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The US is one of the best places in the world to be a business owner, that's why its economy is so much more dynamic than European economies. In order to create

The US is one of the best places in the world to be a business owner, that's why its economy is so much more dynamic than European economies. In order to create such an environment worker protections cannot be as robust as in Europe. This biased article of course ignores that fact. Many workers are much better off in the US than in Europe as well. They get to keep a greater portion of their income, their income goes farther in the US than it would in Europe, and they have more opportunities to change jobs and careers because the flip side of weaker worker protections means businesses can hire with greater agility than in Europe.

jacobush 8y ago
Yet, social mobility is higher in Europe. Also, americans can keep more of their income, if they skimp on health insurance and pensions savings. I don't think americans in general grasp how much higher quality the healthcare system is in Europe. Example: get scorned at by your GP doctor for seeing them for a bad cold. Get billed $20. Receive open heart surgery and triple by-pass. Get billed $20.
- Reactionary_ 8y ago
  Social mobility doesn't really matter when everyone more or less has the same quality of life, as in Europe. That's what many don't understand. The Europeans have essentially nullified the value of social mobility in the first place. That is why their economies are more stagnant than that of the US.
  - abritinthebay 8y ago
    As a European: lol no. This is completely incorrect.
  - brainwad 8y ago
    Have you... been to Europe? This is in no way accurate. There are definitely classes of citizen here, from the working class all the way to billionaires.
  - ergothus 8y ago
    Honest question: what do you think social mobility is? When studies say EU has higher social mobility, what do think they are actually highlighting?
ceejayoz 8y ago
> They get to keep a greater portion of their income If only that greater portion wasn't immediately being eaten up by rapidly rising healthcare, college, etc. costs. Between premiums, copays, and non-covered stuff like compounded medications and dental, I spent $33k last year for a family of four on healthcare. The college I went to - $36k in 2001 - is now $60k/year. I'll take the higher taxes...
- sol_remmy 8y ago
  Notice how every sector of the economy that the government is highly involved with (health care, education, real estate) keeps increasing its costs? Your inflated health care bills helped pay for the 280k average salary of physicians (source: https://www.medscape.com/slideshow/2018-compensation-overview-6009667 https://www.medscape.com/slideshow/2018-compensation-overvie...), which is over 2x as high as Western european doctors' salary. You can thank the aggressive occupational licensing that the AMA engages in that prevents more potential doctors from joining the workforce and keeps salaries high. For instance: Western european doctors do not need a 4-year bachelors degree just to _enter_ medical school. You are also sponsoring drug discovery. United States pays for the drug research, eats the high drug costs, and then Western Europe mooches off our R&D spending. And guess what? Western Europe's free health care is not free: The 50% higher taxes in Western Europe are required to pay for all this.
  - ceejayoz 8y ago
    Europe spends half what we do on healthcare per-capita (and the gap is widening, as their costs historically don't grow as quickly - https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-countries/#item-since-1980-gap-widened-u-s-health-spending-countries https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-...). Just because our government does a shitty half-assed job of it doesn't mean all governments have to.
    - sol_remmy 8y ago
      PolitiFact, a liberal site, rates your claim as FALSE: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/aug/16/bernie-s/bernie-sanders-repeats-flawed-claim-about-us-healt/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/aug/... That graph is not even accurate. This says Canada's health care spending is $6600 per person: https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/canada-to-spend-more-than-6-600-per-person-on-health-care-in-2017-1.3665393?autoPlay=true https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/canada-to-spend-more-than-6-60... while your graph says its $4500. Those numbers aren't even in the same ballpark.
realusername 8y ago
> Many workers are much better off in the US than in Europe as well Workers are not better off, there are way worse off in the US. They get less money due to the minimum wage being very low and the cost of medical care, they work more in average, they have less holidays and less social mobility than in Europe. Big businesses however are better off so I agree in part with your first paragraph.
nerdponx 8y ago
This is true for middle-class and upper-middle class workers. But there has always been an underclass of people who barely make enough to survive, lack the market power to negotiate for better wages, lack the ability to acquire new skills in order to get different jobs, and/or are stuck with their current employers for lack of other opportunities. This population is also susceptible to overtime abuse and wage theft. As for the middle and upper middle class, taking home more of your income is only part of the story. I don't have statistics on this, but I am sure that much of that take-home pay is offset by higher medical costs and the need for more retirement savings. Not to mention the fact that the American work week is longer and vacation days are rarer.
- bluecalm 8y ago
  Additionally every time the underclass bargaining power is about to raise due to shortage of labor the ruling elite imports competition that has even less rights and has to work for less, in worse conditions and in constant fear of being deported. The most important thing to change is stopping illegal immigration. Either allow more people in and give them equal standing in the job market to citizens or don't allow them in at all.
  - maxerickson 8y ago
    Simpler to just punish the people and companies that exploit illegal labor. And of course doing that would reduce the incentive to come here and work illegally...
- maratd 8y ago
  > I am sure that much of that take-home pay is offset by higher medical costs and the need for more retirement savings This is not true. Those same workers get most or all of their insurance costs covered by the company. Same goes for retirement with 401k plans, etc. > Not to mention the fact that the American work week is longer and vacation days are rarer. This is true.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
yvrev 8y ago
