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The US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the US is now nearly 2X
- dataflow 3y agoWhat about their respective debts?
- habosa 3y agoThe US is the best place in the world to accumulate wealth. Unfortunately that does not make it the best place to live.
- evantbyrne 3y agoQuality of life varies significantly based on where you are in the US. There are definitely smaller cities that offer high standards of living–if that's your speed.
- omarelb 3y agoWhat cities would that be? Asking for a friend ;)
- evantbyrne 3y agoYou could start by looking at places that people from the big cities visit for summer vacation. The town I live in has a full winter season, and in the summer turns into a beach town with a lot of regional tourists who boost businesses up with money. Very low crime and thriving local culture. Common to see people not lock their bikes while downtown.
- umeshunni 3y agoThe entire article is worth a read: https://www.wsj.com/articles/europeans-poorer-inflation-economy-255eb629?mod=mhp https://www.wsj.com/articles/europeans-poorer-inflation-econ...
- Aloha 3y agohttps://archive.is/nzdtv https://archive.is/nzdtv
- mensetmanusman 3y agoBrexit.
- dustincoates 3y agoWhile Brexit may have had an impact, it's important to note that this refers to the Eurozone and not the EU, so it's not as simple as an explanation as the loss of the UK. Slightly unrelated: anytime I see an article about dollars impending tumble as the world's reserve currency, I remember an article I read back in 2008 claiming the Euro was overtaking the dollar, because… rappers were flashing them in their videos. I'd be interested to see how much you could align different currencies in rap videos with currency strengths.
- JOnAgain 3y agoDid they actually not control for U.K.? They just subtracted the 6th biggest economy and ran a sensational headline?
- next_xibalba 3y agoThey did. Perhaps GP was referring to the economic impact of the decoupling.
- sefrost 3y agoThe UK was never in the Eurozone.
- mechagodzilla 3y agoThis is about the European Union, of which the UK was a part, not the Eurozone (where they use the Euro as currency).
- clipsy 3y agoThe chart in the linked tweet labels it Eurozone.[0] [0]: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F1P4FUgWAAIMWAd?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F1P4FUgWAAIMWAd?format=jpg&name=...
- dralley 3y agoI'd rather this be displayed on a line chart than a pair of bar graphs. 2008 is an oddly specific year, a year when the US was in the midst of the housing market collapse and ensuing chaos. Yes, Europe was impacted too, but this chart doesn't show how much, relatively speaking.
- pratik661 3y agoSo was Europe. However, most European countries have not grown much since then. 2008 is an important year in divergence between the two
- slibhb 3y agoThe housing crisis is interesting. Post-crisis, Europe adopted austerity measures and the US went the other way. I bet that explains this gap more so than (from the article) unions and Europeans being lazy.
- Gibbon1 3y agoIt felt like Germany and France recapitalized their banks on the backs of hard hit countries with little power to fight back. Where the US recapitalized it's banks by loaning them a bunch of funny money from the Fed. The latter probably worked out better.
- lotsofpulp 3y agoThe latter only works if people are buying even more of what you are selling with that currency. The US continued to supply stability in its society and courts, access to resources via its military, and most importantly, organizations (like tech companies) that pump out very nice cash flows.
- panick21_ 3y agoWhat matters far more is that Eurozone adopted tight money policy, while the US didn't. People love to focus on Fiscal policy and even many economist got drawn into that. But the reality is that monetary policy actually sets aggregate demand. Doing fiscal austerity isn't bad if your monetary policy keeps AD stable. Doing the opposite and spending more is also not really bad as long as monetary policy is correct. The US had bad monetary policy that was partly responsible for the recession of 2008/2009 but corrected it eventually. The Eurozone never corrected in and held to an extreme tight monetary policy for years and at the same time doing austerity. And that simply can't work, if your AD is collapsing, trying to save enough to pay back huge nominal debt is simply impossible. Yanis Varoufakis who was Finance Minister in Greek proposed debt payments indexed to NGDP, so that if AD was going down they would have to have less debt payment. But this was rejected by Countries with their own currency, like Sweden, Switzerland and so on did better despite having many of the same pressures and not going on fiscal spending spree. I think it does make some sense for the government to invest in infrastructure during a recession. But not because of the Keynesian thinking of pushing up AD, but rather because it just make sense invest in infrastructure and its slightly cheaper during a recession.
