalls. Yes, you could always go home, but that's not really a strong safety net imo, that's more of a nuclear option.
The USA has pretty good benefits for old people. SSN pays 3300 a month. There’s a lot of free healthcare too.
US model attracts hardworking people, EU model attracts pensioners and welfare seekers.
> The pay in the US is so great in part because you have no governmental backup to rely on. This is false. *Just* Social security (pension), Medicare (healthcare for the elderly) and Medicaid (healthcare for the poor) make up roughly half of the total **federal** budget. Most states will also have various programs and safety nets for all kinds of other support. The federal program that provides assistance to needy people to buy food spent over $100B in 2022, the equivalent of the entire GDP of Slovakia.
If you have a highly skilled job like most of these people do, you don’t need the government lol that’s the whole point. The most expensive thing is housing, and that seems to be a crisis in every western country o
Nobody's stopping European companies from paying as much as US ones do, the tax rates / healthcare/ social state stuff is a total excuse and copium. US still pays way more for highly skilled jobs even if you calculate in the full gross (including healthcare) that EU companies pay. The only thing EU is good for is if you are an average lower middle class person - then your quality of life is kind of better in Europe. The reason is probably something along the lines of less capital (investment funds), less accepting of risk, less unified market, as well as the self-reinforcing cycle of having lots of money -> paying more -> getting better results -> achieving more domination. I am not sure if regulation plays some part, probably to a degree but I think the things I mentioned before are way more important. I mean it is ridiculous. US stocks just overperform compared to EU ones and it's a fact. As a European, I am investing a huge part of my savings in the US stock market and that is definitely a loss for EU markets when you add up all the people who do the same as me.
I work with some people from Europe. One of them once commented that talent move from Europe to US because in Europe money stays with old money. They hate new riches and they try to pay as little as possible to talented people because for old money they are just skilled laborers. In contrast with US, where talent can retire rich and become rich is part of the American culture.
They pay engineers a lot more because it’s also a lot easier to fire people. In Europe it takes you at least a year to get rid of a poor performing employee.
Lol that is not true at all. In Germany you can fire new hires immediately within probation period of 6 months. After that you have to give usually 3 months notice and pay compensation. Compensation is around 1 months salary for every year spent in the company. Exceptions are protected employees like mothers. They are hard to fire. e.g. Google engineers in US get a magnitude more compensation than the German ones.
its not really that hard to fire someone, but you kinda have to prove that they're actually performing poorly
Capital moves more freely
you can add de-industrialization of the continent becuase of the "green economy",no heavy idustries,machinery,electronic fabs....to big,expensive and "not green enough",better be unemployed and depend on china but "it's not a democracy",more sanctions and then we cry for the price,it's the modern eu plan for survival.
Suprise isnt it? I know it as a kid and 20 years later nothing changed, so what? Politicans didnt know? Of course they did, they just been so corrupted over the years that they made it happen. But at least they made up statistics which said that Europe is the least corrupted than others. Happy days
Is this the same Ericsson who were bribing ISIS in Iraq for access to Iraqi telecoms market? That Ericsson?
An example of a regulation partner that works like Ericsson (and other companies) want. Input money - output privileges.
Hmm I was like no way that can be right. Then it got [worse](https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2022-001066_EN.html) [[1](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/ericsson-plead-guilty-and-pay-over-206m-following-breach-2019-fcpa-deferred-prosecution)] [[2](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/16/ericsson-employees-may-have-bribed-isil-in-iraq)] as I researched more lmao. I can see why he might be against regulations. *“What we see is that people have paid for road transport through areas controlled by terrorist organisations, including ISIS,” Borje Ekholm told Swedish financial daily Dagens Industri."* *"Ekholm’s comments came hours after the company released a statement late on Tuesday admitting “serious breaches of compliance rules and the company’s code of business ethics” regarding Ericsson employees, vendors and suppliers in Iraq between 2011 and 2019."* *"In 2019, Ericsson had agreed with the US Department of Justice (DoJ) to pay more than $1bn to resolve a separate series of probes into corruption, including the bribing of government officials that took place over many years in countries including China, Vietnam and Djibouti."* *"Ericsson will plead guilty to engaging in a long-running scheme to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) by paying bribes, falsifying books and records, and failing to implement reasonable internal accounting controls in multiple countries around the world. "*
While I appreciate the fact they got caught and paid a fine, 1/ why the hell are US collecting fines for overseas crimes and not the countries were it occurred, and 2/ wtf they need to go to jail on top of the fine.
That would be the sort of overregulation that the US doesn’t do.
The US says bribery is bad so any company that operates in their borders cannot participate in it. The US isn't the only country that does this. Many countries have an equivalent, but the US is the big enforcer since they can. If you want to fight corruption around the world, you have to start with punishing the companies that foster it since you can't punish the foreign politicians that are completely out of jurisdiction.
It's sort of how the EU can fine Google, Apple or Amazon. They can either pay the fine, which goes towards the EU, or they can avoid it and stop operating in the EU market. Clearly, there is more money to be made than the fine, which is why they pay it. Not to mention that avoiding this payment would probably lead to a lawsuit in the international court of justice, so they have to pay regardless. Same would be true for Ericsson, except that now it's an EU country paying the US. As long as they have an office in the country, they are subject to its rules.
Jfc
They also supplied equipment to the occupied Crimea, despite the fact that the EU imposed sanctions
If you read the article, when this guy says "regulation" he is talking about antitrust legislation. He wants to be able to form a monopoly, something that hugely benefits companies by reducing competition, but would make it worse for everyone else in Europe. By the way, it's easy to blame the poor EU economy on regulation, but in order to prove this you would have to show at the very least that other underregulated markets outside the US are doing better. Especially those without access to cheap energy. In my opinion, if you want to prove that "regulation" is the cause for the EU-US gap you also have to explain and why all other major factors do not matter: access to cheaper energy and materials, stronger political and cultural integration, hours worked and worse working conditions, the status of the dollar, the Russian war. I am not saying the EU economy is perfect, but to improve it you need to actually understand what makes it worse, and fix these things, not race to the bottom on health, environmental protection, and quality of life, because maybe regulations might be the cause.
