17 ms·

On the other hand the people in EU are happier, have better social protection, better benefits, better health systems, better consumer protection, better applic

by ddalex 5y ago

On the other hand the people in EU are happier, have better social protection, better benefits, better health systems, better consumer protection, better application of rules and laws, they make for more productive employees. Do the shareholders get as rich as fast as in the hyperactive US economy? Not, but the society functions better. I very much prefer the EU.

SOMA_BOFH 5y ago
have you tried to start a company there?
- Tesl 5y ago
  Did you completely fail to parse what he was saying there or something?
  - SOMA_BOFH 5y ago
    responding to a question with a question. rhetorical brilliance.
- onion2k 5y ago
  Why should society optimize for how easy it is to start a business?
  - SOMA_BOFH 5y ago
    gee, i wonder... clearly a bunch of social geniuses in here on a slow friday night.
  - apatters 5y ago
    Because if you don't you'll end up with fewer businesses, which will concentrate wealth, which has documented negative effects on society.
    - yoz-y 5y ago
      The article, most people here, and the reality disagrees with that. The point is that all the giants are elsewhere. Case in point as mentioned elsewhere: we actually have ISP competition here.
      - SOMA_BOFH 5y ago
        and as a result of this, you're more innovative how...?
        coldtea 5y ago
        In that we have better internet for cheaper prices than the US, for example. Between national and state debts, Trump and the Dems electing a zombie, rampant crime, police brutality 10x that of the EU, no work-life balance, average citizens that are the laughing stock of the West education wise, huge inequality, depression and the opioeid epidemic, crumbling infrastructure, the largest incarceration rate per capita in the world, the western capital of nutty religious people and gun-lovers, how does your innovation work for you?
        refurb 5y ago
        This reads like a rant from someone whose entire view of the US is based on Reddit posts.
        kortilla 5y ago
        > how does your innovation work for you? Well it has produced the top tech companies and (most of the) top research universities in the world. So pretty well.
        SOMA_BOFH 5y ago
        anecdotal
        coldtea 5y ago
        And what exactly does the average citizen of the US gets out of this, given the above? Not even the tax money of those "top tech companies". Heck, some of those come to us (e.g. Ireland). As for their products, we can buy them just fine as well.
  - bennybob 5y ago
    Why wouldn't you? The number of EU professionals I've worked with here in the uk over the years is surprising to me, they all left their home countries because their prospects where limited by their governments with over zealous interference in business. Living in a business friendly country has obvious benefits: jobs and money
  - refurb 5y ago
    1. Because new companies create jobs. 2. People with jobs pay taxes. As do the companies themselves. 3. Taxes pay for social safety net?
    - Fargren 5y ago
      You make it sound like having ease to start companies leads to a better social security net. Easier to start companies -> more companies -> more taxes -> safety net. Sounds credible in theory, but the reality is that despite it being harder in the EU than the US to start a company, the safety net is much stronger in the EU. So there must be something wrong in that theory.
      - refurb 5y ago
        I never made that claim at all. What I claimed is without jobs and companies (economic activity) you cant collect taxes which pay for social safety nets. Am I wrong? Or is there magic fairy dust to pay for a social safety net I don’t know about?
        Fargren 5y ago
        No, you did not claim that. You said that the reason "society optimize for how easy it is to start a business" is that "new companies create jobs" which leads to the safety net. That implies that making it easier top start a business is a requirement for the safety net; after all, you wrote that funding for the safety net is the reason creating companies should be made easy. It follows that wherever there is funding for a safety net, businesses are easy to start. So how come that in Europe businesses are -allegedly- so hard to start, but there is a strong social safety net? TL;DR: Europe is proof that it's possible to have a certain level of regulation to business while still having enough successful businesses to fund a strong social safety net.
