6 ms·

GDP per capita per hours worked is an interesting metric, and highlights a significant cultural difference between the US and the EU. But for me it's a little

GDP per capita per hours worked is an interesting metric, and highlights a significant cultural difference between the US and the EU. But for me it's a little disingenuous to start taking cherry picked slices of the EU and comparing them against the whole US. If you ignore Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, etc, or just focus on the Northeast corridor or West Coast...no region in the EU comes close in GDP terms.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
spaniard89277 2y ago
Not only that, for many people things are going south. I don't really care much about GDP if I have no disposable income nor ability to save money with a normal job. And that's the case for a lot of people in Spain, and I presume other countries too.
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  Yeah, it's everywhere. GDP just means how much wealth extraction is going on from the economy. But that extra GDP increase could be extracted from a productive SW business, or from squeezing people on housing costs, but the GPU numbers don't differentiate this.
- jq-r 2y ago
  Happening in Croatia too. The government is chest thumping how we're having stellar economy, high GDP and whatnot. The economists I've listened to are saying that this is mostly propped up by injection of EU funds so the economy artificially looks fine while in reality its in shambles. At the same time people are emigrating to rest of the Europe (Germany, Ireland mostly). We never had that much emmigration in the history of the country. And people are not leaving because the "economy is stellar". At the same time the government is having no trouble getting immigration historically from Bosnia and nowadays from Asia. "People just don't want to work" the local government is shouting while paying everyone minimum wages, while extracting EU money using their friend's private companies.
Rinzler89 2y ago
Exactly this! The author cherry-picks the richest EU countries for the per-capita comparisons with the whole US forgetting that the US has plenty of poor states as well similar to Eastern/Southern Europe. If you cherry-pick the richest US states the differences would be even greater.
tokai 2y ago
>no region in the EU comes close in GDP terms You hope or you know?
- rco8786 2y ago
  Definitely know.
  - WanderPanda 2y ago
    Because there are no multinationals in New York State?
    - walthamstow 2y ago
      They have deleted the part of their comment that referred to NY state, presumably because it was incorrect.
piva00 2y ago
The OECD has a nice data compilation on subnational levels to be compared by [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_regions_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_regions_by_GDP_(P...
gnulinux996 2y ago
Things are being sold in the US that should not be sold. US has created businesses out of Universities and Health meaning you can buy things that should be offered to you by the state; people need more money to stay afloat in the US, more jobs sure are going to get you more GDP. And if we go regional in EU, I bet you can have a better life in Portugal or Greece than Alabama, Mississippi or pretty much the whole South.
- eldaisfish 2y ago
  >And if we go regional in EU, I bet you can have a better life in Portugal or Greece Provided you have a job and a job that pays well enough to be able to afford a decent life. All this rhetoric about european health insurance and job security is good but it is good today. Will it be good tomorrow? unlikely, as the EU faces the same demographic crisis as most of the developed world. Mind you, i'm not advocating for US-style free markets running amok and turning healthcare into a for-profit service but there is a good argument to be made about certain positives of the USA's economic structures. Remember, when the chips are down, you cannot eat the architecture or social services in europe. Those things cannot be exchanged for money.
  - rco8786 2y ago
    All we can do is compare what is real. Not try and project into an uncertain future.
  - jq-r 2y ago
    Right on. > All this rhetoric about european health insurance and job security is good but it is good today. Will it be good tomorrow? In Croatia it already went down the drain years ago. People who never needed hospital treatments in their adult life have absolutely no clue at what the'll get into. Frequent misdiagnosis, waiting lists for years in advance to even see a specialist - not even to have a surgery, no responsiblity, 30 year old methods and knowledge etc. Doctors themselves are disgruntled and are complaining about low salaries how they whould be paid much more if they were in the States or say Germany etc. Which is simply ridiculous because they're highest paid profession over here and frankly any other worker would be paid more if it was working abroad. This is the only profession over here where its completely legal to work in both a public hospital/clinic and work in a private clinic/practice at the same time. So it quickly came down to: "oh you see, the waiting list for your life-saving urgent surgery is 2 years, but if you come to my/friend's practice will sort you out in no time at all, we accept all payment options". Or "Sorry the waiting list is very long, but I'm the one who makes it wink wink". So this quickly devolved to "why would I give two shits what happens in my public hospital (workplace) when they cannot fire me (because they need me)". It also priced out many non well-off people because the Germans and Italians are using these private services too raising the prices. So the public health services are used now pretty much by friends and families of the people working there and by poor people who have no choice but to take whatever scraps are given to them. Citizens get screwed over twice; they get no or bad service for the money thats taken from them by force (very high taxes), and they'll have to pay for private care which is very expensive and the private insurance options are actually very poor. I could go on about job "security" now, but this theme is so painful I'll leave it for another time.
s_dev 2y ago
If you compare the GDP per capita of Alabama with Bavaria, Germany they are approximately the same. I'd contend you would be insane to think Bavaria was in anyway poorer than Alabama -- in any respect. All this does is exposes how over dependent we've become on GDP as a metric. Probably time to start using multiple measures to make meaningful comparisons.
1980phipsi 2y ago
I actually think it makes sense to look at slices of the EU since the composition of the EU has changed over time. Countries like Germany and France were at a very different level of development compared to Estonia or Poland. So it makes sense to break things out to try to account for that. And what it says is the gap for GDP (PPP) per capita between the North/West EU versus the US hasn't narrowed since 1980. It has widened vs. South EU. All the effect seen at an EU level is from the East. There are lots of interesting stories you can tell and lessons you can learn from these trends, but it's not a story of core EU outperforming.
quitit 2y ago
When the EU was performing well in comparison to the USA, no one had any issue using the long-standing growth metrics. The same metrics which now paint the EU as falling behind. This headline of this article implores a false conclusion as one would assume this is in reference to the traditional growth metrics, which it is not. The process of choosing new, rosier, metrics is disingenuous and nothing more than marketing, because it raises the question: If those metrics are doing so well, why are the traditional metrics not reflecting this performance gain? I.E. It demonstrates that the metrics don't have a legitimate relationship to overall performance and thus the piece is almost certainly built to support a pre-determined conclusion. If one is going to discard metrics such as GDP for new metrics, one needs to certainly prove why these metrics are better than the old measure. That includes outweighing the historical reasons for why these metrics are used. Another misleading device is including various weaknesses of the EU, as if these were levied against the EU and not just the direct results of their own policy making decisions. It's disappointing to see articles like this, because reporting on these metrics would be an interesting way to better understand business in the EU. Instead the metrics are being needlessly spun so someone could write the words "The European Union’s remarkable growth performance relative to the United States".
- lostlogin 2y ago
  > When the EU was performing well in comparison to the USA, no one had amy issues with the long standing growth metrics This viewpoint assumes that the article is wrong (and maybe it is). However a metric can be fine, and then something changes which necessitates a change measure. What if this has occurred?
  - quitit 2y ago
    >This viewpoint assumes that the article is wrong I don't see how this is substantiated. Perhaps quote or elaborate upon the part of my reply which you feel substantiated your reply.
keybored 2y ago
> But for me it's a little disingenuous to start taking cherry picked slices of the EU and comparing them against the whole US. Then someone says that it’s unfair to factor in the whole of Germany instead of just the wealthiest parts. Where does it end?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

