Europeans Are Becoming Poorer
wsj.com
wsj.com
Just think about healthier food, walkable cities, great public transportation, safety, free education and healthcare. The way I see it, life in Europe is less stressful and more enjoyable than in the US.
Having less money translates into having a smaller house or a car, but in my opinion that doesn't make you any less happy. You just need enough to live comfortably, which especially in tech is not that hard, and then you can focus on whatever gives your life meaning.
It is more like no house and no car. Prices of cars increased with 50 % .
So has real estate.
At some point, you need to have the mean to finance these services, so stagnating GDP is not that good.
Edit: I suppose it isn't just the transit and the architecture and the safety that's the draw. Many in America, even if they're "conservative" (whatever that means today), are willing to pay more in taxes if it means free health care and a functioning bureaucracy.
You're getting absolutely hosed if you move here for tech work. It's great if you're on government jobs, minimum wage/unionized jobs and living in rent controlled flats though and need frequent government support but if you're a skilled professional, living on real estate off the private market, then basically anywhere else in Europe is better bang for your buck than here.
As an expat there I don't think quality of life in Vienna is that WOW to be honest, it's just that it keeps being promoted by The Economist every year at winning this title they invented, based on some random requirements they set up, to the point I feel it's basically and ad paid by the city of Vienna (Austria already pays a lot for such international advertisements to support their tourist industry) to lure expats to wage-dump themselves and work here and cover the labor shortages (the "most livable city" title comes up a lot in job ads targeting foreigners).
It's basically the Canada of Europe: high real estate costs , low wages, with generous subsidies and social nets for the less well off Austrians.
Learning is 99% for yourself to socialize and thrive, and maybe 1% showing respect. I think actions speak louder than words, and being kind and respectful can take many forms.
I say this because I’ve seen first hand how travelers, expats and tourists from the Anglosphere self-limit at least a bit more than us who grew up speaking less common languages. We’re used to the discomfort and misunderstandings, and hand gesture our way through sometimes. I’d say most Europeans can relate to this strongly. (Of course, we always joke about the French, who refuse to speak English even if they can, but I think even that’s a dated stereotype these days)
Best of luck with your plans.
In the end these labels are pretty useless, the underlying problem is pretty easy to describe, is the system sufficiently just and cost effective or not. It doesn't really matter if it's market-based or it's done through some magic lottery system.
...
That said, services are suffering from cost disease big time. Healthcare and education badly needs productivity increases, otherwise quality has to drop to get back to sustainable funding levels.
The USA providing security guarantees is not freeloading, it's USA's strategy to hegemony, it's how the USA has kept it...
Investing in defence without participating in wars (or to defend your hegemony) is just a waste of taxpayers' money, it's money that could go to healthcare, to education, or to any other improvement in quality of life of your citizens. I'm very glad that Europe hasn't been burning trillions of dollars on stuff just made to kill people.
Next will be Kier Starmer for Labour who main promises seem to be to keep the policies of the incumbents.
(Health used as an illustrative area but this applies across the board).
Kier Starmer thinks Corbyn lost because he was a Socialist. It was about Brexit. "Get Brexit Done" was a master class in political expediency. Even Boris was wise enough to sprinkle a little "socialism" with his levelling up policies.
Kier Starmer looks like he's going to score an own goal in the last minute of extra time.
Shouldn't a stagnating GDP translate to a stagnating quantity/quality of services? If things are getting worse while GDP stagnates, it appears that there is a gross mismanagement of the same amount of resources.
And I'd dare to say, that this mismanagement typically boils down to the privatization of (previously) predominantly publicly-operated sectors. A soon as the publicly-operated provider shuts down, profiteering starts.
I understand that you are in tech and are happy with your position, but consider the lives of millions who are unemployed, or those who can't afford to turn their AC on or fix their car when it breaks down. Not to mention how much prices have increased.
The last city I lived in the US was Seattle and there were people doing drugs on the streets in middle of the city and cops just walked by. Many homeless people actually have a job. Healthcare is insanely expensive. Education costs are a joke.
I'm not saying everything is great in Europe. The original point I was trying to make is that comparing salaries/wealth alone completely misses the point. Quality of life is more complicated than that.
They’ll mention how about they have great cities/safety/etc but you’ll notice they never say which city/country exactly they’re talking about (as in let’s pretend all of Europe is Switzerland)
It has a lot of great things too ofc. But I wouldn’t consider it representative of the nicer parts of Europe (vs pure financial optimization) mentioned above such as working less, walking, biking in the city.
Where did you get your info? Swiss food quality is some of the best in the world, well regulated and mostly organic, that's why it's so expensive.