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    Because societies that promote innovation have higher quality of life and bless the entire world with technological advancement, while their own population benefits from lower prices, more goods, productivity growth, more jobs, more opportunity, and more fairness. It's strange how quick people are to condemn monopolies and yet in the same breath insist that starting businesses is not a social good. Of course it's a social good, how do you think competition happens other than by starting businesses?
    - andruby 5y ago
      > societies that promote innovation have higher quality of life Does the US have a higher quality of life than Germany, France or the Netherlands? I agree that innovation is important and societies should promote it, but -imho- not at the cost of consumer & employee protection.
      - tluyben2 5y ago
        I would like to see US answers to this but in the US your quality of life is fantastic if you are rich and then it degrades fast: in NL it is good to great for all. So I can pick bleeding hard work in a lottery to maybe be someone or I can do whatever I like and have most of those same perks. Where is the choice here?
        joelbluminator 5y ago
        > in the US your quality of life is fantastic if you are rich I would argue almost everywhere in the world quality of life is fantastic if you are rich. What is the huge difference between living in a gated community in California to doing it in Thailand?
        tluyben2 5y ago
        That in Thailand that would cost almost nothing. And personally, it is much nicer on probably almost everything besides the small issue that the country is completely owned by the military. But yes, you are right: rich is also better in NL. But it is not 1000x better: it is just better. Subjective of course; if you enjoy driving McLarens into trees then rich is a lot better. I have the feeling, and again, I do not live there so I cannot be sure (and can you be even if you live there?) But from books, docus and US friends, the difference is not 1000x even. It is just another world. That is simply not true here. I guess it is a matter of taste if you can stomach that inequality. I walked (yes, strange EU thing where one uses legs instead of wheels) through some part of Fort Lauderdale and it looked like a bloody war zone. I could not live in a country that permits that. Your have poor here but that is exclusively mentally challenged(or what is the current PC term?) People who get help but always fall back, and very few of them. I recognize the vagrants in my home city from decades ago: still the same people: they have a state provided house and get help but it does not help. You cannot fix that. But rows of addicts turned criminals lining the streets in tents and worse. In the richest country on earth. Rich people should be ashamed that happens on their doorstep. They can and should fix it today.
  - pembrook 5y ago
    Because 60% of European GDP is government spending, and the place where government gets most of that money is by taxing private businesses (profits & cap gains), their products when sold (VAT and import duties), and their employees when they are paid by said businesses (income tax). No businesses means no wealth to redistribute which means no safety net. They are literally the bedrock of the entire system. So yes, society should place massive importance on making it easy for them to operate.
- arthur-st 5y ago
  Yeah, took a few hours of work and 1 week for correspondence to clear. Your point?
laurent92 5y ago
In the end, one may talk about all the startups (when the BPI pumps billions into it, I sure hope there are some startups and medium companies), but EU has proven unable to build an Apple. It would be dismantled here, and CEO beaten up before reaching any interesting level. DailyMotion (French) was as big as Youtube. Many others like this. We always end up #2, and the Silicon Valley still decides what is ok to say on our smartphones in EU, which is a lot of soft power, and means we live under foreign cultural domination. This is the price of being #2. Loss of leadership of our own country.
- sildur 5y ago