spaniard89277 2y ago

Not only that, for many people things are going south. I don't really care much about GDP if I have no disposable income nor ability to save money with a normal job. And that's the case for a lot of people in Spain, and I presume other countries too.

Rinzler89 2y ago
Yeah, it's everywhere. GDP just means how much wealth extraction is going on from the economy. But that extra GDP increase could be extracted from a productive SW business, or from squeezing people on housing costs, but the GPU numbers don't differentiate this.
jq-r 2y ago
Happening in Croatia too. The government is chest thumping how we're having stellar economy, high GDP and whatnot. The economists I've listened to are saying that this is mostly propped up by injection of EU funds so the economy artificially looks fine while in reality its in shambles. At the same time people are emigrating to rest of the Europe (Germany, Ireland mostly). We never had that much emmigration in the history of the country. And people are not leaving because the "economy is stellar". At the same time the government is having no trouble getting immigration historically from Bosnia and nowadays from Asia. "People just don't want to work" the local government is shouting while paying everyone minimum wages, while extracting EU money using their friend's private companies.

Rinzler89 2y ago

Exactly this! The author cherry-picks the richest EU countries for the per-capita comparisons with the whole US forgetting that the US has plenty of poor states as well similar to Eastern/Southern Europe. If you cherry-pick the richest US states the differences would be even greater.

tokai 2y ago

>no region in the EU comes close in GDP terms You hope or you know?

rco8786 2y ago
Definitely know.
- WanderPanda 2y ago
  Because there are no multinationals in New York State?
  - walthamstow 2y ago
    They have deleted the part of their comment that referred to NY state, presumably because it was incorrect.

piva00 2y ago

The OECD has a nice data compilation on subnational levels to be compared by [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_regions_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_regions_by_GDP_(P...

gnulinux996 2y ago

Things are being sold in the US that should not be sold. US has created businesses out of Universities and Health meaning you can buy things that should be offered to you by the state; people need more money to stay afloat in the US, more jobs sure are going to get you more GDP. And if we go regional in EU, I bet you can have a better life in Portugal or Greece than Alabama, Mississippi or pretty much the whole South.

