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It is ridiculous on its face to compare America with other nations by raw numbers as if there were some single measure like that... dozens of quality-of-life an

It is ridiculous on its face to compare America with other nations by raw numbers as if there were some single measure like that... dozens of quality-of-life and cost-of-living indicators in many regions of the USA are strongly in the opposite direction for many real households. ten percent of people are vastly wealthier while fifty percent plus of people are worse off and more so .. the machinery of economics are driving their own numbers. ref Piketty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Ce...

oceanplexian 2y ago
But we’re talking about economic output, not a qualitative assessment. America has lower transaction costs, a better regulatory environment (e.g the EU with AI), better access to lending and investment, and a more robust consumer market. The US is clearly doing some things better.
- ta1243 2y ago
  Not convinced that AI is doing things better. And transaction costs in what sense? The US banking system is an international joke, so I'm guessing you're talking the lack of language barrier?
  - falleng0d 2y ago
    It's attracting a lot of investment not only from the Americans but also from outside investors. Even if most of those companies do not end up profitable, the workers that participated in the effort will have already gotten paid and the money will be absorbed by the economy. And if it pays off some day, well there you go.
    - red-iron-pine 2y ago
      crypto got a lot of outside investment. various facebook-for-dogs did too. housing pre-2008 did too. very few of the workers in the economy outside of the data center and tech-bro market will ever see any money from this
ta1243 2y ago
Yes, the US really leaves the bottom third behind If you look at incomes for graduates in the US vs the UK, it's far higher. [0] For non-graduates it's the same, and the social safety net in the UK is far better. This ties into median wage in the UK being barely above minimum wage. What this tells me is "don't bother educating yourself, just leave school asap and get a crap job stacking shelves" The UK just isn't an attractive place for graduates to work in, and the few that are there (mainly in London and the south east [1]) massively subsidise the wealthy retired and the minimum wage jobs. [0] https://www.ft.com/content/570d23b3-d286-4cb9-a319-b49cc4056f52 https://www.ft.com/content/570d23b3-d286-4cb9-a319-b49cc4056... [1] https://www.ft.com/content/e5c741a7-befa-4d49-a819-f1b0510a9802 https://www.ft.com/content/e5c741a7-befa-4d49-a819-f1b0510a9...
- klelatti 2y ago
  > and the few that are there Completely wrong as roughly 25% of the UK population has a university degree. The U.K. has lots of problems but a lack of graduates isn’t one of them.
  - ta1243 2y ago
    the few places that are attractive. A graduate of pretty much any degree working in Hull in pretty much any job is not attractive. They would earn far more in other countries, and earn little more than a minimum wage school dropout. A graduate working in fintech in London is fine, but they are subsidising the rest of the country and bring up the "graduate salary" and "total earnings" across the board. The problem isn't the lack of graduates, its the lack of well paid jobs. We don't value an educated workforce (which is at a similar level to France, the US, Ireland, Australia etc)
mperham 2y ago
Exactly. If the US economy is 10x larger but 90% of the economy is benefiting only the richest 0.1%, what's the point? Too many mainstream media pieces focus on overall GDP when they should be focused on averages. The end of the article handwaves away this criticism. > Many critics of America’s economic model contend that it is intrinsically flawed, beset by extreme inequality and ever-more dominant companies crushing competitors. But these are exaggerations. There may be scope for a fairer distribution of the country’s wealth without undermining America’s growth, but the widely held belief that the top 1% are taking it all is overdone. Handwaving. > As for tech behemoths such as Apple and Amazon, their potential for dominance must be watched and, if necessary, curtailed, but it is also true that they have generated incredible value in daily life and shaken up stodgy industries. And they face fierce competition to stay on top. Where's the fierce competition? Apple and Google have a phone duopoly. Measuring the economy is not measuring quality of life or health of the population.
mistrial9 2y ago
Nobel Prize winner of 2024 Simon Johnson interviewed: Johnson told the AP that economic pressures were alienating many Americans. “A lot of people who were previously in the middle class were hit very hard by the combination of globalization, automation, the decline of trade unions, and a sort of shift more broadly in corporate philosophy,” Johnson said. “So instead of workers being a resource to be developed, which they were in the 19th and early 20th century, they became a cost to be minimized … Now, that squeezed the middle class.’’ “We have, as a country, failed to deliver in recent decades on what we were previously very good at, which was sharing prosperity,” Johnson said. One key for the future, Johnson said, is how societies manage new technologies such as artificial intelligence. “AI could go either way,” he said. “AI could either empower people with a lot of education, make them more highly skilled, enable them to do more tasks and get more pay. Or it could be another massive wave of automation that pushes the remnants of the middle down to the bottom. And then, yes, you’re not going to like the political outcomes.’’