>that's why its economy is so much more dynamic than European economies What do you mean with more dynamic?
- jellicle 8y ago
  "Dynamic" is a word intended to invoke the idea that the USA is young, fast-moving, growing, while Europe is old, slow, near-death. It doesn't have any meaning other than to invoke this common US belief. It's part of the American exceptionalism story.
  - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
    No, it has a real meaning. How many new businesses are started each year in the US vs the EU? For an existing company, how easy is it to enter a new line of business? How easy is it to hire new workers? Those things are how dynamic the economy is. It's hard to measure in a rigourous way, but in the US it is distinctly easier for a business to start/expand than it is in the EU. Digression, so I can get shot at from all sides: This dropped under Obama. Again, it's hard to put concrete numbers on it, but things started happening more slowly - I suspect because regulation became more onerous.
finaliteration 8y ago
> They get to keep a greater portion of their income I always see this come up during discussions about how the US compares to other developed countries. I think the mentality is slightly different in the EU. If you were raised knowing that your income was going to be taxed at 50% but you also got free healthcare, education, welfare assistance, etc., you’d probably learn to value those things over buying a bigger TV or whatever. The only reason we complain about how they have less disposable income is due to the fact that we spend so much of ours on healthcare and education so it looks like a scarce resource that we need to hoard.
- nerdponx 8y ago
  This is really what it comes down to. This is also where the basic argument to "tax the rich" comes from. For the price of a yacht, you could feed and house multiple families for a year in some cities.
  - ergothus 8y ago
    I was once asked how much money I could sustainably spend every single day without explicitly trying to waste money. I settled on 10,000/day (I assume big ticket items like house/car would be absorbed by that effortlessly). Then I was asked to do the math on how long it would take to spend 1 billion - the minimum amount to qualify as a billionaire - at that rate. IIRC, ignoring interest and inflation, it worked out to 216 years. Now billionaires dont have a bill sitting around in liquid cash, this is just a thought experiment to try a grasp how much a billion is, but it is an effective one. (Also cool as a party trick, as people tend to always pick a power of ten, so based on their answer you can whip out 2161 years or 21.6 years or whatever)
- drakonka 8y ago
  This is how I feel. I'm taxed a lot, but I can see that money being used for things to benefit me and those around me. I appreciate that I don't have to worry about bike infrastructure, or healthcare, or education, or my coworkers being stressed out about taking time off after having a kid. If I had that money in-hand those are the same things I'd want to buy with it anyway (except then I'd have to worry about actually taking care of all the details myself whereas now I don't). At the same time I feel like I can afford what I need/want even if I take home less money than I would in parts of the US.
djcrayon 8y ago
I would love a citation on this. Anecdotally, I have lived in both the United States and United Kingdom. My tax rate was similar and in the UK I largely paid less for rent, healthcare and public transportation while paying more for staples like food. All in all costs were largely equaled out, although in the UK I enjoyed more vacation and worker protections I did not have as a US employee.
- swimfar 8y ago
  I don't know about the UK, but my net annual savings in the US is about equal to what my gross income would be in France or Germany. If I worked in the tech industry I'm sure the difference would be even greater. Also, healthcare is a problem in the US for people who don't get it from their employer. For those who do, it's often relatively inexpensive. I pay ~$100/month for really good coverage. It's the lower to lower-middle class that has it difficult in the US.
  - abritinthebay 8y ago
    Statistically speaking you are an incredible outlier. Good for you, of course, but you shouldn’t generalize your experience to the entire population.
SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
That greater agility comes at a cost of stability. It's better for those with the means to not worry about the instability - those who are better able or willing to gamble upon an unsure thing, but it punishes those less risk adverse, or less capable of taking advantage of the system (the poor, those with dependents or debt).
toomanybeersies 8y ago
I live in Australia. I pay about as much tax as someone living in California, but with that I also get healthcare. I also get 11 days of public holidays, 20 days of normal leave, and 10 days of sick leave. I'm pretty happy with what I've got, to be honest.
- peterburkimsher 8y ago
  How does Australia compare to NZ? I'm hoping to move down under later this year.
herbst 8y ago
This is highly generalized. Check the numbers from Switzerland compared to any high income city in the US the take away and living standard almost always seems a lot better in switzerland. Generally we talk about less taxes, cheaper health care and a higher or similar income.
maxxxxx 8y ago
"They get to keep a greater portion of their income," If you are not in the very high income range this gets eaten up by health care and education.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  As well as rent and transportation.
lkrubner 8y ago
If the USA is good for business, why has business formation been in decline for 30 years? Understanding the 30 year Decline in Business Dynamism https://ideas.repec.org/p/red/sed015/1333.html https://ideas.repec.org/p/red/sed015/1333.html "Recent empirical work has drawn attention to an unmistakable shift in U.S. firm dynamics since the late 1970s. Principally, the entry rate, measured as the share of new employer firms out of all employer firms, declined by nearly 40 percent from 1977 to 2007, even before the impact of the Great Recession. Remarkably, this steady decline occurred relatively uniformly within geographic areas and within relatively narrow industry aggregations. Taking this trend decline or startup deficit as given, Pugsley and Sahin (2014) show that both its direct effect on business formation and its indirect cumulative effect through a shift in the employer age distribution partly explain the emergence of slower employment recoveries with each business cycle." Declining investment since the early 1960s: http://www.smashcompany.com/business/the-decline-of-usa-investment-since-1964 http://www.smashcompany.com/business/the-decline-of-usa-inve...

