> This is literally the article’s point. Europe and the U.S. grew similarly. The U.S. and China produced more large companies. (The Continent’s larger companies also being older than the other two’s.)
So Europe did a better job in distributing wealth more equally, while in the US and China you got a massive concentration of wealth? So ... fuck yeah, Europe FTW.
False. Europe did a better job at distributing income due to high taxes but not wealth.
Most Europeans are rich due to accumulation of wealth (specifically old business and real estate) inherited across generations.
Due to that, statistically, Europe does worse than the US wealth inequality as wealth has pooled to the people whose families have been here the longest, the newcomers are just burdened with high income taxes and high property prices, that's why skilled immigrants in STEM who have options and can afford to "shop around" usually avoid Europe in favor of North America.
I had a quick look at Wikipedia's wealth Gini figures and this isn't the case. Places like the Netherlands and Sweden score atrociously, but the three big European economies (France, Germany, and the UK) all have less wealth inequality than the US (significantly so for the first two), as do a whole host of other European countries.
* - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_...
Do you have a source for the statistic that show this?
Another comment mentioned Gini. Piketty uses the share of the top percentile (1%) or decile (10%):
* https://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/pikettys-inequal...
* https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/03/pikettys-new-...
The US isn't the worst in the world, but it is certainly more unequal than Europe as a whole, and most (all?) EU countries.
(Or wealth stolen from others. Oops?)
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Ce...
Wealth is harder to measure because it's not as reported in most countries. You get an 'income slip' for tax purposes (e.g., US Form W-2), but there's no official 'wealth slip'.
That's one of the things that Piketty suggests: declaring of credits and debts in an official way, which could then be used for a (net) wealth tax. Starting as little 0.1% if you're just over (e.g.) $US 10M, and having a top rate of (e.g.) 2% for those that are worth more than (say) US$ 1B.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/02/14/american...
This assumes ex ante a similar quantity of wealth. Europe’s GDP per capita is lower than America’s. Where it’s higher, the growth is slower. The more-even distribution comes at the expense of quality of life or economic power. (Though not for Europe’s well-entrenched multi-generational and often legally-entitled wealthy.)
To be clear, I don’t believe in moralising this spectrum of tolerance of scale and creative destruction versus social stability and economic equality. There are multiple equilibria, and Europe and America’s are mutually compatible. The relationship does, however, require Europe take a backseat to the U.S. and China in certain matters. The Economist is protesting that arrangement. (I, as an American, am not.)
What are you talking about? We have fairer elections, better infrastructure, more social security, everyone's got health insurance, we're not getting shot in school, and also we're not on the way to be ruled by a fascist so ... how exactly are you measuring the quality of life?
I downvoted you since you're going massively off-topic with your generalizations about the US that have no place on HN.
However I don't really follow. The discussion is clearly about politics here, so it probably does not count as off-topic. Also, fascism has a massive influence on the economy, making it relevant.
If you merely dispute my view that there's fascist tendencies in the US, that is fair, but no reason for a downvote, I'd argue.
But "about to be ruled by a fascist"? Trump lost the election. Sure the diverging right is worrying, but is the country "about to be ruled" by a fascist?
And "getting shot at school/street" is pretty much just a cheap shot.
I haven't been to the U.S., but I'm willing to wager that for most Americans getting shot is not a primary concern. I'm not saying shootings don't happen or that they aren't tragic, because they do and they are, or that the U.S. don't have a problem. But when they do happen, they obviously get so much visibility and attention that their emotional effect is greater than their actual chances of affecting you in your life, in a way that's not entirely dissimilar to terrorist attacks.
That makes appealing to shootings a populist-style emotional argument: easy to throw around and force people's attention with, not entirely truthful, and much more work to argue against than the argument would substantially warrant. That also makes it pretty annoying and bothersome.
So, I kind of get why people might not like your argumentation style.
[1] Although both Europe and the U.S. are diverse enough that it's going to get tricky; I'm not sure there is such a homogenous thing as "Europe" when it comes to quality of life. But that's a digression.