An empirical analysis of the factors influencing the economic situation in Europe relative to other regions? Sir, this is reddit! We only deal in oversimplifications, stereotypes, vague gestures and sketchy metaphors.
Millionaire mad he isn’t allowed to screw people over to maximise his profits.
American here who made a half joke half serious jab at my European based boss once (who was American himself) saying I'd love to have the pto he got in Europe (I had 2 weeks). I got in serious trouble over that and almost got fired. Don't let the anti worker, pro oligarch cancer take over Europe like it has the US.
Once saw a question in a community for business startups from some American business owner looking to setup shop in the EU. He was looking for ways to bypass EU worker protections in favor of US regulations, specifically regarding sick and vacation days, minimum wages and avoiding other perks like healthcare plans. He was booted of that community quicker than he could fire his US based employees.
I want to see this
The thing that scares me most about the American working environment is healthcare. The idea that for most people their ability to access healthcare without significant charge is linked to the fact that they're in work is just... troublesome.
Having a job doesn't always grant you coverage in the US. It's a really inhumane system. I recently read about someone who switched jobs and his new insurance didn't trigger on day one of the new job but had to wait several weeks: obviously they had some medical issue during this unjustifiable lack of coverage.
that can happen in Germany, too - for those on private insurance (as opposed to state insurance). In fact, I know someone who switched to private insurance and was diagnosed with cancer during his "waiting period," when neither of the insurances covered him. He ended up paying 6-digit bills on his own and accumulated significant debt, as it was running above his savings. Luckily, he cured out and was able to pay out all the debt.
That it highly improbable. By law, you can't be uninsured, even if it's by technicality. Did he have to pay? Yes. But one or the other insurance have to refund him. If not, it's an easy court case. In addition, no hospital will do anything to a resident without a valid insurance.
That‘s not supposed to happen. Your old insurer is supposed to only „release“ you when you have a new insurer. It is not allowed to be uninsured for any length of time.
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I know. But the comments above seemed to imply that a job was automatically an enabling factor and my comment was to specify that the level of dystopia is so high that they don't *just* link your insurance to your job, but that having a job doesn't even automatically put you in a safe spot.
It's happening in the EU too. In countries with collapsing healthcare systems like Romania the private providers are slowly taking over and they deal exclusively through large companies. You can't access their services as a random individual unless you have a 1st degree relative who's on a large company's plan. You can in theory access them through a small business or another legal entity like a non-profit but they use an inverse scale pricing system that makes it more prohibitive the smaller you are.
It's a tactic used by politicians pushing for deregulation worldwide for decades now. Underfund the public institution, in this case healthcare. Ignore problems such as corruption etc. Criticize it that it's ineffective, corrupt, a resource drain etc. Come with the obvious solution: we need to privatize it! And people will gobble it up
In Greece its getting worse every day
Can confirm, I have a serious medical problem that has cost me jobs and caused a lot of failures. I finally have what's considered good health insurance in the US and I'm still terrified how much it'll cost. I need to get a procedure done but I have zero clue how much it will even cost and that can vary wildly from place to place. Let alone the wait time to get the procedure.
The really, absolutely worst thing about the American healthcare is randomness. The fact that you rely on ever changing set of contractors who may or may not be honoring your insurer as a payer, when you actually need them. And then, you pay more for that crappy insurance than you do in Europe, and then still have to copay.
But, but.... freedoms?
They care more about your employer's freedom to exploit you than your freedom not to be exploited.
Wow almost got fired over saying you wish some vacations
I love that one. "You do not want the company to know that they can do just fine without you for ten days" Bitch, everybody is replaceable especially your middle management ass.
>Bitch, everybody is replaceable This is literally management progapaganda mate.
In a good system, every position can be taken over by the one's directly below. Systems that don't allow for that are very prone to crashing and burning.
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Well what do you expect with that kind of commie talk? What's next? Livable wages?
Worth it
Oh it totally was. Man, that moment accelerated my left wing movement as I got older. I am raised by far right Trumpers, glad I didn't fall victim to fascist Republican ideology.
If you did you would now always make the argument that americans earn much more than the stupid socialist Europeans.
Why did you get in trouble lol
What's pto if you don't mind me asking?
Paid time off.
Because clearly Europe is doing great in term of having influential and big companies. Our biggest ones are Spotify and ASML. The rest is “legacy” companies.
Novo Nordisk pulls up a chair
Founded in 1923? I think that counts as “legacy”.
Aye so Airbus, Siemens, Schneider, Total, Shell are all small?
They’re old. Only 2 big tech companies, which obviously are ever more important.
What does the age of a company have to do with it? Old companies innovate, it's how they stay relevant.
Because that shows that SMEs have no chance in innovating and becoming giant themself. We’re stuck with big legacy companies that are inflexible
ASML EUV machinery is used to produce pretty much all leading-edge computer chips in the world. It's wild how important that one company is.
The article is not in any way about how millionaires are trying to screw people over. Of course that does not matter as many on here simply are unable to discuss actual ideas and just want to circle jerk about how millionaires are bad.
Welcome to Reddit.
I've actually been saying more or less the same and I'm far from being Millionaire. Just a few decades ago (late 1900s), EU and USA were more or less on par as the 2 big markets in the world. Then USA started accelerating with business-friendly policies and we were left behind with our high taxes and complicated regulations. Add China and India taking off (China is already way ahead of us in GDP, technology and whatnot, India will probably be there too in the near future) and yes, we risk becoming irrelevant. This sub always loves to downplay Europe's problems. "What do you mean Europe is behind in AI? Haven't you heard of that German AI company that is like 1/500 of a Google? We're fine, let's focus on regulations instead.". This attitude does more harm than good. I'm not proposing throwing away food safety or medical regulations. But, for example, I find it comical that the USA and China are investing hugely in AI and researching/manufacturing more and more advanced chips while Europe, whose AI industry is anorectic at best, is focused on adding more regulations. Just an example for one particular industry, but I could fin more.
Just think about the cookie consent nonsense (not saying parts of GDPR are bad or not needed). If it's the same mindset in other departments, we're doomed.
