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Comment by waihtis | Hacker News Reader

Great living in the EU:

-Economy become stagnant (EU economy was 10% larger than the US economy in 2005; in 2022, US economy was 40% larger than the EU's)

-Ever increasing power centralization into Brussels with all kinds of fun instruments like joint debt

-Censorship laws coming up

Nothing can convince me the end result won't be something akin to the Soviet Union. All the right mechanisms are creeping into place

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> -Economy become stagnant (EU economy was 10% larger than the US economy in 2005; in 2022, US economy was 40% larger than the EU's)

confirmed by this world bank chart:

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?location...

the biggest econ problem in the EU is that some countries are still either below or have similar GDP to 2008’s GFC:

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?location...

> In 2008 the EU’s economy was somewhat larger than America’s: $16.2 trillion versus $14.7 trillion. By 2022, the US economy had grown to $25 trillion, whereas the EU and the UK together had only reached $19.8 trillion. America’s economy is now nearly one-third bigger. It is more than 50 per cent larger than the EU without the UK.

from https://ecfr.eu/publication/the-art-of-vassalisation-how-rus...

> EU economy was 10% larger than the US economy in 2005; in 2022, US economy was 40% larger than the EU's

How much of that is due to the UK leaving?

seems unlikely to be a significant amount - given https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/germany/uk

on edit: actually thinking about it, since Germany is about 21% of economy and England is slightly under Germany I guess England could be responsible for a significant amount of that loss - assuming significance is more than 15% of the loss.

yes, it was a big amount, and it affected all the stats.

The stats were poor (behind the US) even before Brexit

yup, agree. and the stats are still poor.

i don’t see any solution to this problem, and it doesn’t seem like the politicians and/or the public care.

The UK leaving the EU is seen as a UK failure (because brexit affected the UK much); but them leaving the EU is a EU failure because one of the members of the union has left. People underestimate this fact a lot.

How would have the EU prevented this when the Leave camp was fueled by lies, such as the famous NHS budget bus and all the various Euromyths that the UK press liked to conjure? It's not like people didn't try debunking them.

i remember someone from the EU saying something like: they did not do anything to campaign for the continuation of membership.

'(EU economy was 10% larger than the US economy in 2005; in 2022, US economy was 40% larger than the EU's)'

How is this measured? If I can print money without any consequences because I am the world reserve currency, and I decide after 2008 to go berserk on that, would my GDP grow without basically changing anything in the real economie?

GDP is a bit trickier than that, and exports are much harder to fabricate. Printing money clearly has its limits even for the USD (they can see the inflation now and the limits of it).

Can't I just buy my revenue streams with my monopoly money, and would those than count as my exports?

You'll need to export to a certain country, as far as I understand it. What countries usually do, is that they'll lend with their monopoly money while limiting the debit countries to purchase from them.

You can think of that as export-boosting but not completely fake exports.

What i've seen frequently is US investors buying EU companies that hold promise. So later it is a 'US' company and the narrative stays 'EU is great at basic research, but they suck at bringing it to market', but how can you beat free money?

I think you are right on this. Being the world's reserve currency, US can swap their printed money with real assets (in this case, companies, metals, grains, etc), thereby these companies bought with USD becoming American. If USD ceases being the world reserve currency, the dollar value can fall by 35% or more. In a way, the world (esp exporters, exporters who force importers to pay in USD) subsidizes US indirectly. Yet no one talks about this malaise, and the costs borne out by the the rest of the world. That's why the debates in US is always about why not print money to fiscal spending (for the ordinary people), as the cronies of capitalists have been printing money (or by suppressing interest rates, and by QE policies) to help the capitalist class and their elite servant class (managers, media, think tanks, etc).

A quick search showed the EU and the US being, more or less, on par when ot comes to GDP and such. Not sure where you got your numbers from. Also, not sure what any of this has to do with shutting down Social Media in some situations.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?contextu...

I think you're exaggerating with the Soviet Union comparison. But yeah, the economy and jobs market is pretty stagnant. What's not stagnant is the housing market. We're gonna be like Canada soon.

Yeah lets break down EU and then start a limiteless number of wars as Europe was before EU.

Cause the alternative is centralization under a parliament in Brusells. Is that something that you really equal to Soviet Union?

You forgot socialized healthcare

Not sure what you mean with this

comparisons between EU and US economy seem unfair if leaving out well known things that impact economy such as health care costs, that said since the socialized healthcare is not on an EU level but on a national level it might make sense not to put that comparison in.

That highly depends on what country in Europe you live in.

In poorer countries waiting lists on stuff like MRI can be up to two years, debilitating surgery procedures in 6 months, etc.

People talk about EU and just talk about best parts. Inequality between EU countries is greater than US states.

Most social systems are already breaking down due to increased costs, increased burdens and bad privatization, all of which are predicted to increase. Several countries are already pushing the burden back on younger individuals as a way to keep the boomer and older millennial voters happy. Meanwhile, the things named by GP are likely to increase, as well.

It's not the gotcha it was 10 years ago.

Can you cite those statements?

[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?contextu... [2] https://www.2021portugal.eu/en/news/first-european-debt-issu... [3] this post

Are those GDP figures inflation adjusted?

I have no idea how those metrics are calcupated, but by selecting "international USD" (whatever that means...), the US and EU are basically on par... Seems almost like economics are too complex a topic to easily compare in an online comment.

>"international USD" (whatever that means...)

International dollar means normalizing everything to the US dollar as of 1990. So the answer to Chucknorris89's question is "Yes".

GDP is actually the easiest, most apples-to-aples thing to compare, I don't know why you're saying it's too complex. And the graph clearly shows the EU falling behind the US, both in nominal $ and in GDP per capita.

Here's another source. https://statisticstimes.com/economy/united-states-vs-eu-econ...

Still better than living in the USA. Source: have done both long term.

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