Yeah. I know I should dial it down a little. But I'm actually really concerned about the US. They do have a lot of mass shootings, and not even tackling this problem does point to a larger dysfunction in the US.
And Trump does not accept is loss and 60% of republicans agree. That's why I actually fear that the next elections in the US will not be democratic.
In Chicago there are mass shootings every weekend that get no press coverage. The inner city gang warfare and similar makes up the vast majority of mass shootings in the U.S.
Mass shootings have basically nothing to do with small town and rural NRA members.
Did you already know all that?
I really don't care about who shoots who. You know, as an European I know for a fact that if less people have guns, less shooting happens, no matter who's the shooter.
And of course your rural NRA member has a huge influence on inner city shootings, after all the NRA is also responsible for the laws leading to that many guns circulating.
So yeah, I know those things, and I know how wrong you are. Again, I actually live in a country with very few mass shootings, whatever the NRA tells you, they do exist. It seems like NRA "a good guy with a gun" propaganda works though, although I can't really believe that.
Idunno, I don't think I'd call that particularly rare.
That was wrong, but just slightly.
It wasn't fascism,but nazism.
«Evidence in Trump supporter’s trial suggests he espoused Nazi ideals»
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/brendan-hun...
> And "getting shot at school/street" is pretty much just a cheap shot.
It's an enormous social and political problem, caused by the way people live in US and the incentive system that rewards the stronger over the weaker and if you can't beat them, kill them.
> but I'm willing to wager that for most Americans getting shot is not a primary concern
That's the problem.
Coming from Europe I am used to not being killed in the streets, in US the risk of being shot is 10 times higher.
It's a lot!
Consider this: it is safer to go to Nigeria than to Los Angeles. Los Angeles had 300 homicides last year (they increased over 2019, during a pandemic! ) while in the comparably sized European city of Rome violent crimes went down 80% and there were "only" 19 homicides in 2020.
Also police brutality is an overlooked issue there: every year police shoot and kills around 1 thousand people in US, comparing their population to my country's, we should have 60 kills every year by the police, but in reality we have around 1 (one!) and it causes riots in the streets because we consider it unacceptable.
edit: I understand these are controversial topics and many Americans have different opinions tha mine on them, but as an European citizen and parent, what scares me the most is that these are all solvable issues, many other countries have solved them long time ago, while in US the debate hasn't even started yet. I also understand that facing the numbers is hard for some American people, it shatters the idea of "the greatest democracy in the World", but they are unfortunately real and verifiable.
For example: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/23/us/los-angeles-homicides-...
That's not really the point, and I'm not sure the semantics matter. I'm also not doubting that Trump would take up any "ideal" that supports his ego and power. Or that, among Trump supporters, there are people who would in fact be ready to go so far as fascism or nazism.
I just think that, in a thread about the quality of life in different economic cultures, "about to be ruled by a fascists" is kind of cheap rhetoric if you can't actually argue that the U.S. are in fact close to being ruled by one.
> Coming from Europe I am used to not being killed in the streets, in US the risk of being shot is 10 times higher.
That's continuing along nearly the same lines of rhetoric as the comment I responded to.
10 times the risk means there's some kind of a meaningful difference, but that doesn't mean it becomes a huge risk. "10 times higher" is a lot as a ratio, but it doesn't mean shootings actually happen a lot. They might, but your figure alone isn't enough to show that. That's the same as with disease: 10 times the risk of a rare disease might still be rare. It might mean an actual, substantially elevated risk, or it might not. I gets you nice headlines either way, of course.
If you wanted to argue that getting shot at is a major quality of life concern in the U.S., you would need to show that it actually is a major concern for a large proportion of Americans that affects their quality of life, not just that the ratio of occurrences compared to Europe is large.
Again, I disagree about the style of rhetoric. I don't want to argue that gun violence isn't a problem. But I'm not sure us Europeans should tell Americans how that affects their quality of life in general. It's also easy to fall into the trap of stereotypes such as school shootings being everywhere and affecting everyday life. If it's not actually like that, then it's just a stereotype. Which is exactly what ChuckNorris89 was complaining about.
on the contrary
being ruled by a fascist supporter and/or supported by fascist sympathizers has an enormous impact on the quality of life.
