5 ms·
I think the EU is increasingly aware of its faults, especially in Germany & France. Happy to watch them cook and I say that as an American who has watched on wi
by whimsicalism 2y ago
I think the EU is increasingly aware of its faults, especially in Germany & France. Happy to watch them cook and I say that as an American who has watched on with pain at what the EU has done to itself over the last decade+.
- analog31 2y agoAre their people worse off?
- whimsicalism 2y agoIn my view, yes - especially when you subset to native born populations. Many europeans are a proud people though so I understand this is contentious, regardless of what the numbers say.
- vondur 2y agoAccording to this article, the answer is yes: https://www.wsj.com/world/europeans-poorer-inflation-economy-255eb629 https://www.wsj.com/world/europeans-poorer-inflation-economy...
- bobthepanda 2y agoIt depends on what you are looking at. For example there is increasing consensus that Merkel's "black-zero" budget requirements set the stage for today's collapsing German infrastructure and lack of productivity growth due to decreased public investment.
- whimsicalism 2y agoThink it has much more to do with traditional EU regulator attitudes around the dual of labor & capital markets. Both are very dysfunctional in Europe, with labor probably slightly edging out in terms of dysfunction.
- bobthepanda 2y agothats also not helping, but it's not exactly a secret that German public infrastructure from roads to rails to electricity and whatnot are also all crumbling.
- whimsicalism 2y agoit's hard to build infrastructure when you have dysfunctional labor markets & your tax base is declining in real terms.
- FirmwareBurner 2y ago"You eventually run out of other peoples' money" And wait till the EU starts paying it's own defense bills without the US, which is what it wants to do. But with money from where? Education? Healthcare? Welfare?
- daedrdev 2y agoThe black zero literally means that in real terms they have been decreasing government investment for years now.
- analog31 2y agoI'm thinking about things like life expectancy, infant mortality, maternal mortality, health care, violent crime, suicide, incarceration, traffic safety...
- DataDaoDe 2y agoI can't speak for France, but for Germany, unfortunately, by most metrics that matter (affordable housing, infrastructure, subjective well-being, energy costs, labor markets, etc.) compared to 20 years ago, yes. However, compared to most other countries, Germany is still doing quite well. So it all depends on the context for how you interpret the data. [1] https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2024/03/27/germanys-real-challenges-are-aging-underinvestment-and-too-much-red-tape?utm_source=chatgpt.com https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2024/03/27/germanys-rea... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_economic_crisis_%282022%E2%80%93present%29?utm_source=chatgpt.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_economic_crisis_%282022...