  EU built a Nokia. Until MS infiltrated and dismantled it, that is.
  - kentlyons 5y ago
    How much help did Nokia have from the EU?? Sure it was very Finnish, but not clear the EU helped. And it wasn't MS, it was Nokia itself in the face of Apple. I worked at Nokia and saw it first hand.
    - darthrupert 5y ago
      Finland's economy opened up significantly when we joined EU. It's no coincidence that Nokia's success followed soon after.
    - riffraff 5y ago
      Europe gave us GSM[0]. At a time when everyone in Europe had a GSM phone penetration in the US was embarassingly low. It's hard to remember now, but Nokia exploded in the consumer market at a time when mobile phones were still niche in the US. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM
      - midasuni 5y ago
        Back in 2000 everyone and his dog had a payg Nokia 3310 in the U.K. The US was (as always) late to the party, arrived in force, drove everyone else away, then claimed it was their party all along.
Aerroon 5y ago
But how much of this social happiness is a result of riding on the coattails of the past? As the article points out: the past in Europe was great. Today's happiness is heavily influenced by yesterday. Today Europe is not as great. Will the Europe of tomorrow be as happy when the decisions made today carry the day?
kortilla 5y ago
> they make for more productive employees. Source? This has not been my experience at all in the tech industry.
metacritic12 5y ago
Uh I think only the consumer protection, benefits, and social protection are clearly true (taken out of direct pay). Rule of law and happier are debatable. Productivity seems false if you define productivity as economic output versus just a redefinition of self-rated relaxation on the job. At a certain point it gets incredibly subjective like which country's citizens are more awesome. And honestly good on you for being in the EU and liking the EU more. I'm sure a lot of people in the USA feel the same about the USA. The entire point of democracies is that people should change their government to their liking.
- joelbluminator 5y ago
  My kneejerk reaction was to say you're wrong and of course EU citizens are happier, but thinking deeply about it that's nonsense. North Europe yes, happier by a lot. But if you consider the EU in its entirety, the South (Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece) and the East (Poland, Romania, Bulgaria) bring down the average by a lot. When the economy is down and corrupt no amount of safety nets will help you be happy, you simply won't have a job. So on average I would say happiness levels are about the same, both blocks have very vast regions which are poorer/neglected and where resentment is growing. The state of the economy is one of the most important factors in determining happiness, other things are perceived corruption, equality, freedom and safety. That's why North Europe scores so high but the struggling South despite it's awesome weather and views is not happy at all.
  - dieortin 5y ago
    Are you seriously saying people in the north of Europe are happier than in the south? I beg to disagree. Countries in the north have, for example, much higher suicide rates. I’d actually argue people in the south are happier than in the north. Of course, their economies are weaker. But that doesn’t have to translate directly into unhappiness.
    - marvin 5y ago
      You'd have to argue why suicide rates that are measured to be higher trumps scientific attempts at directly measuring happiness. The latter does indeed rank Southern Europe lower than both Northern Europe and the United States. https://countryeconomy.com/demography/world-happiness-index https://countryeconomy.com/demography/world-happiness-index
cscurmudgeon 5y ago
> On the other hand the people in EU are happier Are they though? And maybe happiness is overrated? The first large scale study on overwork deaths says US has less deaths than many countries in Europe. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202... https://www.npr.org/2021/05/17/997462169/thousands-of-people https://www.npr.org/2021/05/17/997462169/thousands-of-people... In the U.S., less than 5% of the population is exposed to long work hours, according to a map the WHO published with the study. That proportion is similar to Brazil and Canada — and much lower than Mexico and in countries across most of Central and South America.