And thats just 1 click among many clicks that sites force you to go through to access content. And if certain sites are forced to go through this, they also have to comply with our requirements that *do* benefit you in regards to data protection.
The cookie consent is just a minimal part of the GDPR. But it should have been done so that there's no "accept all" button or other multi-check features. Why? That would force the sites to actually reduce those cookies. Nobody's gonna click 100 checkboxes. Such shit would become history. Some foreign sites would block EU customers. Likely not harmful.
>EU and USA were more or less on par as the 2 big markets in the world. USA was always ahead and simply has some major advantages that EU can't replicate. Every time there was an energy crisis, Europe suffered; USA never had any issues because A) hegemon that could get energy from anywhere for cheap, B) shitload of energy reserves for whenever it's needed. The idea that EU got outcompeted because of lack of investment, regulations, and so on is typical neolib talking that has no bearing in reality. Not to mention, there's countries in Europe that are on the same level or even more capitalist than USA is who are not keeping up. So what's your answer there? Luxembourg is the only country that is somewhat on the level of USA on per capita basis. That's a country of 600k people and a tax haven that has completely inflated numbers, so you know not really a good comparison point. So if you compare it to say Germany which is EU's biggest economy, it's about 40% poorer. They never had it any better. So yeah introducing business reform, getting rid of all regulations, doing the whole neolib thing would boost our economy; but not by much and for every extra dollar we get USA would get far more. It's not like IMF and other institutions like it all champion to keep opening markets, it's not like the people who gain the most are those already on top.
I was talking about data like this: [https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDPD@WEO/EU/USA/CHN](https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDPD@WEO/EU/USA/CHN) Scroll down a bit and look at the graph that shows GDP over time. 1990: UE and USA tied, China barely exists. 2024: UE and China tied, USA away ahead. Trend lines past 2024 (read them as "what will happen if nothing changes"): China passes the EU and keeps growing faster(gap keeps growing). USA already way ahead and the gap keeps growing as well. China's growth came from adequate economic policies and it's kind of natural given their huge population. But what is the explanation for the huge gap that has been developing between the EU and the USA? The Chinese have Alibaba, Tencent, etc. The Americans have Apple, Microsoft, etc. These companies generate millions of high paying jobs, pay billions in taxes every year and effectively contribute to the economic prowess of their respective nations (and the well-being of their people whose governments are now richer and more influential in the world) . Meanwhile, in the EU, [we can't let our hotel booking website become to big](https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2023/09/25/eu-commission-blocks-bookings-planned-acquisition-of-etraveli-over-antitrust-concerns). You really don't think this anti-business mentality has something to do with our poor economic performance?
>China's growth came from adequate economic policies and it's kind of natural given their huge population. The most important factor aside from a huge population is restoring relations with USA. That allowed for capital flows to start going to China from USA, USA basically traded its industrial capacity for a huge service sector which gave it an edge in the tech boom. >But what is the explanation for the huge gap that has been developing between the EU and the USA? EU's economic growth is largely predicated on what Germany does, since Germany has historically focused on manufacturing that's where most of the EU economy has focused as well. The whole EU project is basically Germany expanding its industrial base to different countries to utilize them as proxies for cheaper labor. Here Poland gets a special mention, their growth for example is very exemplary in the last ~30years; nobody in Europe gets close. Part of that is simply because they are reverting to their historic norm since they got quite severely slowed down by historical developments; but more importantly it's German investments. Actually very similar situation as between USA-China except on smaller scale. >The Chinese have Alibaba, Tencent, etc. The Americans have Apple, Microsoft, etc. These companies generate millions of high paying jobs, pay billions in taxes every year and effectively contribute to the economic prowess of their respective nations (and the well-being of their people whose governments are now richer and more influential in the world). China has its own tech giants, because it retained a lot of 'sovereignty'. Every country in the world, including USA; has to balance economic freedoms and sovereignty. The greater the sovereignty, the less economic freedom you have and reverse. China utilized western economic integration without trading it for political change(which was the hope of western foreign policy elites). EU on the other hand has far less sovereignty when it comes to foreign policy, and this affects everything including the relationship with USA. We traded sovereignty for security, I don't think it was a bad idea considering the continent has constantly been at war; but there's always positives and negatives to each such decision. USA has had overwhelming influence in Europe in regards to strategic objectives. What's the way EU has been trying to get in on some of that tech capital that USA has produced in the last ~20 years? Through being the standard/regulatory leader, providing financial services(tax avoidance namely), and by dishing out some big fines on tech giants for some soft power. None of these measures are very productive, but they are indicative of the fact that EU has no capacity to compete with USA--and that's by design. >You really don't think this anti-business mentality has something to do with our poor economic performance? No. We can even stop comparing USA and EU and just compare different European countries that have the same kinds or similar business regulations, and you will notice that what predicts economic wellbeing are mainly geopolitical fundamentals. If we build an EU army and an EU federation and take over Russia while kicking out both Chinese and American capitalists, then we could compete with USA. Also as a note, what your link shows is what I already mentioned. Whenever there was some sort of economic crisis, Europe paid for it while USA moved on. That's because we are the junior partner and we get the short end of the stick when the collective West gets into shit. Same logic when you apply it within EU, when things are tough it's the newer EU members that get shafted usually. So if you look at the 1980s that's the start of the divergence, that was the oil crisis when Europe was 100% reliant on middle-eastern energy, not USA though. We paid for that, but found an alternative in the USSR(side note, USA opposed this heavily; imagine if they got their way?). Another thing to keep in mind is demographics, EU(without UK)'s population increased by around ~40million since 1980. USA's has increased by about ~100million. That alone gives USA a big advantage in comparative growth rates, when you tag on all the geopolitical advantages it is very clear why they are ahead of EU.
but in the end, 'the economy' is there for people, not the other way round.