That's true everywhere, in Europe as in USA, that's why everybody here in Europe is preoccupied by far right extremists especially in the former eastern Europe.
> you would need to show that it actually is a major concern for a large proportion of Americans that affects their quality of life
It is, having 10 times the chances of dying shot by a stranger makes it 10 times more probable that in US I would be dead instead of alive.
Being dead it's much worse than being alive in my "quality of life" book.
One can argue that Americans don't care, but it is objectively worse as far as the quality of life goes.
Or to put it in another way: for Americans it could be irrelevant, but if we are comparing the two ways of life, it's a data point that can't be easily discarded.
Imagine having the life of a young relative taken by criminals or, worse, by the police.
Would you trade it for a better salary or a larger household, knowing that it's 10 times more probable that it could happen?
In Los Angeles in 2020 there have been 75 murders every million people (a bit more actually, closer to 76), in Rome it was 5 (a bit less, around 4.4 but rounded for easier comparison).
In NY it was 56, Kenya is 50, Egypt 25, Ghana 21, Sierra Leone 17.
Is this a meaningful difference or not?
Would you consider Los Angeles safer than Rome?
Given the choice would you rather raise your kids in Los Angeles or in Rome?
Remember: you're betting on their life or death chances.
> into the trap of stereotypes such as school shootings being everywhere
It's not a stereotype if it's true.
It's the only place were regularly school shootings end up with casaulties.
«There were, on average, 16.4 such shootings a year from 2007 to 2013, compared with an average of 6.4 shootings annually from 2000 to 2006. In the past 13 years, 486 people have been killed in such shootings, with 366 of the deaths in the past seven years. In all, the study looked at 160 shootings since 2000.Sep 24, 2014» (news from 7 years ago!)
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/25/us/25shooters.html
Can you name another country with similar stats?
I honestly can't.
Of course. It's the "about to be ruled by" part that's the cheap-ish rhetoric, as it implies an unsubstantiated imminent threat, not just "some of these guys are really going in the wrong direction".
> having 10 times the chances of dying shot by a stranger makes it 10 times more probable that in US I would be dead instead of alive.
No, it absolutely certainly does not, unless that's the only way you could die. That's really, really basic statistics.
I don't even need to check the statistics to assert that you're much, much more likely to die of causes other than violence, both in (at least the majority of) Europe and in (at least the majority of) the U.S.
If you have a full watermelon, and then take a small slice of the watermelon and somehow multiply the slice by ten, you don't have ten watermelons as a result.
> Would you trade it for a better salary or a larger household, knowing that it's 10 times more probable that it could happen?
Depends on what it's 10 times probable than, and what my other circumstances were. I might not want to live in the most dangerous city, and certainly not in its most dangerous areas, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't want to live in the entire country. In any of those cases, I'd probably be much more likely to die of other causes than because of being shot; it's certainly that way outside of the most dangerous places. But what I want to do is not really the point.
> 366 of the deaths in the past seven years
I'm apparently past my paywall-free articles at nytimes.com, so I'll have to make some assumptions here. 366 deaths in seven years means ~50 deaths per year. That's, of course, an astoundingly large number for a modern western country, which typically see very few of these kinds of incidents. But if that's for the entire U.S. which has ~330 million people, that means an approximately one in a million chance of getting killed in a mass shooting per year.
[edit: and of course I botched the maths -- it's more like one in ten million per year -- but the point still stands]
The numbers would make me question what's going on. The risk of violence might also make me not want to live in the most dangerous areas. But a one in a million chance of dying would not stop me from wanting to live in a country if I otherwise so desired.
You can't really just argue with numbers without putting them in some kind of a context.
You're right, but all other stats regarding mortality are worse for US than my country, so...
Homicides rates in particular are many times worse not just some % worse, that's why I mostly complain about them.
But we also have longer life expectations, better food, better healthcare, etc. etc. if that's of some interest.
we have much worse salaries on average though...
but less inequality overall.
