5 ms·

> In a lot of European countries, a robust social safety net is the great equalizer. You don't get locked up to work in order to afford healthcare, food, etc. -

> In a lot of European countries, a robust social safety net is the great equalizer. You don't get locked up to work in order to afford healthcare, food, etc. - and are thus more free to take chances. That is a great explanation in theory, but simply does not work out in practice. In order to support the safety net, the EU has to impose several regulations that remove the ability of people to 'take chances', such as higher taxes on business, paternity/maternity leave policies that cause parents to have fewer children, higher regulatory atmosphere, etc. Whether it's in business, family, education, etc, the EU is not particularly excellent at any. America still has most of the world's large innovative companies, still has a higher birth rate, still has more VC money (and access to capital in general), and still has the best universities and best research institutions.

silvestrov 5y ago
> higher taxes on business Denmark + Norway: 22% Sweden: 21.4% Finland: 20% Germany: 15% Nederlands: 25% France: 25% USA: 21% (but 35% until 2017). So the tax argument does not hold, especially for the period before 2017. Birth rates are also the same: https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/total-fertility-rate/country-comparison https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/total-fertility... > the EU is not particularly excellent at any Odd that there are so many EU countries at the list of most happy countries when EU is not good at anything: https://www.cntraveler.com/gallery/the-10-happiest-countries-in-the-world https://www.cntraveler.com/gallery/the-10-happiest-countries...
- mnouquet 5y ago
  Nobody in the US pays the full 21% after taking into accounts credits and write-offs.
- iammisc 5y ago
  > Odd that there are so many EU countries at the list of most happy countries when EU is not good at anything Putting words in my mouth. I never said the EU is not good at 'anything'. But it's not as good as America in terms of financing, innovation, or education. One does not need great capital access, top-notch technology, or even the best education to be happy. You sad that european safety nets lead to the ability to 'take chances'. Typically, the result of this would be more innovation, which leads to more capital, which leads to better financing, which incentivizes education so that those with education can convince investors to invest in new innovation. However, the result you claim does not exist in Europe at the same level it exists in America.
  - asdff 5y ago
    Does the median american even benefit from these sorts of things? I would guess not at all, but I'm sure for the 1% the regulatory environment is extremely favorable. Someone working with their hands doesn't care much about national financial policy, since it has very little practical effect on their life vs. something like a national healthcare policy, which they would use regularly throughout their lives.
    - iammisc 5y ago
      Perhaps not, but you're changing the goalposts. You said European style safety nets would spur individual innovation and risk taking. That was the only metric I was interested in. If you want to change the conversation to generic 'benefits' or happiness, by all means, go ahead, but that's not a conversation I'm personally interested in.
      - asdff 5y ago
        Maybe it does spur innovation and risk taking, but not the sorts of innovation that brings VCs to the room like a vulture to carrion. The average American works 25 hours a week. The average German works 18 hours a week. That's another 7 hours you can spend with your children, 7 hours to spend learning an instrument, 7 hours working on art, 7 hours exercising or engaging in physical activity. To me, these are all cases of individual innovation and self improvement. Maybe you now have time after your job as a German to plan your business venture, and you have the time to properly plan for risk taking activities such as this. Due to the hours worked and the requirements that the social safety net be fulfilled by continued employment at certain employers that offer these benefits, it really does feel that most Americans are lacking opportunities to individually innovate or take risks that Europeans might not have issue with, since their social benefits are not tied to their employer and they overall work less hours and have more vacation time and longer parental leave periods.
- flavius29663 5y ago