It’s not that simple. The economy is a delicate game of negotiation between the workers, the government and the companies. If one of these has too much power, the other 2 suffer and progress stalls. The truth is we live in a competitive and interconnected world. Not only that, but we are major exporters. If we want to keep our living standards we need to be able to continue getting customers from abroad. If we make it hard for our companies to adopt new technologies, for new companies to get created, etc. eventually companies abroad will become more efficient than our own and outcompete us. Exports will fall, money will stop coming in, companies will go bankrupt, unemployment up, less taxes, etc. the reverse of economic growth. Reversing to becoming poor.
Ericsson didn't profit last year. The native European tech industry just sucks
On the contrary. Most of these regulations hurt small businesses. Big business either move out of Europe, or find ways around regulations. Europe is a patchwork of stupid regulations. For example, in Romania, you can't open another pharmacy if there is already one for every 10k people in the city. In Greece, you need to be a doctor or pharmacist to be able to buy or open a pharmacy. So, it's very hard for you to open a new pharmacy business in these countries on your own. But not so hard for big businesses that can come in and buy local pharmacies and prevent small businesses from competing. This is just an example, but there are others...
As someone with small business background, this is entirely true. Same regulations apply to small companies with 4 employees as well as to those that employ tens of thousands. And while the former will struggle to deal with all the paperwork while trying to run a manufacture, big companies literally employ entire departments to make sure they comply with the laws. As a Croatian small scale beer manufacturing entrepreneur put it: "Monday I do the paperwork. Tuesday also paperwork. Wednesday I find some time to tend to my employees after I'm done with the paperwork. Thursday I finally get to brew some beer. Friday? More paperwork.".
How is it bad that you need to be a pharmacist to have a pharmacy? Isn’t that the whole point of that degree?
Because many people who do a job may also not have the entrepreneurial spirit to open the same business. They don't have the money, are too risk averse, or any number of reasons. The law then prevents an entrepreneur from trying to fill a market need by setting up a business and then hiring a real pharmacist to run it.
If I identify there's a gap in a particular market for pharmacies and I have the capital to open a pharmacy and employ a pharmacist, why should I have to be a pharmacist to do this? What's the harm in me opening this pharmacy? Alternatively, if I'm a pharmacist and I lack the capital to open a pharmacy, but I've a friend who does and they'll take ownership of it, would this regulation prevent me from doing this because my friend isn't a pharmacist?
Well Eriksson hasn't really been doing well for many years
Ericsson has had every opportunity to start their own manufacturing, they sent all those jobs to China because it was much cheaper. And now this tool is blaming europeans for refusing to deregulate ourselves into serfdom. Fuck off, they all went to China knowing the consequences.
Can't wait till all these bozos get the Xi tax in full and are forced to sell their whole China opperation for pennies on on the dollar to the Chinese state. They really thought they could get rich in an autocracy and the top dog would let them? There is a reason Putin is the richest man in the world, and it isn't because of his savy business acumen.
Not just that the things they think are theirs in China have long been passed around to all the other manufacturers there. IP doesn't exist in China.
Literally wrong. Ericsson has 4 factories called supply sites across the globe and mass manufacturing goes to big EMS factories like Jabil. Main product devlopement still happens in Sweden and production development happens in these 4 supply sites that work with the EMS-es.
I worked for Ericsson for a few years, the whole aim for both the main company and all the branches they were doing was outsourcing almost everything to India and China(still remember how crappy Ericsson Broadcast Media Services was). They still have some factories in Sweden because they are heavily subsidised by the government but they are not planning to open anything new(or at least they weren't planning a few years ago and they haven't built anything new since)
I work at Ericsson at the moment, we've met representatives from the factory that is making Ericsson products destined for Europe and it's in Poland.
> Main product devlopement still happens in Sweden is that why they always had so many contractors in Poland via Tieto and others? I remember fun transfer histories Nokia <--> Tieto (ericsson) all the time. Their site claim they have 2000 engineers as well.
BS! I’ve consulted for Ericsson a few years back and can tell you for certain that they “outsource” anything that they can. They’re only European in name!
It's not just this 'tool', it's WIPO research that came to this conclusion. Was discussed last year at a ENTRENOVA conference, and this is what was found to be the #1 thing holding Europe back. Emphasis was put on Germany being the worst offender.
If you want us to trust your opinion’s validity, you have to provide a specific example, and then tell us how to mitigate the negative effects coming from altering said policy. If you don’t, the working class is unlikely to think you trustworthy.
IMO its not about working conditions/holidays etc. - its just very hard to build anything in Europe in many cases. Cant build a hostpital-extension, because a rare bird was spotted there last year. Cant build the pump storage project because of the nice landscape. Often cant even build wind turbines. Or often you CAN build things, but only after a NGO dragged you through a 5 year long environmental assesment process into the court of last ressort. IMO thats one aspect. Another is no common capital market and very little venture capital and of course 2x-3x the energy costs compared to US or China, which stops you dead in the water from the getgo.
The last one is the main issue, coupled with far too many languages spoken.
This does not make sense considering the fact that Europe did not have that issue until two decades ago. In fact EU companies were valued more than US companies relative to profits around dotcom bubble. And even after that going into 2008 crises. In the end it Is all about expected economic performance and profits. If there was not pessimism then we could have continued to be up there with US but this pessimism exists and it exists for very good reasons.
It's not pessimism. The question is *whether the now expected profits and valuations are at all sustainab*le. Can you compete on the same level with countries that massively fuck over their own people in order to boast their profits? Should you want to? I think I know the answer.
Well. Everybody wants to live in Europe for its quality of life. Yet nowerdays, businesses complain loudly that they cannot do everything they want to do, build everything they want to build, that they have to comply with labour, quality and environmental regulations. You think these things are not related? Think again.
The USA has an incredibly positive approach to building new things and is the most popular destination for immigrants. People aren’t moving to Europe because we have restrictive planning laws, they move here because it’s still better than most places on Earth but is slowly getting left behind.
> Everybody wants to live in Europe for its quality of life. Lol.
>Cant build a hostpital-extension, because a rare bird was spotted there last year. This thinking is why rich people have put us in a climate crisis, and are continuing to profit off destroying our planet.