- midasuni 3y agoAll “growth” in gdp seems to go to rich people. Normal people have seen stagnant wages and increased costs from the owners. Why should I care if gdp isn’t increasing when I don’t see any gains whether it does or not?
- talldatethrow 3y agoDoes all growth go to the same rich people, or do more people become rich?
- dralley 3y agoA little of column A, a little of column B. But the wealth distribution across percentiles continues getting worse.
- cumshitpiss 3y ago[dead]
- ceejayoz 3y agoSee the chart at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/07/opinion/leonhardt-income-inequality.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/07/opinion/leonh....
- TeMPOraL 3y agoYes, but: in case of the latter, does the amount of people becoming rich outpace population growth? Is it even greater than the rate of growth in the sub-population of those already rich?
- carlosjobim 3y agoMore people become poor. Haven't you noticed?
- refurb 3y agoPercent of people in poverty is much lower now than in 1970. And that’s with the poverty level being a moving target.
- seydor 3y agoas i read somewhere. people don't realize that the gap between US and france is as big as between france and greece. I think this is finally being noticed everywhere, and expect that EU will change radically as an institution by the end of the decade
- xeeeeeeeeeeenu 3y agoThe title is wrong. The chart shows the eurozone, not the EU.
- fvdessen 3y agoAnd yet with all that money you can’t buy European quality of life in the USA
- mardifoufs 3y agoMigration stats disagree with you.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- FredPret 3y agoQuality of life includes time off and having nice stuff. Both continents have something to offer, but the US is definitely getting better, faster
- monero-xmr 3y agoMy sister in law is from Spain, had a guaranteed government job at a state run hospital (or some affiliated org) for life, and could retire in her 50s. She chose to bail and come to the US. She hated her boss (who could never be fired), the work was boring, the take home pay was awful, and she lived in a village where she grew up in a tiny apartment. Sure she had enough to eat and wasn’t going to be homeless. But she decided that life really wasn’t very exciting and she had no opportunity for growth whatsoever, just waiting for her boss to retire so she could take over her similarly boring job. But hey she could take double the vacation that an average US employee gets!
- badpun 3y agoThe stats look much better if you compare the number of hours worked. When accounting for that, US is at the level of Scandinavian countries. Obviously, Spain is still seriously lagging.
- monero-xmr 3y agoOK, well how about we compare New England to Europe? Or just Connecticut and Massachusetts? If you start cutting out this and that country from the EU then you need to cut out Mississippi and Idaho from the US. People always compare the US holistically but conveniently pick and choose which part of the Eurozone they want when it benefits their argument.
- darth_avocado 3y agoDoes this account for PPP though?
- Zigurd 3y agoNope. Looks very different when you do. Even more so when you look at longevity, violence, leisure, etc.
- oezi 3y agoGDP per capita please.
- nforgerit 3y agoGerman here. Austerity? Over-regulation? An oligopoly of tech-incompetent local enterprises? Just guessing here. As a student in 2007, I started being an avid follower of what Big Tech was doing and was flabbergasted that local tech enterprises didn't seem to notice or change anything. In CS at university they didn't teach programming (only as an aside) but all the funny theoretical OOP fluff that the community rightfully started ditching and frowning upon. Given software is slowly eating everything, I am not surprised in the result. Probably 7/10 of my fellow CS students will not be remotely able to explain how a given software works under the hood.
- Aperocky 3y ago> In CS at university they didn't teach programming That's quite alarming.
- lnsru 3y agoThere is a myth at German universities, that programming is too practical. So basically you brew there computer scientists with couple internships where they see how programming works.