eldaisfish 2y ago
>And if we go regional in EU, I bet you can have a better life in Portugal or Greece Provided you have a job and a job that pays well enough to be able to afford a decent life. All this rhetoric about european health insurance and job security is good but it is good today. Will it be good tomorrow? unlikely, as the EU faces the same demographic crisis as most of the developed world. Mind you, i'm not advocating for US-style free markets running amok and turning healthcare into a for-profit service but there is a good argument to be made about certain positives of the USA's economic structures. Remember, when the chips are down, you cannot eat the architecture or social services in europe. Those things cannot be exchanged for money.
- rco8786 2y ago
  All we can do is compare what is real. Not try and project into an uncertain future.
- jq-r 2y ago
  Right on. > All this rhetoric about european health insurance and job security is good but it is good today. Will it be good tomorrow? In Croatia it already went down the drain years ago. People who never needed hospital treatments in their adult life have absolutely no clue at what the'll get into. Frequent misdiagnosis, waiting lists for years in advance to even see a specialist - not even to have a surgery, no responsiblity, 30 year old methods and knowledge etc. Doctors themselves are disgruntled and are complaining about low salaries how they whould be paid much more if they were in the States or say Germany etc. Which is simply ridiculous because they're highest paid profession over here and frankly any other worker would be paid more if it was working abroad. This is the only profession over here where its completely legal to work in both a public hospital/clinic and work in a private clinic/practice at the same time. So it quickly came down to: "oh you see, the waiting list for your life-saving urgent surgery is 2 years, but if you come to my/friend's practice will sort you out in no time at all, we accept all payment options". Or "Sorry the waiting list is very long, but I'm the one who makes it wink wink". So this quickly devolved to "why would I give two shits what happens in my public hospital (workplace) when they cannot fire me (because they need me)". It also priced out many non well-off people because the Germans and Italians are using these private services too raising the prices. So the public health services are used now pretty much by friends and families of the people working there and by poor people who have no choice but to take whatever scraps are given to them. Citizens get screwed over twice; they get no or bad service for the money thats taken from them by force (very high taxes), and they'll have to pay for private care which is very expensive and the private insurance options are actually very poor. I could go on about job "security" now, but this theme is so painful I'll leave it for another time.

s_dev 2y ago

If you compare the GDP per capita of Alabama with Bavaria, Germany they are approximately the same. I'd contend you would be insane to think Bavaria was in anyway poorer than Alabama -- in any respect. All this does is exposes how over dependent we've become on GDP as a metric. Probably time to start using multiple measures to make meaningful comparisons.

1980phipsi 2y ago

I actually think it makes sense to look at slices of the EU since the composition of the EU has changed over time. Countries like Germany and France were at a very different level of development compared to Estonia or Poland. So it makes sense to break things out to try to account for that. And what it says is the gap for GDP (PPP) per capita between the North/West EU versus the US hasn't narrowed since 1980. It has widened vs. South EU. All the effect seen at an EU level is from the East. There are lots of interesting stories you can tell and lessons you can learn from these trends, but it's not a story of core EU outperforming.

quitit 2y ago

When the EU was performing well in comparison to the USA, no one had any issue using the long-standing growth metrics. The same metrics which now paint the EU as falling behind. This headline of this article implores a false conclusion as one would assume this is in reference to the traditional growth metrics, which it is not. The process of choosing new, rosier, metrics is disingenuous and nothing more than marketing, because it raises the question: If those metrics are doing so well, why are the traditional metrics not reflecting this performance gain? I.E. It demonstrates that the metrics don't have a legitimate relationship to overall performance and thus the piece is almost certainly built to support a pre-determined conclusion. If one is going to discard metrics such as GDP for new metrics, one needs to certainly prove why these metrics are better than the old measure. That includes outweighing the historical reasons for why these metrics are used. Another misleading device is including various weaknesses of the EU, as if these were levied against the EU and not just the direct results of their own policy making decisions. It's disappointing to see articles like this, because reporting on these metrics would be an interesting way to better understand business in the EU. Instead the metrics are being needlessly spun so someone could write the words "The European Union’s remarkable growth performance relative to the United States".

lostlogin 2y ago
> When the EU was performing well in comparison to the USA, no one had amy issues with the long standing growth metrics This viewpoint assumes that the article is wrong (and maybe it is). However a metric can be fine, and then something changes which necessitates a change measure. What if this has occurred?
- quitit 2y ago
  >This viewpoint assumes that the article is wrong I don't see how this is substantiated. Perhaps quote or elaborate upon the part of my reply which you feel substantiated your reply.

keybored 2y ago

> But for me it's a little disingenuous to start taking cherry picked slices of the EU and comparing them against the whole US. Then someone says that it’s unfair to factor in the whole of Germany instead of just the wealthiest parts. Where does it end?