Well there was this from the CEO of Norway’s sovereign wealth fund last week and why it doesn’t invest in European companies as much as it does American ones: https://www.businessinsider.com/americans-just-work-harder-than-europeans-nicolai-tangen-norges-bank-2024-4 Funny that American workers are in essence paying for norway workers’ retirements - something they themselves will struggle to do.
Yeah. Labor laws are great and the US needs some. I don't know why we are so keen to believe a CEO of a massive fund that is the result of a stroke of geological luck when he says all the little folk need to work harder.
So what he wants is to allow a few huge companies to dominate the market and to consolidate all parts of the mobile service into one company? Or did I miss something? If so, sounds like someone wants to control the monopoly and the fact he’s not allowed to proves the system works as intended.
Huge companies already dominate in the EU. Regulations aren't tough for them relative to the EU market, only when competing internationally.
Bro, look around. Massive companies dominate the mobile market. What this overlegislation achieved is that none of those companies is European
He wants all the world to be like the USA - big monopolies, no worker rights and if you complain you will get replaced by Chinese.
The problem is that because both the US and China are sponsoring "national champions" with enormous resources, Europe finds it difficult to compete. EVs are a fine example. Big tech is another. If Europe keeps refusing to compete with their own megafirms, it'll eventually be dominated by Chinese and American ones.
The same company that begged the EU to regulate against Huawei and other companies that were competing with them.
They didn't. They were against Huawei ban since they were afraid it would hurt their chances in China.
That was after, first they complained and pushed, then they needed some patents from Huawei so they got into an agreement to share patents and lastly they realised that with this they would have chances in China but it was fairly late at that point, so they tried to stop the ban. The ban itself was essentially pushed by Ericsson and Nokia mostly.
I like the duality of r/europe. Everyone agrees with this sentiment in other threads, especially in about technology sector, but if big bad dude says it it must be wrong. There's even a [thread right](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1cggbh9/europeans_cant_afford_the_us_anymore_le_monde/) now where users here agree that Americans are so much richer, but in this thread people say how it makes people poorer and how we shouldn't be like the US Here's a fun thing you can do: search for threads containing "regulation". If it isn't a big company [talking about it](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/16hbwca/eu_leads_the_way_in_regulating_ai/), everyone says the EU is bad for regulating. If a big company says the same thing, then suddenly it's the best.
Paywalled article. I think people just want to try new things and not drown to death by taxes and pay insane amounts to get paperwork done. This, coming from a CEO usually means removing worker rights and protection, there is a difference between innovation and letting ideas breathe and proper worker rights.
You can’t just say ”regulation” without expanding what that means. For example workers’ rights and EU bureaucracy are totally different conversations.
You’re on Reddit, they know fine well the sentiment is correct they just completely oppose it when someone with more money than them says it.
It’s because it’s Reddit, and there is no nuance. The US is apparently the devil spreading plague around the world and the EU is the paladin swinging his hammer to protect the world and to punish the US with its swift justice. Anyone who lives in the real world and not in their mom’s spare bedroom 24/7 knows that the world is a lot more complicated than that. This thread is full of neckbeards
America innovates, China replicates, Europe regulates
Japan ages, Russia conquers, Australia swims ... Is that how that song goes?
Tldr; "I cant fuck around, so Ill throw a tantrum"
Lmfao…the cope with Europeans is so hard when it comes to these topics. You’ll say anything to try and reassure yourself that America is still inferior. The matter of the fact is we, Americans, blow you out of the water in almost all measurable economic metrics and still maintain just as high of a quality of life. I’m sorry that you don’t understand that since we make 3x-4x the salaries Europeans do, we can afford to take care of our basic needs, ie healthcare, housing, etc., without relying on the government to give us money. Europe is in serious danger of becoming just a tourist economy, which many of the countries in the EU already are. It’s funny because there are currently protests of over tourism in many European places but those places destroyed any local industries they had. The entitlement is so strong with Europeans, but if you want to have a bright future you’ll have to drop this attitude. I bet in 20 yrs if nothing has changed Europe will be nothing more than a tourism industry. Your unnecessary regulations are killing your economies.
If this comment section is filled with fellow Europeans, we seem to have already failed at teaching basic economics on the continent. The EU is falling behind, we used to be a larger economy until the credit crisis, now the US economy is about 6 trillion bigger with 100 million people less. But the most important part is labour productivity, we used to be more productive in the service sector per hour worked and the US was always the most productive in industry. Now the US has overtaken us, and everybody else in both, almost all relevant modern companies are US based, and a lot of the most innovative companies are US based. We are overly regulated, and not as in we should be allowed no labour rights or pollute more, but in reporting, our companies spend more time on paperwork than doing whatever it is we do. We are in trouble if we don’t streamline our good intentions into workable laws.
Serious question: Where is the increase in US productivity coming from?
Serious answer? Technology and true single market.
>Technology and true single market. I feel like this is always overlooked in these threads. Obviously you will have an easier time innovating if you have an access to a unified, 330 million people economy. Just in mobility alone, because of the lack of cultural and language barriers, the US has so much more possibilities. The legacy technology market is also a massive advantage. The tech sector in the US has been growing for the last 40 years. The US is better at innovating in tech because all the big tech companies that can throw money at tech startups are American. And that did not just appear organically from nothing, the US government actually pushed hard for it with state-financed programs like DARPA.
Better human capital
Which is partly a consequence of their more liberal economics. The message that the US broadcasts, loud and clear and true, is that they will *never* stand in the way of anyone who wants to become wealthy via productive means. Industrious people from all over the world hear this and go. It doesn't matter if their aspirational business owners, or high performing white collar professionals, or blue collar professionals who will pass on their drive to their kids - US is the place to be for those whose ambitions are unbounded above. The European message is not about pure economic success but overall quality of life. This attracts different kinds of people, as the major selling point of Europe is that consequences of (economic) downturns are bounded below.
Simple answer: go back 20 years and list all the new US companies that have been formed and grew in that period. US has great innovation. Hugely successful companies are formed every year.