- duxup 3y agoMy career coding was a product of a bootcamp. Bootcamps have a well deserved reputation for pumping out unqualified candidates. Having said that the bootcamp I was a part of was hosted at (not really run by...) a local US university. I've worked with computer science graduates from there, good people, capable ... but man many of them should have had a semester of a bootcamp IMO, on top of their more traditional comp sci education. I would jump at the chance to get a formal comp sci education, but I think all universities could use a heavy dose of “practical application” type courses.
- Tade0 3y ago> There is a myth at German universities, that programming is too practical. Am I understanding this correctly that students don't get programming assignments?
- kryptiskt 3y agoThe economic engine of the Eurozone, Germany, keeps stepping on the brakes because they are so obsessed with their competitiveness and running huge trade surpluses. If the German consumers would finally be allowed to a bigger share of all the gains from their productivity it would be good for the whole of Europe as the biggest problem is weak demand. But no, we can't have that because then their trade surplus would shrink. Never mind that all the other EU countries are supposed to absorb a big part of that trade surplus while being scolded for not being as frugal as Germany.
- rafaelero 3y agoUS wages have not followed US productivity for the last 50 years as well.
- e4e5 3y agoI don't understand this argument. If everyone has become more productive, why would wages rise? Wouldn't we see that as inflation then? I think the rise of productivity is more seen in the growth of the GDP
- rafaelero 3y agoEither wages keep stagnant and prices drop following productivity growth (gold standard) or wage growth = price growth (inflation) + productivity growth (fiat system).
- lukas099 3y agoCan you explain why the monetary system changes the effects of productivity growth like this?
- cbsmith 3y agoSo if employees are more productive, you would naturally expect all of the benefits of that increased productivity to go to their employers? I'm curious as to your reasoning about why people do anything other than the absolute minimum to receive their paycheck.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- derstander 3y agoI don’t like this figure, nor the article it was copied directly from in the WSJ (which I believe was recently discussed here, archive link = https://archive.li/nzdtv https://archive.li/nzdtv). Why don’t I like it? “Source: International Monetary Fund” !! Fantastic. That’s like quoting a scientific breakthrough and saying Source: MIT. Which of the many artifacts they’ve recently released did it come from? I scrolled through the first three or four pages of IMF pubs, checked all of the titles that I thought may have contained the figure or similar data but no dice. Is it too much to ask for a standard citation including the publication title and date, too? I went looking because another comment suggested that maybe Brexit made the Eurozone numbers look particularly bad. But I don’t think that’s the case: the WSJ article particularly calls out UK citizens as similarly being worse off. But after all that looking I couldn’t ultimately tell you whether or not the Brexit hypothesis is correct.
- mrtksn 3y agoIMHO the west as a whole will need to re-consider its metrics. Europe, not only Eurozone, lag in absolute numbers of economic activity but the life quality is not that different from the US and arguably it’s even better depending on what is important for you. An appendicitis generates more economic activity in the US but Europeans die les from it. On the other hand, Europe does lag on post soviet era tech(that’s anything seen mainstream adoption since 90’s) and the contenders for US are China, Taiwan an India. China, Taiwan, and India might be at the frontlines on some tech but their societies are facing political and demographic problems in much different ways than the west. I’m afraid our world is poised for a dramatic change as every country is screwed in a different way and people see no easy way out.
- Aperocky 3y agoThe existing metrics are already the fairest. i.e. Life expectancy, work length, income, spending, etc. Metrics has to be objectively measurable, otherwise they would have a huge subjective bias. Some people can be happy and enjoy life in almost any circumstances - but that is much harder to measure across societies and you'll end up with scams like "happiest country on Earth".
- legitster 3y agoI was recently talking with a friend who moved to Germany and loved it. But now that he is raising a family he is planning on moving back to the states. There's definitely a quantity/quality difference. Things in Germany are just nicer. But at a certain point, the "niceness" of things doesn't matter to you much anymore when you are trying to raise a family of 4 in a 800 sq ft apartment.