> so I'll have to make some assumptions here. 366 deaths in seven years means ~50 deaths per year
If that was the only way people died.
It's basic statistics.
But in reality it's 50 more deaths, completely avoidable, every other developed country avoided them.
It's like saying that in USA infant mortality rate is "only" 5.7 every 1,000 newborns, while Estonia, many times poorer than US, has only 1.9 x 1,000.
In absolute numbers and as deaths per year rate is negligible, but on a human level it's a complete nightmare! and an healthcare disaster, especially for the country with the highest spending per capita on the Planet for healthcare.
I think a positive example is deaths in space flights.
Only 15 austronauts died during spaceflight, the odds of something going wrong and killing everybody in space are gigantic, but the space programs managed to keep the fatalities low by applying rigorous security checks. The fatality rate is around 3%, it's very high in absolute, it's quite low if we consider the kinds of risks involved.
It's a matter of willingness, if in USA so many people die every year for reasons that other similar countries have mostly solved or reduced drastically, IMO means that there is no political will to keep'em down.
> which has ~330 million people, that means an approximately one in a million chance of getting killed in a mass shooting per year.
still a lot worse then everywhere else in the werstern World.
And you don't really count deaths like that, 10 young students killed by another armed student destroy the fabric of entire communities forever.
Because it's not 50 deaths a year, it's 366 people that shouldn't have died that way in a developed country.
It's 366 families than won't see their kids grow old, without any logical reason.
You are counting on luck, but I personally don't trust luck.
it's a risk I would never take. For no reason.
> But a one in a million chance of dying would not stop me from wanting to live in a country if I otherwise so desired.
except that that's 1 in a million MORE, that adds up to, for example, the 1 in 13 thousands chances of being shot dead that you have in Los Angeles, that your kids have, in Rome the chances are 1 in 200 hundred thousand (assuming all other stats are similar, even though they are not and Los Angeles lags behind in all of them)
If you understand basic statistics, as I imagine you do, it's pretty clear what a responsible parent would chose, given the choice.
It's not only about how many people die every year, having lost someone for a 1 in a hundred million event, it's the mentality that also scares me: considering the chances of death kinda like a gamble is what makes me think I would never go back living in the USA, even more so after having enjoyed the peace and tranquillity of European life for a long long time.
It's easy to discard the benefits if you don't factor them into the equation.
See? this is exactly what I am talking about: when you talk about quality of life in Europe "living in a gang neighborhood" is not a concern, there is no "gang neighborhood" the like you can find in many US cities.
There are of course bad neighborhoods but the chances of being killed are still very low.
I am from a bad neighborhood, one of the most powerful criminal organizations of my country's history was from the neighborhood I grew up in.
It was bad, but far from American armed gangs bad.
You might get harassed or have to be careful who you talk to, journalist receive threats, someone is beaten, but killed? Possible, but highly improbable.
And when it happens usually the reaction from the State is quite strong.
That's generally the worst that can happen.
The only place where I've seen something similar to LA gangs (I've lived in LA) is developing countries ruled by warlords.
The rest can be easily compromised by economic stagnation, to have good social security you need a lot of wealth, and a lot of immigration from poorer countries
Right now, the social security system works, does it not? Just from the perspective of a citizen ... I have health and unemployment insurance, good public transportation, I won't get shot in public, the police will less likely kill me, etc.
I really don't get your point. Because there's stuff that could go wrong, the good things we have are irrelevant?
The second part is, well, like asking why should we sit in the lockdown and wear masks when not a lot of people are dying of covid right now. It's not something that may happen, it will happen if evething goes as it goes and no one makes anything about it
We know what happens with Covid due to science, modeling and stuff. But a virus spread is oretty easy to model compared to a society and its economy. So until now it worked really nice, haven't seen a lot of studies saying it won't in the future, rather the opposite.
Edit: or do you mean because we're getting older and hace fewer kids? Yeah that'll be a challange. Bit eventually every country will experience that, so lets figure out how to deal with this! And yeah, also let immigrants in ;)
No, not at all. But you don't have the same party ruling in U.S. for several decades. That would be legally possible, but that just doesn't happen due to how the system works.