by ddalex 5y ago

SOMA_BOFH 5y ago

have you tried to start a company there?

Tesl 5y ago
Did you completely fail to parse what he was saying there or something?
- SOMA_BOFH 5y ago
  responding to a question with a question. rhetorical brilliance.
onion2k 5y ago
Why should society optimize for how easy it is to start a business?
- SOMA_BOFH 5y ago
  gee, i wonder... clearly a bunch of social geniuses in here on a slow friday night.
- apatters 5y ago
  Because if you don't you'll end up with fewer businesses, which will concentrate wealth, which has documented negative effects on society.
  - yoz-y 5y ago
    The article, most people here, and the reality disagrees with that. The point is that all the giants are elsewhere. Case in point as mentioned elsewhere: we actually have ISP competition here.
    - SOMA_BOFH 5y ago
      and as a result of this, you're more innovative how...?
      - coldtea 5y ago
        In that we have better internet for cheaper prices than the US, for example. Between national and state debts, Trump and the Dems electing a zombie, rampant crime, police brutality 10x that of the EU, no work-life balance, average citizens that are the laughing stock of the West education wise, huge inequality, depression and the opioeid epidemic, crumbling infrastructure, the largest incarceration rate per capita in the world, the western capital of nutty religious people and gun-lovers, how does your innovation work for you?
        refurb 5y ago
        This reads like a rant from someone whose entire view of the US is based on Reddit posts.
        kortilla 5y ago
        > how does your innovation work for you? Well it has produced the top tech companies and (most of the) top research universities in the world. So pretty well.
        SOMA_BOFH 5y ago
        anecdotal
        coldtea 5y ago
        And what exactly does the average citizen of the US gets out of this, given the above? Not even the tax money of those "top tech companies". Heck, some of those come to us (e.g. Ireland). As for their products, we can buy them just fine as well.
- bennybob 5y ago
  Why wouldn't you? The number of EU professionals I've worked with here in the uk over the years is surprising to me, they all left their home countries because their prospects where limited by their governments with over zealous interference in business. Living in a business friendly country has obvious benefits: jobs and money
- refurb 5y ago
  1. Because new companies create jobs. 2. People with jobs pay taxes. As do the companies themselves. 3. Taxes pay for social safety net?
  - Fargren 5y ago
    You make it sound like having ease to start companies leads to a better social security net. Easier to start companies -> more companies -> more taxes -> safety net. Sounds credible in theory, but the reality is that despite it being harder in the EU than the US to start a company, the safety net is much stronger in the EU. So there must be something wrong in that theory.
    - refurb 5y ago
      I never made that claim at all. What I claimed is without jobs and companies (economic activity) you cant collect taxes which pay for social safety nets. Am I wrong? Or is there magic fairy dust to pay for a social safety net I don’t know about?
      - Fargren 5y ago
        No, you did not claim that. You said that the reason "society optimize for how easy it is to start a business" is that "new companies create jobs" which leads to the safety net. That implies that making it easier top start a business is a requirement for the safety net; after all, you wrote that funding for the safety net is the reason creating companies should be made easy. It follows that wherever there is funding for a safety net, businesses are easy to start. So how come that in Europe businesses are -allegedly- so hard to start, but there is a strong social safety net? TL;DR: Europe is proof that it's possible to have a certain level of regulation to business while still having enough successful businesses to fund a strong social safety net.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  Because societies that promote innovation have higher quality of life and bless the entire world with technological advancement, while their own population benefits from lower prices, more goods, productivity growth, more jobs, more opportunity, and more fairness. It's strange how quick people are to condemn monopolies and yet in the same breath insist that starting businesses is not a social good. Of course it's a social good, how do you think competition happens other than by starting businesses?
  - andruby 5y ago
    > societies that promote innovation have higher quality of life Does the US have a higher quality of life than Germany, France or the Netherlands? I agree that innovation is important and societies should promote it, but -imho- not at the cost of consumer & employee protection.
    - tluyben2 5y ago
      I would like to see US answers to this but in the US your quality of life is fantastic if you are rich and then it degrades fast: in NL it is good to great for all. So I can pick bleeding hard work in a lottery to maybe be someone or I can do whatever I like and have most of those same perks. Where is the choice here?
      - joelbluminator 5y ago
        > in the US your quality of life is fantastic if you are rich I would argue almost everywhere in the world quality of life is fantastic if you are rich. What is the huge difference between living in a gated community in California to doing it in Thailand?
        tluyben2 5y ago
        That in Thailand that would cost almost nothing. And personally, it is much nicer on probably almost everything besides the small issue that the country is completely owned by the military. But yes, you are right: rich is also better in NL. But it is not 1000x better: it is just better. Subjective of course; if you enjoy driving McLarens into trees then rich is a lot better. I have the feeling, and again, I do not live there so I cannot be sure (and can you be even if you live there?) But from books, docus and US friends, the difference is not 1000x even. It is just another world. That is simply not true here. I guess it is a matter of taste if you can stomach that inequality. I walked (yes, strange EU thing where one uses legs instead of wheels) through some part of Fort Lauderdale and it looked like a bloody war zone. I could not live in a country that permits that. Your have poor here but that is exclusively mentally challenged(or what is the current PC term?) People who get help but always fall back, and very few of them. I recognize the vagrants in my home city from decades ago: still the same people: they have a state provided house and get help but it does not help. You cannot fix that. But rows of addicts turned criminals lining the streets in tents and worse. In the richest country on earth. Rich people should be ashamed that happens on their doorstep. They can and should fix it today.
- pembrook 5y ago
  Because 60% of European GDP is government spending, and the place where government gets most of that money is by taxing private businesses (profits & cap gains), their products when sold (VAT and import duties), and their employees when they are paid by said businesses (income tax). No businesses means no wealth to redistribute which means no safety net. They are literally the bedrock of the entire system. So yes, society should place massive importance on making it easy for them to operate.
arthur-st 5y ago
Yeah, took a few hours of work and 1 week for correspondence to clear. Your point?