- mrtksn 3y agoEurope is densely populated in general but there are villages all over the place where you can have a large house like in an American suburb. I think cultural expectations are more defining, for example Turks are frustrated with the healthcare in Europe because they expect to see a specialist ASAP even for the smallest thing and they want antibiotics for it. In Germany you won’t get all the antibiotics you want unless you actually need it and you won’t be seen by a professor just because you feel like. Germany will try to make you live healthier life through preventative medicine, Turkey will try to give you a 5 minutes access to a doctor and infrastructure quickly. I’m hearing about Americans complaining on similar stuff. IIRC Americans feel neglected during pregnancy in Germany despite that the US infant mortality rate is almost twice the German one.
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- dougmwne 3y agoHere’s a better comparison. The thing that really hurt the Eurozone was the 2011 - 2013 recession that the US did not experience. Plus there’s a slower growth rate even in the good times. https://freedomandprosperity.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Feb-5-22-Tweet.jpg https://freedomandprosperity.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/... That said, these numbers are very misleading and do not show well what a person’s life looks like in the US. By my own anecdotal estimation, in the EU low and medium income people live a better life than in the US and have more livable wages, relaxed work culture, and enjoy a strong safety net. The missing GDP growth seems to show up in the upper middle to high incomes where it is extremely hard to pull away from the pack and acquire wealth. Things like early retirement and FIRE are almost unheard of in EU countries. Stock investing seems much less common. People mostly seem focused on more conservative investments like real estate that has a lower yield and liquidity than equities. Luxury spending seems limited to small consumer outlays like fashion or travel, not large wealth building outlays like McMansions. It is really, really uncommon to hear of someone making more than 100k USD and taxes in most countries take a bigger bite. There are even significant wealth taxes in some countries. For example in some parts of Spain the wealth tax is high enough that it would be impossible to live off investments as the safe withdrawal rate is so low that you would need millions to fund a modest income. All of this is deep in the political psyche that wants to cut down the tall poppies.
- tinus_hn 3y ago[flagged]
- futureshock 3y agoI’d like to point out that the open door policy to refugees came because Europe was trying to escape the demographic trap and the collapse of the social safety net. The hope was that young refugees would become net positive GDP contributors for decades, an idea borrowed from the US. If that has failed, it’s due to a failure of integration. Europe can actually be quite a racist place and in many ways the US is better at offering big opportunities to immigrants and encouraging them to become big tax contributors. The US’s secret sauce is that the only real cultural purity it has to protect is consumer capitalism.
- bsder 3y ago> "An aging population that values its free time set the stage for economic stagnation." I mean, the outrage! How dare they! When are we going to get over this obssession that your value is your job? Eh? A vast number of unskilled labor jobs being able to provide solid employment for the vast majority of people are not coming back. AI is going to eat a bunch more jobs. These jobs are not coming back. Either we're going to figure this out together or human society is in for a very bad time.
- legitster 3y agoBefore you go too far down the road of politics and policies, but the biggest lever affecting the economic differences comes down to age. The EU is aging rapidly. Whereas the US had a minor baby-boom with Millenials - there was no equivalent in the EU. So even without any slowdown in labor productivity or even reduction in QOL, the ratio of people participating in the workforce is much lower in Europe.
- neverrroot 3y agoCould the energy policy and the costs of electricity for the industry have contributed to this outcome in the eurozone? Just as an example, Germany has the highest electricity prices in the world (20% higher than second place Italy), and starting April, switched to being a net electricity importer, after it shut down the last remaining nuclear power plants.
- yodelshady 3y agoYes, it can and does. Go to a chemicals conference these days and half the research is on managing blackouts. In the best case your plant, which is the same CAPEX in Europe as it is the US, is producing 25% less. There's only so much sugar-coating you can do. The atmosphere's like a funeral.
- neverrroot 3y agoThanks, this is something I will look into. Unfortunately the people who downvoted me must be thinking differently. Would have loved so much to hear their reasoning and POV on the matter, especially if they disagree with my hypothesis, I’m always willing to learn.
