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Wow nice, a few questions if you don't mind: 1. Why are income levels lower? 2. Everything is cheaper, but is it cheap enough to be more affordable with the l

Wow nice, a few questions if you don't mind: 1. Why are income levels lower? 2. Everything is cheaper, but is it cheap enough to be more affordable with the lower income? 3. Do you plan to stay in Spain long-term? Thanks!

cft 5y ago
1. I do not yet know why. I think somebody may chime in on here. Maybe because there are no multinationals, the economy appears to be somewhat local, insulated. 2. Middle class here has way more comfortable life than in San Francisco. I mean life quality. If you want to do something new, eg some new tech, it's another matter. 3. For a while, but it's not super easy from the bureaucratic standpoint, without the EU residency. The bureaucracy here is very slow and inefficient.
- gradschoolfail 5y ago
  Replying to 2. Curiously, curiosity (exploring tech) is cheaper in the US. I don’t see why it necessarily has to be, though. EU folks are more educated, hence they can select promising avenues and avoid boredom and even upfront costs. E.g. you want to train a new language model? Harnessing your polyglot nature, you find a far better kind of language model where you eschew the latest TPU. You learn quickly from Juergen Schmidhuber, whom Americans do not realize, has already solved everything in machine learning. It is hard to do new things in the EU because there is nothing new in the EU — someone already did it.
bruce511 5y ago
I have not lived in the US, and I'm not an economist, so this is annecdonte, not data. 1. Things are cheaper because there are fewer rich[1] people. It makes sense to price things to the level where you make a little for each sale but keep your market large. There are intrinsically fewer people, which means less demand. A container of tin openers is still a container load to get rid of. Of course selling for less means you make less, meaning the seller does not become richer than his customers. There is also a massive difference in mindset between the US and everywhere else. In the US the only measure is money. If you have money, everything else flows from that, if you don't have money everything is harder. Outside the US, money is still a driving force, but not to the same degree. There is less opportunity to be a billionaire, so the top is somewhat pushed-down, but at the same time the bottom is higher, and the safety net is better. But we are all fish in water - we like what we know - Americans would not want to be Spain, and the Spanish would hate to be American. Europeans prioritize family time, vacations, shorter work weeks. Americans prioritize rich company owners. The latter allows for ordinary folk to become very rich. Or at least dream of it. [1] rich in the sense that they have disposable income enough to afford your thing.
- Ultimatt 5y ago
  Billionaires per million people is about 1.8 in the USA and 1.5 in Germany. The opportunity is extremely similar, compared with say China that has plenty of billionaires but its 0.2 per million people. The reality is very simple, all of Europe looks extremely socialist in comparison to the USA. People don't need millions throughout their lifetime to cover medical bills. Student debt is either non existent or orders of magnitude lower etc. Europeans also work less per week, so you should adjust incomes to reflect prorated time worked.
  - wozniacki 5y ago
    This largely ignores the crucial role that the U.S. has played as global ensure-r of security, world order and enabler of global free trade. Peter Zeihan speaks at length about this.[1] For example Germany has recently said it would sharply increase its spending on defense to more than 2% of its economic output in one of a series of policy shifts.[1] Other European countries will be increasing their defense spending too. Formerly it was just the U.S. footing the lion share of the NATO bill. That will rapidly change. And that will also affect how much of the domestic spending it eats into. This has been largely ignored in past number crunching of living standards of various countries. [1] The places America cares about post Globalization | Peter Zeihan (2021) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oeG170bv7k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oeG170bv7k [2] Germany to increase defence spending in response to 'Putin's war' - Scholz https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/germany-hike-defense-spending-scholz-says-further-policy-shift-2022-02-27/ https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/germany-h...
    - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
      'Formerly it was just the U.S. footing the lion share of the NATO bill.' This is quite unfair portrayal of the situation. It is always portrayed as if US is paying biggest share of the tab - like if we were all paying for shared commitments. However in reality it's more everyone going out for a fancy dinner and one guy buying loads of dishes that turn out to taste terrible, or are left uneaten - and then bragging abiut paying the most. You can imagine that the budget would be quote a bit smaller without the war in Iraq, which was tremendously expensive, so was F-22 programm and littoral combat ship programms that came to nothing, etc. Clearly we have spent a lot of money bombing some poor people that should have never been harmed, and creating regime change that turned out to be a mistake. Like does anyone remember that time US installed a Fashist regime in Greece? Dont forget thaylt Nato's budget, without US, is still larger than Russia's or China's - i am not sure how much is enough, but there is still a lot of rich countries spending money.
yobbo 5y ago
> 1. Why are income levels lower? USA is in a unique position where it can stimulate its economy to a degree that is treatise-wise impossible for EU governments in EMU, and (until recently) without causing inflation. Southern Europe used to have very high inflation before EMU. For Spain, there is no equivalent to all the US government debts held by China and Japan, which you might view as subsidies to the US government. A better question might be why Germany is wealthier than Spain. The answer will involve work ethic and discipline, attitude vs self-sacrifice, long-term strategic planning for industry, and so on. You probably won't see this is in individuals nowadays, but systemically and historically this might have been what "set the stage".
- kurupt213 5y ago
  China hold very little US debt…around 1T USD. Americans are far and away the largest holders of US debt.

