4 ms·
Land is more expensive in Europe, that's a fact; EEA[1] has more than 500 million people for a size half of the USA, and as much relief and less plains: Scandi
by bdauvergne 6y ago
Land is more expensive in Europe, that's a fact; EEA[1] has more than 500 million people for a size half of the USA, and as much relief and less plains: Scandinavia is just a big mountain, the Alps severely limit the possibility of cheap transportation in the middle of it, and UK the main economic powerhouse with Germany and France is an island not even connected to the continent where 50% of everything is around London. Also not enough waterways rely the economic regions apart from around Germany. Yeah subway and infrastructure cost less but everything else is costlier.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Economic_Area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Economic_Area
- inglor_cz 6y agoScandinavia as a whole is not a big mountain. Did you mean Norway? B/C Sweden only has some mountains in the sparsely uninhabited borderlands and Denmark + Finland are basically flat.
- apexalpha 6y agoFWIW the UK is connected via a rail tunnel to France. But most goods are transported via cargo ship and most people via planes, so how much does it really matter? Furthermore, the US might have more land but they also have other challenges that Europe doesn't have, such as huge cities in dessert area, tornadoes, and no internal waterways from east to west (need the panama canal). There's pro's and con's to the land on both sides of the Atlantic. But it seems far from a decisive factor in the wealth of our nations.