  The corporate tax might be nominally higher in the US, but the cost of doing business is definitely higher in Europe. When you have to pay 55% to the state if an employee has a salary above 100k, that will seriously hinder your ability to hire top talent, retain them, and motivate them (why work harder if it will go down the tax drain?)
  - asdff 5y ago
    It's not a tax drain though. It funds things like higher education and healthcare. Things that most Americans have to pay out of pocket if they want which entrenches the lack of class mobility in this country. Imo the european system is better.
    - flavius29663 5y ago
      > It funds things like higher education and healthcare The US funds the healthcare above and beyond what any other country on Earth is doing. I think it's 50% higher than the next contender, per capita. As for higher education, the US universities are doing much much better than their European counterparts. If you get a STEM degree, you're basically set for life in the US, pay your debts in no time and then enjoy a salary that can easily be 2 times higher than in Europe. In Europe you get a free education, which opens up the exciting opportunity to toil for 60k-80k (pre-tax) a year for the rest of your life. Take the tax out, and you're left with around 50% of that money. The US universities are fine. The STEM graduates are fine. The problem is with all the non-marketable degrees for which students get into serious debt. I don't think we should subsidize those more, I think we should discourage students from attending useless degrees. If the government will pay for the degrees, then the government will also have a heavy hand in picking winners and losers in terms of classes, degrees, schools etc. This is how it's in Europe, and it shows, they are lacking performance. e.g. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/french-universities-crisis-low-fees-and-selection-lotteries-create-headaches-higher-education-10517241.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/french-unive... To put it shortly: if everybody has X, then nobody has X. Education and healthcare in the US do not lack funding. We don't need more money thrown at these nuanced and delicate problems.
- usaar333 5y ago
  The main difference is not taxes, but how loose employment and business regulations in the US are vs. EU. In general, it is much easier to fire people in the US (https://smallbusiness.chron.com/compare-us-labor-laws-european-labor-laws-62420.html https://smallbusiness.chron.com/compare-us-labor-laws-europe...)
distances 5y ago
> paternity/maternity leave policies that cause parents to have fewer children Could you expand what you mean by this? The higher birth rate in US (compared to Europe) is usually attributed to poverty and religion.
- iammisc 5y ago
  This is going to be an extremely heterodox opinion. Please be charitable. As far as I know I'm the only person other than my wife with this opinion. I don't get this from anywhere. Then again, I don't read very much sociology so I don't know. I guess what I'm saying is I come by these views honestly. My wife and I are pretty traditional Catholics. That is to say... we don't use birth control. We also got married pretty young. All things considered, I imagine we will have about 4 - 6 kids by the time she enters menopause. This informs my views. Now to my points. From a business perspective, people taking time off for their kids is disruptive to the business. Try as you may to incentivize businesses to get around this, the truth is that a worker that is present is going to be better than one who takes several weeks off every 2-3 years. Now, the typical response is that parents are more productive and dedicated as employees. That is perhaps true, but I doubt the parents of six children are any more productive or dedicated than the parents of one or two. In order for a good fertility rate, you need most couples to have 2 or 3 kids, and some to have 4 or more kids, to account for those who do not marry or cannot have kids or cannot have enough to replace themselves. If parents can potentially take up to a year off (as they can in Canada for example), which is incredibly disruptive to business, then companies are not going to want to hire them. This is not going to take the form of explicit 'no parents allowed'. But rather, all incentives ultimately 'leak' -- incentives are a leaky abstraction. At some point the additional loyalty and hard work one gets from parents is going to be balanced off by the risk that you may have to give them one year off. Companies do not need to explicitly fire parents for this to shake out in the market. Parents are going to internally police themselves as well. Due to how much of a benefit being able to take a full year off is, parents are going