- mrb 3y agoNote this chart shows nominal dollars, not PPP-adjusted. The EU has certainly kept up with the US when looking at PPP GDP from 2008 to 2022: US grew from $14.8T to $25.5T EU grew from $14.3T to $24.3T What that means is that the prices of goods are inflated in the US compared to similar goods in the EU. That's all. Want something interesting? Look at China who grew from $10.0T to $30.3T over the same period (!) Sources: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.PP.CD?locations=US https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.PP.CD?locat... https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.PP.CD?locations=EU https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.PP.CD?locat... https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.PP.CD?locations=CN https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.PP.CD?locat...
- freetime2 3y agoThank you. Twitter is terrible when it comes to cherry picking stats out of context.
- tnel77 3y agoIronically posted as a reply to a comment cherry picking stats.
- freetime2 3y agoFair enough - my comment complaining about the quality of content on Twitter was admittedly pretty low quality. When I said "Twitter is terrible when it comes to cherry picking stats out of context", I was referring to the fact that the Tweet doesn't link to its source, and that it only shows 2 years (instead of a line chart which would show all the years in between). It also doesn't make any attempt to interpret the data (e.g. why or what it means). I view the parent comment as adding context. They linked to the source of their data and also included their interpretation - which other people can then agree or disagree with instead of having to guess what they meant. So yes I think this is a much more constructive post than the original tweet. Note: I now see that they linked to the source WSJ article beneath the original tweet, but that was not clear to me when I made my earlier comment (and I see other people on Twitter asking about the source so it's not just me who missed it). I still think that twitter in an inferior platform for discussing nuanced topics like economics than, say, HN.
- ramesh31 3y agoApple was worth 2 trillion last year. This year it's worth 3 trillion. Five years ago, there had never been a US company worth 1 trillion before. Something is broken.
- slimebot80 3y ago100%
- sonicshadow 3y agoLazy thinking
- cypress66 3y agoApple's P/E is around 30. Which is a bit high but completely within reason. Very low compared to inflated stocks such as NVDA at 230 P/E Apple is just crazy profitable.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- cpursley 3y agoThis is only going to get worse unless Europe starts building reactors, yesterday. Energy is everything and the cheap reliable stuff is now gone.
- hsuduebc2 3y agoAs a European I have sometimes feeling that we are skanzen of the world. Don't get me wrong. It's much better than to be battleground like before.
- sva_ 3y ago> skanzen Outdoor museum?! I couldn't really find a definition for this term.
- hsuduebc2 3y agoBasically. It is conserved for the purpose of conservation where change is not desirable. These outdoor museums are actually preserved villages where people live in these old conditions because they feel good that way. Somehow like today's Europe. Progress is limited and regulated or stopped.
- TMWNN 3y ago> skanzen Highly relevant: "The Evitable Conflct" <https://np.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/24zvhe/the_world_divided_into_four_regions_according_to/ https://np.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/24zvhe/the_world_di...> by Isaac Asimov
- nemo44x 3y agoWhat is Europe’s purpose in the world today? This was easy to answer for hundreds of years but I have no idea today.
- janalsncm 3y agoThis is a bit of a frame trap. Here’s another metric: ==2021== Life expectancy in EU: 80 Life expectancy in US: 76 ==Rolling back to 2008== Life expectancy in EU: 79 Life expectancy in US: 78 What’s the point? Maybe GDP isn’t the most important indicator. The US can double it’s GDP by making healthcare more expensive and extracting every last dime from the elderly, but can it actually improve quality of life for people? [1] [1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN?locations=EU-US https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN?location...
- sonicshadow 3y agoWhat's the point of living an extra few years either? I'd rather die at 70 after having lived a healthy life, than 80 and suffered the last 10 years
- wizofaus 3y agoI'm fairly sure in countries where the life expectancy is lower you're more likely to suffer in your final years.
- zerodensity 3y agoYou say that now. I bet you are going to be dancing by a different tune at 70.
- sonicshadow 3y agoThink you're intentionally misreading what I'm saying, thanks for that
- zerodensity 3y agoAm I? I think not. You are saying that you would rather live a shorter time in good health than a longer time being unhealthy at the end. I am saying that the day will come when you start to deteriorate, get aches, getting slower, maybe even critically ill. During all that you will most likely still not want to die. People suffer in every age group most of them don't want to die. Why do you think you would?
