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Comment by codingslave | Hacker News Reader

Failing European economies where the workers look down on technical work will continue to look for ways to tax US corporations. Apple may have some monopolistic practices, but a larger problem in Europe is as I stated, a work force not inclined, interested, and put off by the "low status" of being a programmer. They will continue to pursue aggressive legal tactics to stop the domination of FAANG tech products, but the real answer is legislation and action that foster growth of tech companies and start ups.

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"put off by the "low status" of being a programmer" - Must be a different Europe where you are living

If it were the opposite, there wouldn’t be such pay disparities between management and programmers

Is it that much different in US? Beside that, the tech has a general problem of lack of good career progression outside of going into management.

Senior engineer at a tech company pays 350-700k. Thats plenty of money to retire by 45...

> Apple may have some monopolistic practices, but a larger problem in Europe is as I stated, a work force not inclined, interested, and put off by the "low status" of being a programmer.

I've never seen any reasonable person look down on developers, IT-consultants, sysadmins etc, and I've lived in Europe my whole life. Yes, you'll get the occasional academic that studied the humanities and is pissed off that techies are paid more and asked to solve society's problems instead of him but that's pretty much it. Tech will almost guarantee a safe job and an income above the average. You just might hit the average income when you're starting out if you're in the right place. Who's looking down on that?

> They will continue to pursue aggressive legal tactics to stop the domination of FAANG tech products, but the real answer is legislation and action that foster growth of tech companies and start ups.

You can't create a cultural environment with legislation. Not that there's not a lot to do, but it's not that easy.

Also, I think they're very right to limit the power of US-West-Coast-Corporations. Search, Social Networks, News etc are too central to any nation to let them be provided by a foreign entity.

Pay for engineers in Europe is abysmal for programmers. And not just absolutely, also relatively to the rest of European professions. In contrast, the United States has extremely high compensation for programmers with respect to other careers. Status is about money. And Europe doesn’t pay technical workers and by and large sees no reason to.

Maybe you're talking about a different part of Europe. I'm in Germany, you'll quickly make more as a developer in a non-leadership role than you will in other careers in leadership roles.

Sure, the difference isn't as big as it is in the US, but you don't have to be a rock star to make twice the average income with 10, 15 years experience.

If you expect to be treated as a god, being treated as a king may seem like an insult, but I think the difference to the US is mostly the European set up: you won't rise as high, you won't fall as deep. I don't see any general dislike for IT.

You're getting downvoted to oblivion for telling the truth, because that truth is painful and tastes horrible.

The EU is going to unleash tens of billions in fines at US tech companies in the coming decade, because they can't compete and now they have a large hole in their budget thanks to the Brexit [1], which can conveniently be filled with fines. It's obvious what they're going to do.

The only proper response is subtle economic war on the part of the US directed at France and Germany. And we will do exactly that. We'll use every practical lever we possess to harm their corporations in retribution. It's fair game. It's a mistake on the part of the EU, the US is radically stronger in every respect. If they're not careful, the EU will end up as an economic colony of China - perhaps appropriate given history.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-budget/eu-leaders-to-c...

"European Union leaders will clash this week over the EU’s 2021-2027 budget as Britain’s exit leaves a 75 billion euro ($81 billion) hole in the bloc’s finances just as it faces costly challenges such as becoming carbon neutral by 2050. "

I recommend you to stop reading only americans news/propaganda. Read a bit of everything, even it's propaganda. You'll discover what you considered as a news source is also propaganda.

Are you suggesting Reuters is American news/propaganda? If so then I suggest you check this out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuters

It was not about the article that he linked but his point of view. What i seen in his point of view is a story that US media try to sell: Europe will fine america because europe is no longer competitive. In fact, Boeing won recently a case against Airbus at WTO because europe financed indirectly Airbus by favoring unfairly Airbus contract. I predict that in a few year, Airbus will win recently a case against Boieng for the same reason.

Fair enough

The EU's total GDP is $18.8 trillion, which is very close to the GDP of the US, and much larger than the GDP of China.

The total EU budget is much less than 1% of that, and is entirely discretionary spending on long-term strategic policy goals, infrastructure, and social investment.

And having a "costly" challenge of becoming carbon neutral by 2050 is a lot more realistic than the US policy on carbon neutrality, which is "We'll get back to you on that, but probably not until the coastal flooding and economy-destroying extreme weather events becomes impossible to ignore."

Yes, but the EU budget is special in several ways.

One is that they can't directly control most tax rates. The EU isn't funded by direct income taxation, for instance. But they can raise funds via fines, which aren't tried in court and go directly into the EU's own budget (there's a huge conflict of interest here).

Another is that the EU's budget normally only ever goes up. It's a part of the whole plan for the EU to constantly subsume more and more from national governments. The obvious view of the EU is it has a budget so it can provide services but this isn't how the EU officials themselves see it. That's why the fight over the Brexit budget hole is so bitter. Someone unfamiliar with the EU might think, well, the EU is smaller now, so it should be just fine with a correspondingly smaller budget. But it's not that way because the size of the budget is psychological. If it shrinks it's the project going into reverse, not a mere re-allocation of service resources.

I think we keep seeing dubious fines by the EU against US tech firms and although it's unpopular, I tend to agree with adventured. A lot of these fines are enormous and backed by no real robust system of justice. A government simply decrees without trial that a tech firm must pay them a billion euros. A billion here, a few hundred million there - it starts to add up. From the EU perspective sucking gold out of tech firms is not only free money but even better, populist free money, because they can demonise these companies and claim to be fighting for the consumer. Whether they actually are or not doesn't get a close look.

> The only proper response is subtle economic war on the part of the US directed at France and Germany. And we will do exactly that. We'll use every practical lever we possess to harm their corporations in retribution. It's fair game.

This has been going on since the beginning of time. Governments take stronger action against foreign entities than domestic ones. US turned a blind eye to GM knowingly allowing over 100 people to be killed due to a known faulty part but burned VW for the pollution. EU turned a blind eye to VW polluting but burned Apple for antitrust violations. Both unions acted well within law and reason when fining the foreign entities. But this is how things go. Local lobbies are usually far stronger than foreign ones so the path of least resistance means you can easier enact justice on foreign companies.

> It's a mistake on the part of the EU, the US is radically stronger in every respect.

It's stronger because it has allies like the EU. There's the distinct risk that every ally that the US alienates invariably turns to the East. And it's not like anyone (US included, not counting armchair warriors) wants any kind of open conflict (military or economic), this shoots everyone in the foot. Sometimes even when on the winning side people may be less prepared for the hardships of such conflict than the ones on the losing side.

It could be that you only see the Apple and Intel getting fines from EU because this is the only stories that are big enough for HN of whatever newspaper you read.

Do you doubt the illegality of the process? Seems to me that american are trying to ignore the laws, similar with the case of the person that killed a person in a driving accident and then flees from UK, it is a giant fuck you small countries, our army is bigger so your laws are insignificant--- don't forget the new Disney laws otherwise you might regret it.

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