to succumb to the natural social pressure of not demanding too much of society. If every kid is an excuse to take a year off, it's not long before parents with lots of kids are seen as welfare queens. We already see this in places like France, where President Macron has made remarks about how ambitious women don't have lots of children. This also leads to an incentive to not have kids because those that put in that extra year that a parent may take off accelerate their promotions at a faster speed. Thus, kids grow up seeing that the childless are the most successful and then want to emulate that path. I feel this pressure currently. With the birth of a new baby pending, and the likely addition of another child a few years after, if I were to take 12 months off as some european countries allow, I'd soon develop the reputation of that guy who takes years off at a time. Work one year, then leave the other. Already, it's common in the quiet recesses of the break room for child-free colleagues to complain about having to cover for the mom/dad having another kid. This sort of resentment will never go unheeded; the effect is just subtle. Ultimately, this will have the effect of making parents feel guilty, thus making them reconsider having a kid. I already feel guilty about taking time off for my next baby. So, I believe these three effects -- the self-policing of parents who don't want to be seen as leeches, the natural advancement of the childless/those with fewer children over those with more, and the subliminal incentive to hire workers who are not going to take long, disruptive breaks every few years -- leads to a society in which only having some X number of children is really acceptable. In contrast, in American society, there is less incentive to be nosy in people's childbearing lives. Whether someone has six or ten, since society provides comparatively less to the kids, as long as the parents can provide for them, many people see childbearing as a personal decision. In a more collectivist society, where government does provide a lot of benefits, then having 'too many' children can become a source of social shame much in the way that the title 'welfare queen' carries a stigma of being on government benefits. I don't believe such constraints can be overcome by more government regulation. Or if they can, I haven't seen anywhere that does so successfully. The effects are natural. Imagine if a 20 year old woman got a nice job in a Canadian company. Then at age 22, after two years of exemplary service, got married and had a baby every year until 40. This is a bit extreme, but certainly within possibility if she wanted it. Now she requests one year off each time. That woman is 'entitled' to twenty years off. Don't you think she'll face lower career prospects, less advancement, and less employment? Now, imagine she just takes every other year off or every fourth year off, etc? It seems to me these negative effects scale linearly and they do so simply because each child represents time taken out of the workforce, while your childless / less fruitful colleagues are advancing freely. Back to my personal observations. I have a few acquaintances who are also having big families. guess what? Their paternity/maternity leaves are much shorter. They realize that if they took the full benefit, they will have less career advancement, less prestige, and reduce their chances of employment. Thus, they take less. In America, where it's normal to take a short paternity break (or maternity of only a few months), this carries little stigma, and they're just seen as hard-working. In places where most parents take many many months off, then these parents would be seen as bad parents. Kind of a brain dump, sorry.
ozim 5y ago
Yes EU does not have more VC money or crazy startup unicorns but also it has a lot less bums dying on the street and people ruined by medical bills. There is no need to help Elon Musk or Travis Kalanick to take chances. There is a need for average Joe to be able to say "f*k it I am quitting" so he can get something better. That is why topic of this submission is about equalizing society. So we want to have a society where people are not dying on the streets but maybe going to Mars will take us longer.
standardUser 5y ago
Just because the European system isn't perfect doesn't mean we can't learn from it or try to emulate its strengths. For too long the American approach has been "other ways aren't perfect so we'll keep doing it our way". But I think its becoming clear that "our way" does not lead to better outcomes across a wide range of metrics. Not seriously entraining some major adjustments based on these learnings is borderline insanity.