- WhereIsTheTruth 3y agoWas the UK included then excluded from the data? Perhaps explains the stagnation in the data How much does the FED has printed vs the ECB? How much of EU's economy was affected by the US extraterritoriality legislation? https://www.rferl.org/a/1095057.html https://www.rferl.org/a/1095057.html https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1665370246126125060 https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1665370246126125060
- TMWNN 3y ago> Was the UK included then excluded from the data? Perhaps explains the stagnation in the data The chart says "Eurozone". Either you 1) didn't read the chart, or 2) don't know that the UK was never a part of the Eurozone. If 1), read the discussed thing the next time before discussing it. If 2), never speak about economics in public again.
- WhereIsTheTruth 3y agoI confused myself with the EEA I love when someone correct me because I don't like carrying incorrect knowledge with me Your hostile and condescending tone however wasn't needed
- yodelshady 3y agoThe title and tweet both say "EU".
- gumballindie 3y agoThe eu is germany’s playground. Until that changes the economy will stagnate or even shrink. Also does this comparison factor in uk’s departure?
- eduction 3y agoBad chart - EU membership has fluctuated but they don’t control for this. Mentally visualize adding in 3.1 trillion to EU 2023 to control for Brexit and the difference becomes a lot less stark (though still interesting).
- bhewes 3y agoEurozone does equal the EU. Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Sweden are not part of the Eurozone but are part of the EU.
- moneywoes 3y agoDoes Britain leaving the EU affect this number?
- joejag 3y agoyeah, by about 3.131 trillion USD
- wanderingmind 3y agoNot even an amateur economist, but intuitively, it feels like there is a very delicate balance needed in taxation. Higher taxation (likely Eurozone) is needed to support the poorer sections of the society. However too high, it kills innovation and growth and in turn the whole pie size. Too little taxation (likely US), pumps innovation and growth but destroys support for poor but also hinders investments in infrastructure needed for these innovations to thrive. I'm not going to comment on the correct levels, as I have no clue, but one thing that feels certainly wrong is complexity of taxation. This gets exploited by a small percentage of people while leaves a large percentage afraid to venture.
- croes 3y agoNational debt US 2013 16.83 trillion dollars 2023 32.33 trillion dollars EU 2013 13.19 trillion dollars 2023 14.5 trillion dollars
- mithrilskeleton 3y agoI guess this shows that deficit spending works to increase GDP, but we already knew that.
- mardifoufs 3y agoSo, the US grew but kept its GDP to debt ratio relatively similar to Europe's? That's awesome actually.
- croes 3y agoGini coeeficient USA 41.5 EU 29.6 Debt is often used as a justification for spending cuts, often targeting the middle and lower classes It's a weakth shift. The EU could double it's debt and give the money to the companies and would be on the same level as the US, GDP and debt wise.
- local_crmdgeon 3y agoIt’s weird that every single comment is an excuse or a denial. People are weird about Europe.
- KingOfCoders 3y agoThe US calculates inflation ~1% lower than others (chained dollars), this accounts for ~15% of the difference.
- KingOfCoders 3y agoDoes this take Brexit into account?
- KingOfCoders 3y agoIf the "EU" mentioned in the tweet in 2008 does include the UK and the "EU" mentioned in the tweet in 2023 does not include the UK, then the EU is smaller by ~15% - the size of the UK economy.
- TheRealPomax 3y agoIt also took fascism way further than Europe, so it kinda balances out.
- asynchronous 3y ago…did you just say Europe, the literal birthplace of fascism, took it less farther than the US?
- mardifoufs 3y agoLol. Lmao. right wing parties in Europe regularly get 40% of the vote. And they would make Republicans seem like bleeding heart, diverse liberals in comparison. Marine lepen's party regularly calls for not just closing border but sending back uppity french citizens if they are Muslims lol. Europeans online just really like to ignore their own problems, it's almost amazing.
