5 ms·

On the face of it, your reductio ad absurdum is perfectly reasonable. Employees do their job, get their money, end of story. Right? In continental Europe, nobo

by skosch 9y ago

On the face of it, your reductio ad absurdum is perfectly reasonable. Employees do their job, get their money, end of story. Right? In continental Europe, nobody expects it to work like that. It's a different mindset. If you work in a large firm, the works council has a say (to some degree) in management decisions. It's not always perfect – politics are everywhere – but it is completely normal and expected by bosses and workers alike that employment is a relationship, not a transaction. And for the most part, it seems to be working. To someone who grew up in that culture, your wild-west thinking seems a bit, well, primitive? Or uncivilized?

skookumchuck 9y ago
> primitive? uncivilized? Nice dismissal with the logical fallacy of appeal to emotion!
adventured 9y ago
> In continental Europe, nobody expects it to work like that. ... To someone who grew up in that culture, your wild-west thinking seems a bit, well, primitive? Or uncivilized? One should challenge that setup by asking the question: has contintental Europe's policies resulted in high wages? France has far lower wages than the US, with 1/4 to 1/5 the wage growth rate of the US over the last two decades. Germany, Britain, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy, Austria, Belgium, all have considerably lower wages than the US. Continental Europe also includes dozens of nations that are dramatically poorer than the US, both in terms of median income and median household net worth. Wouldn't it be more primitive or uncivilized to be using the French approach, since it has resulted in dramatically lower wage growth for decades now? Wage growth in France averaged 0.5% annually the prior two decades. In the US, 2.5% wage growth is considered very slow, with 3.5% to 4% being average in the 1999-2009 time frame. If their system works so well, where's the wage growth (and we're talking about the last 20 years, not a blip of time)?
- tensor 9y ago
  But digging deeper, Europe has a bigger middle class than the US, and the US has the largest lower class and upper class, the latter which pulls up the overall average. So is the average citizen is probably better off in Europe than in the US. Data: https://www.citylab.com/life/2017/04/euro-vs-american-middle-class/524193/ https://www.citylab.com/life/2017/04/euro-vs-american-middle... Also, Europe is catching up on the US average income too, which is really more relevant than what the past or current average is. It means that recent US policy is not working in favour of the average citizen.
  - adventured 9y ago
    > Europe is catching up on the US average income too ... It means that recent US policy is not working in favour of the average citizen. Western Europe isn't seeing faster wage growth than the US. Economically the US is pulling away from Germany, Britain, Italy and France. US income and GDP growth rates have been far higher the last 10 and 20 years than most of its peers. Economically speaking, Germany's GDP hasn't net expanded since 2007, when it was $3.44 trillion (it was $3.46 trillion for 2016). France and Britain are similar. French GDP was $2.66 trillion in 2007, it was $2.46 trillion in 2016. In that time, 2007 to 2016, the US added GDP larger than the entire German economy (about $4.5 trillion). It's practically impossible to generate broad wage gains if you don't grow the whole economic pie. That's why French wages have been so stagnant for so long, despite all the supposedly labor friendly approaches there. The US middle class has contracted because more people have moved up and out of the middle class and into the upper classes, than have moved down and out (that's true over 10, 20, 30 years of time): https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/is-the-middle-class-moving-up/2016/06/24/214dc04a-3a28-11e6-8f7c-d4c723a2becb_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/is-the-middle-class-... https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2016/06/21/sure-the-middle-class-is-shrinking-30-of-americans-are-too-rich-to-be-middle-class-now/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2016/06/21/sure-the... The formerly extremely poor 1/2 of Europe in the East has seen dramatic improvement since the end of the USSR. You can see that dramatic improvement in several countries like Czech, Slovakia, Romania (more recently), etc. Many are still doing very poorly at growing their economies, including Bulgaria, Moldova, Hungary, Belarus, Macedonia, Albania, Ukraine, Croatia, Bosnia. The median incomes of Latvia and Lithuania are still around 1/4 that of the US, Estonia is closer to 1/3 that of the US.
    - JamesBarney 9y ago
      US real median income growth does not look nearly as nice as the picture you paint. http://www.multpl.com/us-median-real-income-growth http://www.multpl.com/us-median-real-income-growth https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/23/upshot/the-american-middle-class-is-no-longer-the-worlds-richest.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/23/upshot/the-american-middl...