silvestrov 5y ago

> higher taxes on business Denmark + Norway: 22% Sweden: 21.4% Finland: 20% Germany: 15% Nederlands: 25% France: 25% USA: 21% (but 35% until 2017). So the tax argument does not hold, especially for the period before 2017. Birth rates are also the same: https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/total-fertility-rate/country-comparison https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/total-fertility... > the EU is not particularly excellent at any Odd that there are so many EU countries at the list of most happy countries when EU is not good at anything: https://www.cntraveler.com/gallery/the-10-happiest-countries-in-the-world https://www.cntraveler.com/gallery/the-10-happiest-countries...

mnouquet 5y ago
Nobody in the US pays the full 21% after taking into accounts credits and write-offs.
iammisc 5y ago
> Odd that there are so many EU countries at the list of most happy countries when EU is not good at anything Putting words in my mouth. I never said the EU is not good at 'anything'. But it's not as good as America in terms of financing, innovation, or education. One does not need great capital access, top-notch technology, or even the best education to be happy. You sad that european safety nets lead to the ability to 'take chances'. Typically, the result of this would be more innovation, which leads to more capital, which leads to better financing, which incentivizes education so that those with education can convince investors to invest in new innovation. However, the result you claim does not exist in Europe at the same level it exists in America.
- asdff 5y ago
  Does the median american even benefit from these sorts of things? I would guess not at all, but I'm sure for the 1% the regulatory environment is extremely favorable. Someone working with their hands doesn't care much about national financial policy, since it has very little practical effect on their life vs. something like a national healthcare policy, which they would use regularly throughout their lives.
  - iammisc 5y ago
    Perhaps not, but you're changing the goalposts. You said European style safety nets would spur individual innovation and risk taking. That was the only metric I was interested in. If you want to change the conversation to generic 'benefits' or happiness, by all means, go ahead, but that's not a conversation I'm personally interested in.
    - asdff 5y ago
      Maybe it does spur innovation and risk taking, but not the sorts of innovation that brings VCs to the room like a vulture to carrion. The average American works 25 hours a week. The average German works 18 hours a week. That's another 7 hours you can spend with your children, 7 hours to spend learning an instrument, 7 hours working on art, 7 hours exercising or engaging in physical activity. To me, these are all cases of individual innovation and self improvement. Maybe you now have time after your job as a German to plan your business venture, and you have the time to properly plan for risk taking activities such as this. Due to the hours worked and the requirements that the social safety net be fulfilled by continued employment at certain employers that offer these benefits, it really does feel that most Americans are lacking opportunities to individually innovate or take risks that Europeans might not have issue with, since their social benefits are not tied to their employer and they overall work less hours and have more vacation time and longer parental leave periods.
flavius29663 5y ago
The corporate tax might be nominally higher in the US, but the cost of doing business is definitely higher in Europe. When you have to pay 55% to the state if an employee has a salary above 100k, that will seriously hinder your ability to hire top talent, retain them, and motivate them (why work harder if it will go down the tax drain?)
- asdff 5y ago
  It's not a tax drain though. It funds things like higher education and healthcare. Things that most Americans have to pay out of pocket if they want which entrenches the lack of class mobility in this country. Imo the european system is better.
  - flavius29663 5y ago
    > It funds things like higher education and healthcare The US funds the healthcare above and beyond what any other country on Earth is doing. I think it's 50% higher than the next contender, per capita. As for higher education, the US universities are doing much much better than their European counterparts. If you get a STEM degree, you're basically set for life in the US, pay your debts in no time and then enjoy a salary that can easily be 2 times higher than in Europe. In Europe you get a free education, which opens up the exciting opportunity to toil for 60k-80k (pre-tax) a year for the rest of your life. Take the tax out, and you're left with around 50% of that money. The US universities are fine. The STEM graduates are fine. The problem is with all the non-marketable degrees for which students get into serious debt. I don't think we should subsidize those more, I think we should discourage students from attending useless degrees. If the government will pay for the degrees, then the government will also have a heavy hand in picking winners and losers in terms of classes, degrees, schools etc. This is how it's in Europe, and it shows, they are lacking performance. e.g. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/french-universities-crisis-low-fees-and-selection-lotteries-create-headaches-higher-education-10517241.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/french-unive... To put it shortly: if everybody has X, then nobody has X. Education and healthcare in the US do not lack funding. We don't need more money thrown at these nuanced and delicate problems.
usaar333 5y ago
The main difference is not taxes, but how loose employment and business regulations in the US are vs. EU. In general, it is much easier to fire people in the US (https://smallbusiness.chron.com/compare-us-labor-laws-european-labor-laws-62420.html https://smallbusiness.chron.com/compare-us-labor-laws-europe...)

distances 5y ago

> paternity/maternity leave policies that cause parents to have fewer children Could you expand what you mean by this? The higher birth rate in US (compared to Europe) is usually attributed to poverty and religion.