- derelicta 3y agoYup, other Europeans laughing at America while Fascism has reached new highs on the old continent is the real joke
- krageon 3y agoIn the US you have young, silly fascism: cops killing anyone who isn't their preferred skin colour in the street. It's all very hateful and not palatable, even for folks that don't think further than the current incident. In the EU you have older, more refined fascism: a political party subtly (or not so subtly) intimating an entire group of people is a huge problem, a return to "strong leader" values, etc. It's perhaps a bit more seductive, and deliberately so: public perception would be more poor if it was as violence-heavy as it is in the US. You have to remember the EU is where fascism came from. It was a huge deal before WW2 and in essence it has never really left, it has just gotten better at rebranding. Eventually you will see the hot new fascism trends in the EU transported to the US as well, it is how fashion works. N.B.: I'm not a fan (of fascism or other regressive policies), which is perhaps not obvious. I just wanted to make clear that while the US has many problems and they are horrible, most of them are just "well the EU is doing this now so why aren't they???" and you can sort that out by waiting a generation or two. It's how the two areas started out (for ease of dialogue I'm ignoring how the US actually started out, that's a can of worms for another day), after all.
- IceHegel 3y agoGDP as the prime measure of national prosperity is nothing short of a joke. This indicator is really just a proxy for unchecked consumption. It fools us into thinking we're tracking economic health. If you allow yourself to imagine, say, a population addicted to drugs, you would find that GDP would surge with every consumed dose. Especially in the US, we've allowed our economy to become so consumption-oriented, it's alarming. The health of the people is the supreme law (Salus populi suprema lex esto).
- misja111 3y agoDoes this take into account that the UK left the EU in the meanwhile?
- yodelshady 3y agoIt either does not or mislabels the chart. The chart refers to Eurozone.
- misja111 3y agoOh I missed that. If it's really about the Eurozone, then the UK was never in it in the first place.
- leipie 3y agoI was wondering the same thing. EU no longer included the UK. Which should have a sizeable economy.
- FreshStart 3y agoBaseballstats wankery for a handful of obsessed, cause owning. How much of the population is positively affected by the "growth". Cancer has growth rates too..
- thevania 3y agointeresting, but where is all that "prosperity" going in the US then? the one percent? what i imply is that its not like an ordinary US citizen has 2x better quality of life than an ordinary EU citizen, I would strongly suggest that is far from the truth as i worked and lived in both US and EU and earned top dollar in both
- Tade0 3y agoThe title is misleading. The Eurozone does not include the entire EU - there are quite a few countries with their own currencies(notably Czechia, Poland, Romania), which coincidentally saw some of the highest growths in the region during the last two decades. Meanwhile some Eurozone countries like Greece, Italy and Spain actually saw a decline. Hard not to draw such conclusions when your set includes all the troubled countries and none of the fast growing ones.
- imtringued 3y ago>which coincidentally saw some of the highest growths in the region during the last two decades. That isn't some coincidence. The biggest beneficiary of the Eurozone relies on the suffering of its less successful members and this is ultimately reflected by the fact that poorer countries in the Eurozone don't catch up with the rest of the EU and in fact the opposite happens. Meanwhile for EU countries outside the Eurozone it is smooth sailing because they don't have to suffer for the benefit of a country that is role playing as the hero of the Eurozone.
- Tade0 3y agoOh believe me the biggest beneficiary's influence goes way outside the Eurozone. With this I'm glad my country doesn't qualify - I'll take that any day vs having monetary policy tied to that of a very different economy.
- ffhhttt 3y agoI think it’s more about western vs eastern Europe. EE countries which adopted the Euro did quite good as well. For instance growth in Poland lagged significantly behind Estonia or Lithuania in the last 10 years or so.
- 76SlashDolphin 3y agoOn the other hand, Bulgaria used to be significantly more developed than Romania back in the early 90s, yet has been significantly surpassed in 2023. Granted, Bulgaria isn't using the euro yet but the BGN has been pegged to the euro since the late 90s so for most intents and purposes it is using the euro. IMO this is a better comparison than with Poland and the Baltics since Poland is a massive country and has 5x the population so there are a lot more factors at play.