How did you measure xenofobia?
xenofobia is subjective, and maybe wrong word, but expat society is largely cut off from locals. I know many germans firsthand that feel they can't integrate.
I'm not Swiss but, I think you don't know what xenofobia means. Honestly, I'm getting pretty tired of these tropes, of expats who think that because locald don't chat them up, and if the baristas never greet and smile at them like it's the norm in their home country they immediately take it as the country being xenofobic.
Expat societies are mostly isolated in most other countries, because the locals already have cemented family and social circles from their youth/childhood/university, especially in the Germanic/Norther-European cultures where small-talk and chit-chat is unpopular and people mostly keep to themselves and don't interact much with people they don't know out of respecting their personal space.
> I know many germans firsthand that feel they can't integrate
Then Germans get to experience exactly how expats feel in their country. Join the club.
Snark aside, a Swiss/German/Finnish person not chatting you up and not inviting you to hang out the moment they meet you is not xenofobia, it's people keeping to themselves. Every country and culture has completely different social norms which other cultures might find "unfriendly" but that's not xenofobia.
Xenofobia means something else. And I doubt you were a target of xenofobia too often in Switzerland.
Not my feeling/experience at all. I’ve moved to Germany 1.5 years ago and the locals are the most welcoming people I’ve ever met. Especially comparing to Singaporeans, where I spent 6 years before.
I live in the North though, if I lived in Bayern my experience would probably be different.
In practice Switzerland is one of the more accommodating societies in the world. Most Swiss people don't move far from where they grow up though, so often still have friends from school. It isn't a culture oriented towards chatting with strangers or making new friends at the drop of a hat, but that's not the same thing as xenophobia. Swiss who move abroad then back after many years experience the same difficulties with making new friends.
Maybe that's why it works so well.
I work for a small factory in Aargau and they send me across the planet to install their devices, but I live in Zürich.
It is genuinely one of the nicest place I’ve ever been and I would hardly describe it as xenophobic.
Indeed. They don't know that many people here still have 1h+ commutes to their soul crushing 9-5 jobs just like they do, and assume everyone has a 15 minute bike ride to work through a cobble stone street or working remotely with their MacBooks in hip central cafes.
Not every EU city has the public transport of Vienna and London, nor the cycling infrastructure of Netherlands and Copenhagen. And a lot of Americans miss this as they just look at the model cities where it's all perfect, but those are like what, 10%-20% of the EU.
That's a pretty awful experience. I'd much rather ride for 30 minutes on asphalt.
Some developing nations have seen living standards raise, mostly because the baseline comparison to 20-30 years ago was pretty low (China, India, Brazil, etc.).
Btw, the main reason people think European food tastes better than US is because we enrich our flour with extra nutrients. You just don't like the taste of iron.
(Japan also only has the kind that doesn't do anything. No personal experience elsewhere.)
In my case the entire building I live in has "central A/C". I'm not an expert, but I believe it works by circulating cold water in the pipes and then each apartment has fans in the ceiling that blow cool air. You regulate it by setting the desired temperature in each room using a thermostat. IMO it works very well.
Majority of other buildings with A/C have a more traditional A/C units like in the US that blow air outside.
Like I mentioned in the first paragraph, A/C is non-standard in the country I'm currently in. Some of my friends who don't have A/C use devices similar to humidifiers, but you put ice in them instead of water. They say it's good enough to cool down one room in a an apartment (like a bedroom or an office).
In which country do you live? In Austria you're not allowed to install an split unit AC due to building regulations. You could if you own your own single family house but you need to be very wealthy for that, beyond the average tech worker. Tech worker is blue-colar work here.
I think it's somewhat rare in Germany and Austria, but you don't need to be very wealthy to own a house in France or Belgium for example. And you are allowed to install A/C, in fact heat pumps are very much recommended for new builds, almost mandatory even given the tight energy requirements today and it's becoming common enough to use a reversible one.
The Belgians on the other hand are the 4th richest people in the world, and also Belgium has one of the lowest levels of wealth inequality. So it's much easier to inherit a home or at least enough cash for a downpayment.
Fridge - regular sized ones (that is, full height) are not uncommon
AC - not a problem in the hotter places and it is getting better in the not so hot places (also if you're booking an Airbnb definitely check this)
"oh but the dryer doesn't do anything" it absolutely does, for most of them select the 'Iron' or 'Cupboard' level of dryness instead of the time. It does take a long time, so just throw it in the night and have a day/night or peak electricity contract. Unless you're overloading it or think someone would go out in 5C/40F weather with humid clothes
> walkable cities, great public transportation, safety
These are great upsides for sure, no arguments
> healthier food
As I said, only if you can afford it. I would guess about 70-80% of the population can't - they shop at discount grocery stores and get cheap foods, usually of terrible quality
> free education and healthcare
Healthcare is a sham. Pray that you don't need anything 'complex' ever. The GPs will talk to you for 2 minutes max, tell you something generic (go rest, green tea, ibuprofen) and tell you to be on your way. Getting appointments at specialists usually takes weeks on average and can often take months. It's very good if you have a costly treatment for a chronic disease, however.