iammisc 5y ago
This is going to be an extremely heterodox opinion. Please be charitable. As far as I know I'm the only person other than my wife with this opinion. I don't get this from anywhere. Then again, I don't read very much sociology so I don't know. I guess what I'm saying is I come by these views honestly. My wife and I are pretty traditional Catholics. That is to say... we don't use birth control. We also got married pretty young. All things considered, I imagine we will have about 4 - 6 kids by the time she enters menopause. This informs my views. Now to my points. From a business perspective, people taking time off for their kids is disruptive to the business. Try as you may to incentivize businesses to get around this, the truth is that a worker that is present is going to be better than one who takes several weeks off every 2-3 years. Now, the typical response is that parents are more productive and dedicated as employees. That is perhaps true, but I doubt the parents of six children are any more productive or dedicated than the parents of one or two. In order for a good fertility rate, you need most couples to have 2 or 3 kids, and some to have 4 or more kids, to account for those who do not marry or cannot have kids or cannot have enough to replace themselves. If parents can potentially take up to a year off (as they can in Canada for example), which is incredibly disruptive to business, then companies are not going to want to hire them. This is not going to take the form of explicit 'no parents allowed'. But rather, all incentives ultimately 'leak' -- incentives are a leaky abstraction. At some point the additional loyalty and hard work one gets from parents is going to be balanced off by the risk that you may have to give them one year off. Companies do not need to explicitly fire parents for this to shake out in the market. Parents are going to internally police themselves as well. Due to how much of a benefit being able to take a full year off is, parents are going to succumb to the natural social pressure of not demanding too much of society. If every kid is an excuse to take a year off, it's not long before parents with lots of kids are seen as welfare queens. We already see this in places like France, where President Macron has made remarks about how ambitious women don't have lots of children. This also leads to an incentive to not have kids because those that put in that extra year that a parent may take off accelerate their promotions at a faster speed. Thus, kids grow up seeing that the childless are the most successful and then want to emulate that path. I feel this pressure currently. With the birth of a new baby pending, and the likely addition of another child a few years after, if I were to take 12 months off as some european countries allow, I'd soon develop the reputation of that guy who takes years off at a time. Work one year, then leave the other. Already, it's common in the quiet recesses of the break room for child-free colleagues to complain about having to cover for the mom/dad having another kid. This sort of resentment will never go unheeded; the effect is just subtle. Ultimately, this will have the effect of making parents feel guilty, thus making them reconsider having a kid. I already feel guilty about taking time off for my next baby. So, I believe these three effects -- the self-policing of parents who don't want to be seen as leeches, the natural advancement of the childless/those with fewer children over those with more, and the subliminal incentive to hire workers who are not going to take long, disruptive breaks every few years -- leads to a society in which only having some X number of children is really acceptable. In contrast, in American society, there is less incentive to be nosy in people's childbearing lives. Whether someone has six or ten, since society provides comparatively less to the kids, as long as the parents can provide for them, many people see childbearing as a personal decision. In a more collectivist society, where government does provide a lot of benefits, then having 'too many' children can become a source of social shame much in the way that the title 'welfare queen' carries a stigma of being on government benefits. I don't believe such constraints can be overcome by more government regulation. Or if they can, I haven't seen anywhere that does so successfully. The effects are natural. Imagine if a 20 year old woman got a nice job in a Canadian company. Then at age 22, after two years of exemplary service, got married and had a baby every year until 40. This is a bit extreme, but certainly within possibility if she wanted it. Now she requests one year off each time. That woman is 'entitled' to twenty years off. Don't you think she'll face lower career prospects, less advancement, and less employment? Now, imagine she just takes every other year off or every fourth year off, etc? It seems to me these negative effects scale linearly and they do so simply because each child represents time taken out of the workforce, while your childless / less fruitful colleagues are advancing freely. Back to my personal observations. I have a few acquaintances who are also having big families. guess what? Their paternity/maternity leaves are much shorter. They realize that if they took the full benefit, they will have less career advancement, less prestige, and reduce their chances of employment. Thus, they take less. In America, where it's normal to take a short paternity break (or maternity of only a few months), this carries little stigma, and they're just seen as hard-working. In places where most parents take many many months off, then these parents would be seen as bad parents. Kind of a brain dump, sorry.

ozim 5y ago

Yes EU does not have more VC money or crazy startup unicorns but also it has a lot less bums dying on the street and people ruined by medical bills. There is no need to help Elon Musk or Travis Kalanick to take chances. There is a need for average Joe to be able to say "f*k it I am quitting" so he can get something better. That is why topic of this submission is about equalizing society. So we want to have a society where people are not dying on the streets but maybe going to Mars will take us longer.

standardUser 5y ago

Just because the European system isn't perfect doesn't mean we can't learn from it or try to emulate its strengths. For too long the American approach has been "other ways aren't perfect so we'll keep doing it our way". But I think its becoming clear that "our way" does not lead to better outcomes across a wide range of metrics. Not seriously entraining some major adjustments based on these learnings is borderline insanity.