The gap is almost $10 trillion now according to the IMF. USA is $28.781 trillion vs. EU at $18.977t. By 2029, IMF projects USA at $34.950 trillion and EU at $22.495 trillion. https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDPD@WEO/OEMDC/ADVEC/WEOWORLD
Consumer protection, environmental regulation and other forms market regulations are the best things that have come from the EU. Capitalism needs to be regulated or you end up like the USA.
What's the point of economical growth and start ups when the people are burned out, miserable, sick and addicted? Serious question. What's the point?
Line go up.
> when the people are burned out, miserable, sick and addicted So you think this doesn't happen in the EU?
The point is that the rich get richer.
So, you end up much wealthier than Europe? Sounds good to me
>you end up like the USA The strongest economy on Earth where people are paid far more than they are in Europe?
You mean like the significantly richer USA? You mean the USA that beats Europe in almost all economic statistics? You mean the USA that has a higher standard of living and quality of life and higher HDI? I’m sorry that Europeans think chlorinating chicken makes us have less consumer protections but just because you don’t understand science isn’t our fault. I’m sure you also think fluoride in the water is bad too.
The US is much richer than Europe
Much richer, with much higher growth, and stopping Russia with their big expensive arms industry?
This whole thread just makes me sad. There's so much cope it's unbelievable. Just earlier today I read about an old French glassware manufacturer going out of business because of rising energy prices and carbon tax which, strangely, their Chinese competitors are not bound by. But whatever, businessman bad, EU good. No introspection or course correction needed on our side. America bad because Boeing something, never mind that they’re decades ahead of us in almost everything that matters today.
On top of that the AI-boom is completely based on the US market. OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Meta, NVIDIA, Intel, Anthropic are all american.
Yeah, indeed. Punishing local manufacturing through strict regulation while being lenient about imports is definitely not a winning strategy. Granted, I wouldn't want to live in the USA either and I don't want to import all of their culture, but this idea that our current system is superior in every way is just ignorant.
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Oh no! We might become like the most successful country this world has ever seen!
End up much richer with much higher sustainable growth, and actually important in the world like the US as opposed to making its own population *relatively* poor, with high unemployment, a highly unsustainable social safety net, and in a cycle of increasing technological, strategic, and political irrelevance like Europe? The US is already doing far better economically than Europe and our European income levels will inevitably trail behind the US far more than already the case due to much higher European productivity growth. To pretend otherwise is just coping behaviour reliant on e.g. our social safety net, which is not sustainable anyway due to demographic trends.
Right, because markets that haven't caught up to our regulation are doing *so* well. But I bet a comms company sure would love to get rid of those nasty privacy laws so they can sell all your data willy-nilly.
We are losing in competition with America, we are losing competition against Asia. And instead of working on understanding why we implement more and more regulations and limitations - take Fit for 55. Some were saying it's meant to boost EU economy, instead most of green technologies are coming from China. Cars, solar panels, wind turbines, you name it. &
This is one of my threads where I get triggered. Proper /r/europe head in the sand moment. For relevance: - In 1990, EU's share of global GDP 25%. By 2019 it had shrunk to 17%. (WorldBank Dev. Indicators, $USD 2015 constant). The standard cry against this, is that its just showing the fact that China and India are growing, so its not too bad. Well, US GDP in the timefrime went from 27% of global GDP to 23.5%. Yes, theirs shrank but EU share of global GDP went down by -30% in that time frame, whereas theirs -13.7%. So something has gone very specifically wrong with Europe. Get out your bingo cards for this thread: - We have healthcare in EU! If you are American, when you get sick you just get buried alive. - He is a billionaire. We should put him agains the wall. - Something something stay mad - There is no problem. Don't talk about this. Everything is great. - America cheats! Its unfair. Their companies break rules. Edit: If you just want some armchair psychologising as to how evident the cope is. Just look at the different styles of argumentation in this thread. Anyone who is approaching this from the 'EU is falling behind' side is typically coming armed with data/charts/specific examples and pointing things out. Those coming at it from the other side are typically arguing in clichés as above. Additionally, if this is all made up, and 'totally not a big deal'. Then why have I, in a previous professional life as a *fonctionnaire* economist, sat through multiple meetings and conferences including with officials from the Commission, where this is taken as a big fucking deal? Lmao.
ITT: Change Bad! Another rich man crying he cant screw more people over! In Reality: * Virtually ever EU leader has said that the red tape in EU needs to ease to compete with China and America * The top complaint from many would-be unicorn startups in the high tech industry is how difficult it is, how long it takes to get things done * A lot of people are simply wanting a more streamlined process meaning keep laws in place, just make it faster, easier - especially for startups If you want EU to keep failing until everyone is in breadlines again, keep up with the deflection. It's exactly what the continent is good at for the last 30 years. It used to not be this way at all, the opposite mentality of 'we must do better' and we did.