by skosch 9y ago

skookumchuck 9y ago

> primitive? uncivilized? Nice dismissal with the logical fallacy of appeal to emotion!

adventured 9y ago

> In continental Europe, nobody expects it to work like that. ... To someone who grew up in that culture, your wild-west thinking seems a bit, well, primitive? Or uncivilized? One should challenge that setup by asking the question: has contintental Europe's policies resulted in high wages? France has far lower wages than the US, with 1/4 to 1/5 the wage growth rate of the US over the last two decades. Germany, Britain, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy, Austria, Belgium, all have considerably lower wages than the US. Continental Europe also includes dozens of nations that are dramatically poorer than the US, both in terms of median income and median household net worth. Wouldn't it be more primitive or uncivilized to be using the French approach, since it has resulted in dramatically lower wage growth for decades now? Wage growth in France averaged 0.5% annually the prior two decades. In the US, 2.5% wage growth is considered very slow, with 3.5% to 4% being average in the 1999-2009 time frame. If their system works so well, where's the wage growth (and we're talking about the last 20 years, not a blip of time)?

tensor 9y ago
But digging deeper, Europe has a bigger middle class than the US, and the US has the largest lower class and upper class, the latter which pulls up the overall average. So is the average citizen is probably better off in Europe than in the US. Data: https://www.citylab.com/life/2017/04/euro-vs-american-middle-class/524193/ https://www.citylab.com/life/2017/04/euro-vs-american-middle... Also, Europe is catching up on the US average income too, which is really more relevant than what the past or current average is. It means that recent US policy is not working in favour of the average citizen.
- adventured 9y ago
  > Europe is catching up on the US average income too ... It means that recent US policy is not working in favour of the average citizen. Western Europe isn't seeing faster wage growth than the US. Economically the US is pulling away from Germany, Britain, Italy and France. US income and GDP growth rates have been far higher the last 10 and 20 years than most of its peers. Economically speaking, Germany's GDP hasn't net expanded since 2007, when it was $3.44 trillion (it was $3.46 trillion for 2016). France and Britain are similar. French GDP was $2.66 trillion in 2007, it was $2.46 trillion in 2016. In that time, 2007 to 2016, the US added GDP larger than the entire German economy (about $4.5 trillion). It's practically impossible to generate broad wage gains if you don't grow the whole economic pie. That's why French wages have been so stagnant for so long, despite all the supposedly labor friendly approaches there. The US middle class has contracted because more people have moved up and out of the middle class and into the upper classes, than have moved down and out (that's true over 10, 20, 30 years of time): https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/is-the-middle-class-moving-up/2016/06/24/214dc04a-3a28-11e6-8f7c-d4c723a2becb_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/is-the-middle-class-... https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2016/06/21/sure-the-middle-class-is-shrinking-30-of-americans-are-too-rich-to-be-middle-class-now/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2016/06/21/sure-the... The formerly extremely poor 1/2 of Europe in the East has seen dramatic improvement since the end of the USSR. You can see that dramatic improvement in several countries like Czech, Slovakia, Romania (more recently), etc. Many are still doing very poorly at growing their economies, including Bulgaria, Moldova, Hungary, Belarus, Macedonia, Albania, Ukraine, Croatia, Bosnia. The median incomes of Latvia and Lithuania are still around 1/4 that of the US, Estonia is closer to 1/3 that of the US.
  - JamesBarney 9y ago
    US real median income growth does not look nearly as nice as the picture you paint. http://www.multpl.com/us-median-real-income-growth http://www.multpl.com/us-median-real-income-growth https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/23/upshot/the-american-middle-class-is-no-longer-the-worlds-richest.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/23/upshot/the-american-middl...