cft 5y ago

1. I do not yet know why. I think somebody may chime in on here. Maybe because there are no multinationals, the economy appears to be somewhat local, insulated. 2. Middle class here has way more comfortable life than in San Francisco. I mean life quality. If you want to do something new, eg some new tech, it's another matter. 3. For a while, but it's not super easy from the bureaucratic standpoint, without the EU residency. The bureaucracy here is very slow and inefficient.

gradschoolfail 5y ago
Replying to 2. Curiously, curiosity (exploring tech) is cheaper in the US. I don’t see why it necessarily has to be, though. EU folks are more educated, hence they can select promising avenues and avoid boredom and even upfront costs. E.g. you want to train a new language model? Harnessing your polyglot nature, you find a far better kind of language model where you eschew the latest TPU. You learn quickly from Juergen Schmidhuber, whom Americans do not realize, has already solved everything in machine learning. It is hard to do new things in the EU because there is nothing new in the EU — someone already did it.

bruce511 5y ago

I have not lived in the US, and I'm not an economist, so this is annecdonte, not data. 1. Things are cheaper because there are fewer rich[1] people. It makes sense to price things to the level where you make a little for each sale but keep your market large. There are intrinsically fewer people, which means less demand. A container of tin openers is still a container load to get rid of. Of course selling for less means you make less, meaning the seller does not become richer than his customers. There is also a massive difference in mindset between the US and everywhere else. In the US the only measure is money. If you have money, everything else flows from that, if you don't have money everything is harder. Outside the US, money is still a driving force, but not to the same degree. There is less opportunity to be a billionaire, so the top is somewhat pushed-down, but at the same time the bottom is higher, and the safety net is better. But we are all fish in water - we like what we know - Americans would not want to be Spain, and the Spanish would hate to be American. Europeans prioritize family time, vacations, shorter work weeks. Americans prioritize rich company owners. The latter allows for ordinary folk to become very rich. Or at least dream of it. [1] rich in the sense that they have disposable income enough to afford your thing.

Ultimatt 5y ago
Billionaires per million people is about 1.8 in the USA and 1.5 in Germany. The opportunity is extremely similar, compared with say China that has plenty of billionaires but its 0.2 per million people. The reality is very simple, all of Europe looks extremely socialist in comparison to the USA. People don't need millions throughout their lifetime to cover medical bills. Student debt is either non existent or orders of magnitude lower etc. Europeans also work less per week, so you should adjust incomes to reflect prorated time worked.
- wozniacki 5y ago
  This largely ignores the crucial role that the U.S. has played as global ensure-r of security, world order and enabler of global free trade. Peter Zeihan speaks at length about this.[1] For example Germany has recently said it would sharply increase its spending on defense to more than 2% of its economic output in one of a series of policy shifts.[1] Other European countries will be increasing their defense spending too. Formerly it was just the U.S. footing the lion share of the NATO bill. That will rapidly change. And that will also affect how much of the domestic spending it eats into. This has been largely ignored in past number crunching of living standards of various countries. [1] The places America cares about post Globalization | Peter Zeihan (2021) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oeG170bv7k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oeG170bv7k [2] Germany to increase defence spending in response to 'Putin's war' - Scholz https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/germany-hike-defense-spending-scholz-says-further-policy-shift-2022-02-27/ https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/germany-h...
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    'Formerly it was just the U.S. footing the lion share of the NATO bill.' This is quite unfair portrayal of the situation. It is always portrayed as if US is paying biggest share of the tab - like if we were all paying for shared commitments. However in reality it's more everyone going out for a fancy dinner and one guy buying loads of dishes that turn out to taste terrible, or are left uneaten - and then bragging abiut paying the most. You can imagine that the budget would be quote a bit smaller without the war in Iraq, which was tremendously expensive, so was F-22 programm and littoral combat ship programms that came to nothing, etc. Clearly we have spent a lot of money bombing some poor people that should have never been harmed, and creating regime change that turned out to be a mistake. Like does anyone remember that time US installed a Fashist regime in Greece? Dont forget thaylt Nato's budget, without US, is still larger than Russia's or China's - i am not sure how much is enough, but there is still a lot of rich countries spending money.

yobbo 5y ago

> 1. Why are income levels lower? USA is in a unique position where it can stimulate its economy to a degree that is treatise-wise impossible for EU governments in EMU, and (until recently) without causing inflation. Southern Europe used to have very high inflation before EMU. For Spain, there is no equivalent to all the US government debts held by China and Japan, which you might view as subsidies to the US government. A better question might be why Germany is wealthier than Spain. The answer will involve work ethic and discipline, attitude vs self-sacrifice, long-term strategic planning for industry, and so on. You probably won't see this is in individuals nowadays, but systemically and historically this might have been what "set the stage".

kurupt213 5y ago
China hold very little US debt…around 1T USD. Americans are far and away the largest holders of US debt.