oceanplexian 2y ago

But we’re talking about economic output, not a qualitative assessment. America has lower transaction costs, a better regulatory environment (e.g the EU with AI), better access to lending and investment, and a more robust consumer market. The US is clearly doing some things better.

ta1243 2y ago
Not convinced that AI is doing things better. And transaction costs in what sense? The US banking system is an international joke, so I'm guessing you're talking the lack of language barrier?
- falleng0d 2y ago
  It's attracting a lot of investment not only from the Americans but also from outside investors. Even if most of those companies do not end up profitable, the workers that participated in the effort will have already gotten paid and the money will be absorbed by the economy. And if it pays off some day, well there you go.
  - red-iron-pine 2y ago
    crypto got a lot of outside investment. various facebook-for-dogs did too. housing pre-2008 did too. very few of the workers in the economy outside of the data center and tech-bro market will ever see any money from this

ta1243 2y ago

Yes, the US really leaves the bottom third behind If you look at incomes for graduates in the US vs the UK, it's far higher. [0] For non-graduates it's the same, and the social safety net in the UK is far better. This ties into median wage in the UK being barely above minimum wage. What this tells me is "don't bother educating yourself, just leave school asap and get a crap job stacking shelves" The UK just isn't an attractive place for graduates to work in, and the few that are there (mainly in London and the south east [1]) massively subsidise the wealthy retired and the minimum wage jobs. [0] https://www.ft.com/content/570d23b3-d286-4cb9-a319-b49cc4056f52 https://www.ft.com/content/570d23b3-d286-4cb9-a319-b49cc4056... [1] https://www.ft.com/content/e5c741a7-befa-4d49-a819-f1b0510a9802 https://www.ft.com/content/e5c741a7-befa-4d49-a819-f1b0510a9...

klelatti 2y ago
> and the few that are there Completely wrong as roughly 25% of the UK population has a university degree. The U.K. has lots of problems but a lack of graduates isn’t one of them.
- ta1243 2y ago
  the few places that are attractive. A graduate of pretty much any degree working in Hull in pretty much any job is not attractive. They would earn far more in other countries, and earn little more than a minimum wage school dropout. A graduate working in fintech in London is fine, but they are subsidising the rest of the country and bring up the "graduate salary" and "total earnings" across the board. The problem isn't the lack of graduates, its the lack of well paid jobs. We don't value an educated workforce (which is at a similar level to France, the US, Ireland, Australia etc)

mperham 2y ago

Exactly. If the US economy is 10x larger but 90% of the economy is benefiting only the richest 0.1%, what's the point? Too many mainstream media pieces focus on overall GDP when they should be focused on averages. The end of the article handwaves away this criticism. > Many critics of America’s economic model contend that it is intrinsically flawed, beset by extreme inequality and ever-more dominant companies crushing competitors. But these are exaggerations. There may be scope for a fairer distribution of the country’s wealth without undermining America’s growth, but the widely held belief that the top 1% are taking it all is overdone. Handwaving. > As for tech behemoths such as Apple and Amazon, their potential for dominance must be watched and, if necessary, curtailed, but it is also true that they have generated incredible value in daily life and shaken up stodgy industries. And they face fierce competition to stay on top. Where's the fierce competition? Apple and Google have a phone duopoly. Measuring the economy is not measuring quality of life or health of the population.

mistrial9 2y ago

Nobel Prize winner of 2024 Simon Johnson interviewed: Johnson told the AP that economic pressures were alienating many Americans. “A lot of people who were previously in the middle class were hit very hard by the combination of globalization, automation, the decline of trade unions, and a sort of shift more broadly in corporate philosophy,” Johnson said. “So instead of workers being a resource to be developed, which they were in the 19th and early 20th century, they became a cost to be minimized … Now, that squeezed the middle class.’’ “We have, as a country, failed to deliver in recent decades on what we were previously very good at, which was sharing prosperity,” Johnson said. One key for the future, Johnson said, is how societies manage new technologies such as artificial intelligence. “AI could go either way,” he said. “AI could either empower people with a lot of education, make them more highly skilled, enable them to do more tasks and get more pay. Or it could be another massive wave of automation that pushes the remnants of the middle down to the bottom. And then, yes, you’re not going to like the political outcomes.’’