> So until now it worked really nice
I'm not very well versed with the statistics here. But my impression is that social security is on decline. Welfare benefits sum grows much slower than inflation, and there have been studies that it's already not enough to even get the necessary nutrients. So it is a tendency that we see right now, not a prediction about some possible catastrophic event in future.
> And yeah, also let immigrants in ;)
There will be no immigrants if economy is weak, that's the thing.
Look at state/city level and you will have a different picture of United States.
And for Europe, let's take France as example. Here are the ruling party changes in the last forty years : 81,86,88,93,97,02,12,17
Do you know the average tenure of the current American senators ?
It depends on what country you're talking about, but looking at which party is the biggest/who the prime minister is and summing it up as the "ruling party" is a gross oversimplification of the power dynamics in a parliamentary democracy. The power balance shifting between smaller parties can bring about huge effects on the government and the policies that are passed.
But again, just because social security does not deliver all it promises - throw it out completely? I don't get that point. Tendencies that exist right now can be corrected.
And that wouldn't even be more expensive, but at least in Germany, the money would just have to be distributed more fairly. For example, you get the same amount of child benefits no matter what you earn. That doesn't make sense. So change that a little and lots of people won't notice while lots of people will do way better.
Wrong for Germany, those immigrants from 2015 integrated well into the workforce.
I have no horse in this race, but I'm curious about a source for this, mostly for how it's been measured.
It says that by 2020 half of them has found a job, which is way higher unemployment rate than is average in Germany though.
But even if they don't find jobs themselves, at the very least they have children which is critical for sustainability of a country with inverted population pyramid.
Half of immigrants being unemployed after half a decade is bad, especially compared with America, where immigrants are more likely to find themselves employed than the native born [1].
> if they don't find jobs themselves, at the very least they have children
Sure. But I'd hate to do the math on how much each of those children cost the German taxpayer.
[1] https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=LZTRCwAAQBAJ&oi=...
And it's not like refugees were allowed to look for jobs immediately, getting work permit for a refugee takes awfully long in Germany.
Cost of their children is pretty much the same as for German children. And it's a necessary expenditure, otherwise the said taxpayers are going to have a pretty rough time when they retire.
If the principal benefit of a refugee couple is their children, the the cost of accepting and maintaining that couple is part of the cost of that child.
I believe there is a moral responsibility, on the part of rich countries, to accept some refugees. But we have to be honest that it is usually charitable work. Framing it as economically beneficial can be misleading and lead to a backlash when the promised gains don't pan out.
Funny how often people start a sentence with "we got to be honest" and finish it with something that has long been debunked.
Americans think it's racist but actually it is just business.
how is this racist?
Its incredible how high maternal mortality is in the US. Like a development country.
European GDPs per capita have been by and large lower than the US one since at least 1900, so this doesn't tell us much.
You know, having a continental sized country with continent sized resources and a population all speaking the same language, plus the last conflict on its territory having happened 150+ years ago, seems to be paying off.
Now compare GDP per hour worked:
* https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/labor-productivity-per-ho...
* https://time.com/4621185/worker-productivity-countries/
Germany and France are basically equivalent to the US. Some of the other larger economies (UK, IT, ES) are further down.
Those 4+ weeks of vacation make a difference. :)
Also, who gets to actually keep all of that GDP?
* https://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/pikettys-inequal...
* https://voxeu.org/article/exploding-wealth-inequality-united...
All that the Economist is pointing out is that there are some businesses in which you have to have massive scale to be competitive. In those specific businesses, you either scale up or you can't compete at all. Europe is giving up competing in those areas.
Innovative is the real disruptor. We forget this at our peril.
I do think Europe has many advantages the US and China don't have, it's not like being able to develop massive scale enterprises is the be-all and end-all of economics, but it is self-limiting in some important ways.
Like enforcing interoperability between platforms, privacy rules etc.?
So you favor the monopolies that some American companies have in some markets?