jacobush 8y ago

Yet, social mobility is higher in Europe. Also, americans can keep more of their income, if they skimp on health insurance and pensions savings. I don't think americans in general grasp how much higher quality the healthcare system is in Europe. Example: get scorned at by your GP doctor for seeing them for a bad cold. Get billed $20. Receive open heart surgery and triple by-pass. Get billed $20.

Reactionary_ 8y ago
Social mobility doesn't really matter when everyone more or less has the same quality of life, as in Europe. That's what many don't understand. The Europeans have essentially nullified the value of social mobility in the first place. That is why their economies are more stagnant than that of the US.
- abritinthebay 8y ago
  As a European: lol no. This is completely incorrect.
- brainwad 8y ago
  Have you... been to Europe? This is in no way accurate. There are definitely classes of citizen here, from the working class all the way to billionaires.
- ergothus 8y ago
  Honest question: what do you think social mobility is? When studies say EU has higher social mobility, what do think they are actually highlighting?

ceejayoz 8y ago

> They get to keep a greater portion of their income If only that greater portion wasn't immediately being eaten up by rapidly rising healthcare, college, etc. costs. Between premiums, copays, and non-covered stuff like compounded medications and dental, I spent $33k last year for a family of four on healthcare. The college I went to - $36k in 2001 - is now $60k/year. I'll take the higher taxes...