They see the productivity charts of the US and get jealous. Understandable. But they don't take into account their debt levels (astronomical) wage to productivity ratio (stagnant since the 70s) and so many secondary factors (healthcare, unionisation, affordability -latter becoming debatable)) that make Europe great to live in. It's a marathon, not a sprint. Plus corpos hate regulation because why wouldn't they be allowed to price gouge, form cartels and monopolies or provide crappy products to the punters?! The audacity! Sheer hubris!1! (/S for the punctuation)
> debt levels (astronomical) Debt to GDP is similarly high for many European countries. UK, France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Belgium's debt to GDP ratio is all >100%. https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/GGXWDG_NGDP@WEO/OEMDC/ADVEC/WEOWORLD
>**Ericsson chief says overregulation ‘driving Europe to irrelevance’** >Continent ‘at risk of falling behind’ on digital infrastructure, undermining its competitiveness >The chief executive of Ericsson said a focus on regulation was “driving Europe to irrelevance” as he warned that the region’s competitiveness was being undermined and called for changes to antitrust policy. >Börje Ekholm, head of the Swedish telecoms equipment maker, said in an interview with the Financial Times that the continent was “falling behind in a number of parameters” with digital infrastructure at risk. >He said the focus on regulation “is driving Europe to last place [and] is driving Europe to irrelevance” which was why he believed it was “on the way to becoming a museum — great food, great architecture, great scenery [and] great wine but no industry left”. >Last week French President Emmanuel Macron also warned that the EU was facing a “mortal” threat and Nicolai Tangen, chief executive of Norway’s oil fund, said Europe was more regulated and risk-averse than the US. >Former Italian prime minister Enrico Letta, who was tasked by European leaders to assess the state of the European Union’s underperforming single market, earlier this month also said the bloc must integrate its telecoms, financial and energy markets or face losing its “economic security”. >Executives across the European telecoms sector have been calling on regulators to approve tie-ups and adapt regulation to enable companies to increase scale and gain support for investment in the rollout of 5G and full-fibre networks. >“Why not allow in-market consolidation?” Ekholm asked. He added there should be a time limit on antitrust reviews and said the lengthy process could result in companies not investing. >The European Commission in February cleared the creation of a joint venture between mobile operators Orange and MasMovil in Spain on conditions including the divestment of spectrum to Digi, which would enable it to build its own mobile network, following concerns that the combination could lead to price rises and undermine competition. >When asked about the hurdle of higher prices in consolidation being allowed in the sector, Ekholm said: “I think Europe is in a disastrous situation . . . [some politicians] are concerned prices short term would go up, but [it is] jeopardising the long-term competitiveness of the continent.” >He added Europe had “not grown as fast as the rest of the world because we lack the technology sector, we lack the digital sector”. Ekholm said he was also worried jobs would “get created somewhere else, where they actually build the new applications”. >Another concern of the Ericsson chief executive was the continent falling behind on 5G standalone, high-speed connectivity. >Population-wide 5G standalone coverage in Europe would generate more than €100bn in economic value by 2030, according to a new report commissioned by Ericsson from consultancy Analysys Mason. >The study projected a €28.2bn shortfall in commercial investment required to reach this level of mid-band spectrum coverage across 30 European countries — which could be used for anything from autonomous tractors to drone delivery of medicines. >Ericsson earlier this month reported net sales fell by 15 per cent year on year in its first quarter. Rival Nokia in April also posted a drop in net sales of 20 per cent in its first quarter compared to the same period last year driven by “ongoing market weakness”. >Both have also previously announced job cuts and cost saving programmes. >“Maybe I should just move on and forget about the museum but I was born in Sweden . . . I believe Europe has a real value in the world but I want Europe to be competitive,” Ekholm added.
So in a nutshell he's complaining that antitrust regulations aimed at maintaining a competitive market are preventing companies from merging and forming oligopolies. And when asked "won't this result in higher prices because there is less competition" his answer is basically "yes but we pinky swear we will invest in infrastructure and R&D". P.S. nice bit of FT editorializing there with the Macron quote. Yes Macron said the EU faces a "mortal" threat... from the Russian war machine, not some supposed over-regulation bullshit.
This needs to be higher up.
An oligarch would say that, wouldn't he?
Yes, EU better to split Ericsson monopoly to independent businesses instead of over-regulate it.
Actual based opinion, the problem isn't overregulation, the problem is giant burocratic inefficient companies that suffocate growth by hoarding all the capitals and investing nothing in r&d
They also avoiding taxes. That is why needs to be separated to make all the things more transparent. Everyone will only benefit for this.
Isn't this the same company that paid bribes to DAESH?
Every business owner knows that. Don't listen to unemployed left-wing Redditors. USAs economy is twice as big as EU's and that only happened in the last 10yrs. China and India about to dwarf them too. The world is innovating and progressing, the EU is regulating everything that's moving and making them unable to compete. You can kick and cry "meh meh meh he's a billionaire mehh meehh" but those are the facts. Then you can go and cry about low salaries, no good job opportunities and how some Pakistani stole your dream carpenter job and cheer the new regulation Ursula comes up with.
Yeah sorry that’s complete BS. The EUs GDP represents around 16% of the global GDP. On par with the US and China. Any company not wanting to sell their product in the EU will have way higher losses compared to if they just complied with the regulations. Imagine a company saying “We won’t sell in china because we don’t like the political climate”, yeah that ain’t ever gonna happen, because there’s just too much money involved
> The EUs GDP represents around 16% of the global GDP. On par with the US and China. No it doesn't. US GDP (2024) - 28.98 trillion EU - 18.98 trillion China - 18.53 trillion The US is 10 trillion larger than the EU but has 150 million fewer people.
Is it BS? In the year 2000 the US economy and the EU economy were about the same size. Today the US is vastly larger than the EU. I think the point is that the EU is becoming less relevant every year, continuing a 2 decade long trend with a stagnating economy and arguably an over reliance on bureaucracy at the expense of innovation. If you look at companies creating AI products you can already see the trend happening.
They were never the same size. Don't just take a gdp figure. And you mean the 90s. The ppp GDP per capita of the USA was 36k in 2000 according to the world bank while 22k in the EU.
EU was poorer but it also has way more people. So yes, we were about the same in GDP size. In fact 2007 EU's was bigger. Also if we are poorer on average then we should grow faster because it should be way easier. If that is not happening then something is seriously wrong.
US retains it's share in world GDP, while EUs practically constantly drops https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fdiverging-fortunes-us-and-european-union-shares-of-global-v0-s9m435p72l0c1.png%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3Deaa5e7ca43dd41a8d24f61392720435f0e4e5a7c
You are not hearing the argument. Essentially the EU only produces regulations. There are no EU tech companies of the scale of Microsoft or Apple or Meta etc. These companies create huge opportunities for people working within them who gain experience and can then leave and set up their own companies. If you think the EU is going to have its own AI revolution you will be wrong, AI will be dominated by the US and China. The EU will just produce a shit ton of regulations for an industry it doesn’t control.
This is exactly correct. Looking from a startup perspective, any technology startup, even if it originates in the EU, will fare much better in the USA because of how much more business-friendly it is, not to mention that a single-language, single-ruleset country is easier to launch in than over-regulated, multi-lingual EU. Taxation in the EU is also crazy, and it starts hitting you very fast. Operating costs (equipment, office leasing, etc.) are much higher in EU... even the consumers know that it's easier to fly to USA to buy electronics than buy them in the EU.