- hgomersall 3y agoAnd yet, I'd far rather live in the EU than the US.
- hknmtt 3y agoThe "economy" directly reflects the amount of paper money you print. There, i solved the mystery for you.
- kotsman 3y agoAs a European, I am reading this and my reaction is mixed. I can’t deny all the “inefficiencies” happening in Europe, but what you see in the streets of Sf, you only see in the worst suburbs of European capitals
- MilaM 3y agoI would not be surprised if a large share of this growth could be attributed to the enormous expansion of domestic oil and gas production. The timeframe also coincides with the beginning of the shale gas and oil boom. If my understanding of GDP is correct, onshoring of energy production should have a direct effect on economic activity as measured by GDP.
- Aerbil313 3y agoThis is all pointless as a measure of happiness, or rather peace in one's life. The obsession to materia of modern man is showing in the thread here.
- vpastore 3y ago[dead]
- mpweiher 3y agoThis appears to largely be an artefact of the USD/EUR exchange rate. In 2008, a euro was worth ~$1.60, now it's around 1:1
- Fredej 3y agoOr is the exchange rate an artefact of the size of their economy?
- panick21_ 3y agoThe US would be a spectacularly successful country for its most of the population if its land use/transportation policies were not such total shitshow. A lot this growth just doesn't reflect in most people quality of live, mostly because of health care and land use. Tons of people are richer, but a lot of the extra consumption goes to health care and cars (suburban living).
- bluelightning2k 3y agoI searched "Brexit" and was stunned not to see this in the comments. One of the biggest economies in the World leaving the designation of the EU surely is relevant here.
- Wildgoose 3y agoThis tweet talks about the "Eurozone", (those countries sharing the Euro), rather than those countries belonging to the EU. Furthermore, any EU figures will have been badly skewed by the UK having left the EU since 2008. Comparisons should take this into account.
- capableweb 3y agoAnd the link in the subsequent tweet talks about "Europeans", apparently not knowing that European Union != Eurozone != Europe The following diagram might be worth sending to the author(s): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Supranational_European_Bodies-en.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Supranational_Europe... ("Euler diagram of supranational European Bodies")
- sgt 3y agoBut if the tweet is about the Eurozone, then the UK would surely not have been included in the first place? They never had the Euro.
- wunderland 3y agoThe US has worked hard to engineer a recovery for the global financial crisis that counters any efforts for greater cooperation across Europe. Merkel believed strongly in a peaceful partnership for the Eurasian continent (which included Russia) and the US saw this as an economic threat greater than that of China’s rise. We’re living through the results of American intervention in Europe.
- throwaway2037 3y agoI have written about this before on HN. Forget about GDP or PPP. What really matters for quality of life is local currency median income. If it is rising at a good rate above inflation levels, then your quality of life is getting better. Nothing else really matters at the ground level.
- cman1444 3y agoI understand that "at the ground level" that's all that matters. But these statistics are very useful for examining the economic heft of an entire country in the context of geopolitics. Of course if you don't care about things like that (like most people don't and have no reason to in their everyday lives) then you're correct it doesn't matter. Every once in a while big things happen though (world wars break out, trade deals are signed, etc.) and in those cases it can pay to have the largest GDP.
- LatteLazy 3y agoOf course, if the average person is not 2x as rich in the US (or 0.5x as rich in the EU) then that would indicate this is a terrible measure for actual wealth. Let alone happiness etc. And that is the average person, since people naturally get richer as they age, any individual trying to decide needs to have gotten much much richer (4x plus) just to have gotten an average share...
- vogon_laureate 3y agoYeah we know. Americans also have 2X the obesity rate as EU, significantly more than that in mass shootings, lower average life expectancy, significantly more CO2 emissions from electricity production and with 2x the energy usage and electricity consumption per capita, 30% less renewable electricity production, 3X the murder rate, and we reserve the word “football” for the ball game that mostly involves kicking one with your feet.