sol_remmy 8y ago
Notice how every sector of the economy that the government is highly involved with (health care, education, real estate) keeps increasing its costs? Your inflated health care bills helped pay for the 280k average salary of physicians (source: https://www.medscape.com/slideshow/2018-compensation-overview-6009667 https://www.medscape.com/slideshow/2018-compensation-overvie...), which is over 2x as high as Western european doctors' salary. You can thank the aggressive occupational licensing that the AMA engages in that prevents more potential doctors from joining the workforce and keeps salaries high. For instance: Western european doctors do not need a 4-year bachelors degree just to _enter_ medical school. You are also sponsoring drug discovery. United States pays for the drug research, eats the high drug costs, and then Western Europe mooches off our R&D spending. And guess what? Western Europe's free health care is not free: The 50% higher taxes in Western Europe are required to pay for all this.
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  Europe spends half what we do on healthcare per-capita (and the gap is widening, as their costs historically don't grow as quickly - https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-countries/#item-since-1980-gap-widened-u-s-health-spending-countries https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-...). Just because our government does a shitty half-assed job of it doesn't mean all governments have to.
  - sol_remmy 8y ago
    PolitiFact, a liberal site, rates your claim as FALSE: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/aug/16/bernie-s/bernie-sanders-repeats-flawed-claim-about-us-healt/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/aug/... That graph is not even accurate. This says Canada's health care spending is $6600 per person: https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/canada-to-spend-more-than-6-600-per-person-on-health-care-in-2017-1.3665393?autoPlay=true https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/canada-to-spend-more-than-6-60... while your graph says its $4500. Those numbers aren't even in the same ballpark.

realusername 8y ago

> Many workers are much better off in the US than in Europe as well Workers are not better off, there are way worse off in the US. They get less money due to the minimum wage being very low and the cost of medical care, they work more in average, they have less holidays and less social mobility than in Europe. Big businesses however are better off so I agree in part with your first paragraph.

nerdponx 8y ago

This is true for middle-class and upper-middle class workers. But there has always been an underclass of people who barely make enough to survive, lack the market power to negotiate for better wages, lack the ability to acquire new skills in order to get different jobs, and/or are stuck with their current employers for lack of other opportunities. This population is also susceptible to overtime abuse and wage theft. As for the middle and upper middle class, taking home more of your income is only part of the story. I don't have statistics on this, but I am sure that much of that take-home pay is offset by higher medical costs and the need for more retirement savings. Not to mention the fact that the American work week is longer and vacation days are rarer.

bluecalm 8y ago
Additionally every time the underclass bargaining power is about to raise due to shortage of labor the ruling elite imports competition that has even less rights and has to work for less, in worse conditions and in constant fear of being deported. The most important thing to change is stopping illegal immigration. Either allow more people in and give them equal standing in the job market to citizens or don't allow them in at all.
- maxerickson 8y ago
  Simpler to just punish the people and companies that exploit illegal labor. And of course doing that would reduce the incentive to come here and work illegally...
maratd 8y ago
> I am sure that much of that take-home pay is offset by higher medical costs and the need for more retirement savings This is not true. Those same workers get most or all of their insurance costs covered by the company. Same goes for retirement with 401k plans, etc. > Not to mention the fact that the American work week is longer and vacation days are rarer. This is true.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

yvrev 8y ago

>that's why its economy is so much more dynamic than European economies What do you mean with more dynamic?

jellicle 8y ago
"Dynamic" is a word intended to invoke the idea that the USA is young, fast-moving, growing, while Europe is old, slow, near-death. It doesn't have any meaning other than to invoke this common US belief. It's part of the American exceptionalism story.
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  No, it has a real meaning. How many new businesses are started each year in the US vs the EU? For an existing company, how easy is it to enter a new line of business? How easy is it to hire new workers? Those things are how dynamic the economy is. It's hard to measure in a rigourous way, but in the US it is distinctly easier for a business to start/expand than it is in the EU. Digression, so I can get shot at from all sides: This dropped under Obama. Again, it's hard to put concrete numbers on it, but things started happening more slowly - I suspect because regulation became more onerous.

finaliteration 8y ago

> They get to keep a greater portion of their income I always see this come up during discussions about how the US compares to other developed countries. I think the mentality is slightly different in the EU. If you were raised knowing that your income was going to be taxed at 50% but you also got free healthcare, education, welfare assistance, etc., you’d probably learn to value those things over buying a bigger TV or whatever. The only reason we complain about how they have less disposable income is due to the fact that we spend so much of ours on healthcare and education so it looks like a scarce resource that we need to hoard.