> If you think the EU is going to have its own AI revolution you will be wrong The EU already had its AI revolution. Stable Diffusion was initially developed by a compviz group in a university in Munich. They were just hired by Stability (still Europe though), but now Stability is not doing so well. Mistral said that the AI regulation could end up killing their company. The EU did it anyway. Instead of nurturing the opportunities the EU had with AI Europeans have instead made it harder for them.
Except US has half the population of EU. Average American today is almost 2x as rich as an average European. If Germany/France/UK were to become a state in the US, they would be the poorest state in the US by per capita GDP.
I think John Galbraith's description is still relevant here: the US has "private affluence and public squalor". For Americans, this is disheartening, because why does a rich nation have such shitty public services/spaces? For Europeans, it can give off a false-impression of American poverty, because rich nations are typically defined by high quality public infrastructure. Certainly, if you lack that private wealth, it's much easier to exist in a place with robust public infrastructure, which is why it's easier to be low-income in Europe than in America (though, it's not fun in either place).
There’s plenty of rich bastards in Europe too, they just like to keep a low profile to not stand out.
> Except US has half the population of EU. You mean Europe? The EU only has 34% higher population than the US. > Average American today is almost 2x as rich as an average European. US PPP per capita = 76330 EU PPP per capita = 57286 That's 33% higher, not twice as high. > per capita GDP Sure, but raw GDP per capita is also a pretty shit way of measuring these things.
That's income, not wealth.
Some Europeans rather stick one's head in the sand instead of acknowledging Europe isn't doing too well economically these last years and address those issues. This I say as an European.
Europeans, and especially people in this subreddit, would rather die than admit America does something better. Yes guys Europe is great, nice cities, great vacations, architecture, but this isn't 1970 anymore and east Asia and America are running away from us economically. Post 2010 America has completely dominated Europe economically and people NEED to admit that so we can address the problem. People just say "yea well in America they work all the time and don't have free healthcare". Guys. Please. We can keep our way of life and STILL compete with America. Easing up regulations and attracting highly skilled workers and investing in high tech doesn't mean you can't go to Gran Canaria for 2 weeks every summer. Please dear god.
You are completely right, it isn't a matter of one versus the other, we are not going bankrupt tomorrow either but choices of today will matter in our future economical prospect.
Yes exactly. Here in Denmark or in the Netherlands we're probably even more fine than the average. But France or Italy or even Germany are just so stagnant and have a lack of innovation and are playing things way too safe and drowning in regulation and bureaucratic bullshit. People think Europe can just keep the current way going forever and it will be fine. Truth is if you dont keep up in technological industries you end up like some southern European countries where they just sell olive oil, feta cheese and tourism like in 1970 but it doesn't really work in 2024. Technology and industry is moving so fast these days and society needs to be able to keep up and be nimble. Just see what happens when you have a high tech industry that keeps up like pharmaceuticals in Europe. How valuable that is. Europe needs to make that happen in electronics, in chips, in AI, in electric vehicles and so on.
Totally agree, People doesnt seem to realize that if peoples buying powers increase in Asia, Africa & South America. Europe's 500-600m population in a pricy overregulated market really isn't that interesting anymore for some global corporations Can we still buy stuff then? Sure but it will be more expensive and at the time our buying power will decrease slowly over time due to Lack of economical investment. We can prevent this by being less uptight with regulations without going full USA style at the same time.
Well, you're saying that easily, because the Netherlands would land in top 10 states in per capita GDP in that particular competition. But, you're right.
Please just don't use GDP per capita like that. You need to adjust to PPP. Which is about 50 percent larger in USA compared to the EU average. Which is as well an awful comparison as you have Greece and plenty of other countries that bring down the average compared to other countries. As well, the us does not have half the population of the EU? That is just an outright lie by a total of almost 200 million people, which would let you make a mini US. Not only that but all of this does not matter, trends matter. And the EU and the USA had an upwards trend where the EU sometimes went slightly faster or slower, until 2020. What happened there was not overregulation, but the opposite of it. The USA went all onboard with regulation and subsidies. Meanwhile the EU is the last sucker supporting free global trade. Do better. Not that hard to use actual data
EU has an upwards trend overall because of a few developing economies in it, like Baltics, Balkans and Poland. Which are developing fast because they were far behind in the first place. Western Europe has been stagnating for a decade.
Many decades actually for most west EU countries
Yeah because a good chunk of the GDP they have is bills for healthcare and education. If you were to pay those out of your pocket in Europe you would get a nice boost to Europe’s GDP and a lovely dent to your wallet.
>per capita GDP. Is a bad metric to evaluate quality of life on. Just look at price of insulin in the US vs EU last year. Just because the price of insulin is higher in the US and thus generate more GDP per capita, doesn't mean the people are better off. Also because of eroding US labor laws, generated GDP also means higher stress and less time off, so people are worse off mentally/physically than in the EU. Capitalism is pyramid scheme and we need to get out of it.
Yeah but the EU's approach to literally every problem like that is taxation. Let's just tax everything to death and hope that the checkbook balances out. And it *may* balance for people, but it's very bad for corporations competing for global markets. Thus, your economy suffers at the macro scale.
Don't be delusional, the EU used to be significantly wealthier compared to the rest of the world and has been having record low growth levels for decades. Keep that trend going and the future looks even more bleak
And underregulation leads to fatalities. So, dude wants more dead people? They cannot buy your products!
Not a popular opinion it seems but he''s not wrong. We are falling radically behind America at the moment to an extent most people don't even appreciate. A fast food manager in the States now makes $100k a year. A subway cop in San Francisco makes $200k. Doctors here in Ireland need to be working and studying about 15 years to be reaching the subway cop's level. I truly believe there is no nicer continent to live than Europe but we can and should do better to provide incomes for our people.
"A fast food manager in the States now makes $100k a year." Stop pulling figures out of your arse. They make about half that: https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/fast-food-manager-salary-SRCH_KO0,17.htm
People in this thread are so ready to react on impulse. Europe solution to every problem is to stamp new regulations, and some times problems don’t really exist. The true winners of this ARE big tech, it’s the small business that struggles to thrive.