laurent92 5y ago

In the end, one may talk about all the startups (when the BPI pumps billions into it, I sure hope there are some startups and medium companies), but EU has proven unable to build an Apple. It would be dismantled here, and CEO beaten up before reaching any interesting level. DailyMotion (French) was as big as Youtube. Many others like this. We always end up #2, and the Silicon Valley still decides what is ok to say on our smartphones in EU, which is a lot of soft power, and means we live under foreign cultural domination. This is the price of being #2. Loss of leadership of our own country.

sildur 5y ago
EU built a Nokia. Until MS infiltrated and dismantled it, that is.
- kentlyons 5y ago
  How much help did Nokia have from the EU?? Sure it was very Finnish, but not clear the EU helped. And it wasn't MS, it was Nokia itself in the face of Apple. I worked at Nokia and saw it first hand.
  - darthrupert 5y ago
    Finland's economy opened up significantly when we joined EU. It's no coincidence that Nokia's success followed soon after.
  - riffraff 5y ago
    Europe gave us GSM[0]. At a time when everyone in Europe had a GSM phone penetration in the US was embarassingly low. It's hard to remember now, but Nokia exploded in the consumer market at a time when mobile phones were still niche in the US. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM
    - midasuni 5y ago
      Back in 2000 everyone and his dog had a payg Nokia 3310 in the U.K. The US was (as always) late to the party, arrived in force, drove everyone else away, then claimed it was their party all along.

Aerroon 5y ago

But how much of this social happiness is a result of riding on the coattails of the past? As the article points out: the past in Europe was great. Today's happiness is heavily influenced by yesterday. Today Europe is not as great. Will the Europe of tomorrow be as happy when the decisions made today carry the day?

kortilla 5y ago

> they make for more productive employees. Source? This has not been my experience at all in the tech industry.

metacritic12 5y ago

Uh I think only the consumer protection, benefits, and social protection are clearly true (taken out of direct pay). Rule of law and happier are debatable. Productivity seems false if you define productivity as economic output versus just a redefinition of self-rated relaxation on the job. At a certain point it gets incredibly subjective like which country's citizens are more awesome. And honestly good on you for being in the EU and liking the EU more. I'm sure a lot of people in the USA feel the same about the USA. The entire point of democracies is that people should change their government to their liking.

joelbluminator 5y ago
My kneejerk reaction was to say you're wrong and of course EU citizens are happier, but thinking deeply about it that's nonsense. North Europe yes, happier by a lot. But if you consider the EU in its entirety, the South (Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece) and the East (Poland, Romania, Bulgaria) bring down the average by a lot. When the economy is down and corrupt no amount of safety nets will help you be happy, you simply won't have a job. So on average I would say happiness levels are about the same, both blocks have very vast regions which are poorer/neglected and where resentment is growing. The state of the economy is one of the most important factors in determining happiness, other things are perceived corruption, equality, freedom and safety. That's why North Europe scores so high but the struggling South despite it's awesome weather and views is not happy at all.
- dieortin 5y ago
  Are you seriously saying people in the north of Europe are happier than in the south? I beg to disagree. Countries in the north have, for example, much higher suicide rates. I’d actually argue people in the south are happier than in the north. Of course, their economies are weaker. But that doesn’t have to translate directly into unhappiness.
  - marvin 5y ago
    You'd have to argue why suicide rates that are measured to be higher trumps scientific attempts at directly measuring happiness. The latter does indeed rank Southern Europe lower than both Northern Europe and the United States. https://countryeconomy.com/demography/world-happiness-index https://countryeconomy.com/demography/world-happiness-index

cscurmudgeon 5y ago

> On the other hand the people in EU are happier Are they though? And maybe happiness is overrated? The first large scale study on overwork deaths says US has less deaths than many countries in Europe. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202... https://www.npr.org/2021/05/17/997462169/thousands-of-people https://www.npr.org/2021/05/17/997462169/thousands-of-people... In the U.S., less than 5% of the population is exposed to long work hours, according to a map the WHO published with the study. That proportion is similar to Brazil and Canada — and much lower than Mexico and in countries across most of Central and South America.