nerdponx 8y ago
This is really what it comes down to. This is also where the basic argument to "tax the rich" comes from. For the price of a yacht, you could feed and house multiple families for a year in some cities.
- ergothus 8y ago
  I was once asked how much money I could sustainably spend every single day without explicitly trying to waste money. I settled on 10,000/day (I assume big ticket items like house/car would be absorbed by that effortlessly). Then I was asked to do the math on how long it would take to spend 1 billion - the minimum amount to qualify as a billionaire - at that rate. IIRC, ignoring interest and inflation, it worked out to 216 years. Now billionaires dont have a bill sitting around in liquid cash, this is just a thought experiment to try a grasp how much a billion is, but it is an effective one. (Also cool as a party trick, as people tend to always pick a power of ten, so based on their answer you can whip out 2161 years or 21.6 years or whatever)
drakonka 8y ago
This is how I feel. I'm taxed a lot, but I can see that money being used for things to benefit me and those around me. I appreciate that I don't have to worry about bike infrastructure, or healthcare, or education, or my coworkers being stressed out about taking time off after having a kid. If I had that money in-hand those are the same things I'd want to buy with it anyway (except then I'd have to worry about actually taking care of all the details myself whereas now I don't). At the same time I feel like I can afford what I need/want even if I take home less money than I would in parts of the US.

djcrayon 8y ago

I would love a citation on this. Anecdotally, I have lived in both the United States and United Kingdom. My tax rate was similar and in the UK I largely paid less for rent, healthcare and public transportation while paying more for staples like food. All in all costs were largely equaled out, although in the UK I enjoyed more vacation and worker protections I did not have as a US employee.

swimfar 8y ago
I don't know about the UK, but my net annual savings in the US is about equal to what my gross income would be in France or Germany. If I worked in the tech industry I'm sure the difference would be even greater. Also, healthcare is a problem in the US for people who don't get it from their employer. For those who do, it's often relatively inexpensive. I pay ~$100/month for really good coverage. It's the lower to lower-middle class that has it difficult in the US.
- abritinthebay 8y ago
  Statistically speaking you are an incredible outlier. Good for you, of course, but you shouldn’t generalize your experience to the entire population.

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago

That greater agility comes at a cost of stability. It's better for those with the means to not worry about the instability - those who are better able or willing to gamble upon an unsure thing, but it punishes those less risk adverse, or less capable of taking advantage of the system (the poor, those with dependents or debt).

toomanybeersies 8y ago

I live in Australia. I pay about as much tax as someone living in California, but with that I also get healthcare. I also get 11 days of public holidays, 20 days of normal leave, and 10 days of sick leave. I'm pretty happy with what I've got, to be honest.

peterburkimsher 8y ago
How does Australia compare to NZ? I'm hoping to move down under later this year.

herbst 8y ago

This is highly generalized. Check the numbers from Switzerland compared to any high income city in the US the take away and living standard almost always seems a lot better in switzerland. Generally we talk about less taxes, cheaper health care and a higher or similar income.

maxxxxx 8y ago

"They get to keep a greater portion of their income," If you are not in the very high income range this gets eaten up by health care and education.

toomuchtodo 8y ago
As well as rent and transportation.

lkrubner 8y ago

If the USA is good for business, why has business formation been in decline for 30 years? Understanding the 30 year Decline in Business Dynamism https://ideas.repec.org/p/red/sed015/1333.html https://ideas.repec.org/p/red/sed015/1333.html "Recent empirical work has drawn attention to an unmistakable shift in U.S. firm dynamics since the late 1970s. Principally, the entry rate, measured as the share of new employer firms out of all employer firms, declined by nearly 40 percent from 1977 to 2007, even before the impact of the Great Recession. Remarkably, this steady decline occurred relatively uniformly within geographic areas and within relatively narrow industry aggregations. Taking this trend decline or startup deficit as given, Pugsley and Sahin (2014) show that both its direct effect on business formation and its indirect cumulative effect through a shift in the employer age distribution partly explain the emergence of slower employment recoveries with each business cycle." Declining investment since the early 1960s: http://www.smashcompany.com/business/the-decline-of-usa-investment-since-1964 http://www.smashcompany.com/business/the-decline-of-usa-inve...