Education is severely underfunded and getting your kids into a good kindergarten is a massive undertaking, especially in a large city. You have to start usually an year in advance. Higher education, while free, is likewise underfunded (look at any university rankings for research output)
The collapsing population means that the pension liabilities of countries are growing quickly and pretty much everyone who's working age today should expect their pension to only cover 25-50% of their living costs. But, no one's saving anything and people don't seem to realize this fact.
Yes the quality of life is decent - for now. The trajectory of many things that make it so however appears to be going downhill. The worst part though that that most europeans have their head in the sand about it and as a result, no one's pushing for any changes.
I love living here but for all the things I said before, I don't think I'll stay.
No, it doesn't. I live in Austria and as a tech worker you're not in the 5-10% income. As a tech worker you earn as much as the unionized tram-driver, ~2500 Euros net/month.
Also, INCOME != WEALTH. It takes time and a big income to build wealth and we don't have that, and most wealth here is inherited cross-generation via zero-inheritance taxes. There's people making minim wages spending all day smoking weed and walking dogs, who's families own entire apartment blocks and several houses, yet you'll pay way more taxes than them and be financially less well off.
If you move here for work, the high taxes, low wages means you won't build any wealth (legally).
I agree with your other points. All the great social services in Europe are underfunded relative to their usage.
Europe isn't a country. Where exactly in Europe did you move?
In the end you still just had the tourist experience, enjoying the best parts of life there, while being mostly isolated from the poor stuff the locals have to put up with.
As someone who had a chance a decade or so ago to emigrate to the EU from the US, I regret not doing so every time I hear of a school shooting or visit the EU and see how much actual health/enjoyment for normal people I see over there that's not visible here.
> The French are eating less foie gras and drinking less red wine.
foie gras involves torturing animals, and drinking less alcohol is healthier, so good for them!
> Across Germany, meat and milk consumption has fallen to the lowest level in three decades
yes, more people are eating less meat - good for them and for the environment!
> TooGoodToGo, a company founded in Denmark in 2015 that sells leftover food from retailers and restaurants, has 76 million registered users across Europe
using food at or past its sell-by date instead of throwing it away? Now we can't have that, can we?
At this point, I was waiting for a line about how so many of these poor, poor Europeans are now forced to use bicycles or public transportation, which must surely be because they can't afford a car or the gas prices. But luckily it didn't come (except for the poor woman who has to "share a car with her partner’s father").
As for "having smaller houses", that's not as much because people are earning less, but because housing prices have exploded recently - that's a real problem that the article completely fails to mention, because it doesn't fit into its narrative (it also happens in the US).
She's volunteering at a food and clothes bank and noticed the increase in demand; even from the working class, the struggle is real. And, pardon me for the directness, but your patronising tone really isn't helping workers get on the side of what you see as "good".
I am a registered user and never used the service. I just forget.
The struggle is real for non-wealthy everywhere as more and more is owned by fewer and fewer people. To paraphrase William Gibson: "the future is here, just unevenly distributed".
I would suggest that europeans try and work together in some sort of union of cooperation and mutual respect. If there was such a union then certainly the whole continent might fare better. Just a thought.
In short, the article uses some nice ancdotes, throws in special cases, puts some statistics and numbers (without additional explanation of how those numbers are calculated) on top of all of that only to justify the narrative behind the headline. So, all the mortal sins (in my view) of numbers heavy journalism in one place.
Not that everything is rosey over here, but Europe is far from poor. And for some reason, we didn't have a recession yet neither. The article is well in line so with a lot of others pushing the narrative of neo-liberalism being the only saviour of a Europe on the brink of collaps (only a slight exageration).
And pay no taxes.
I was visiting a med island recently with both Americans and Europeans, it was evident how wide the income gap was becoming. The American members of our group, working in comparable positions and industries, had significantly more spare cash than their European counter parts.
I honestly hope that Europe addresses this lack of innovation and economic decline instead of just propping failing industries. Although it's important to recognize that the issue is not just bureaucratic. It's more deeply rooted in mindset and creativity — which is arguably much harder to overcome..
Unfortunately, creating an environment that encourages innovation, startups, and tech adoption isn't particularly straight-forward (especially if you're behind). It requires a cultural shift, coupled with decent policies and investment in top-level education
What's missing is investment to increase productivity of costly public services. Sure there are billions of funds spent every year on "economic activity encouragement", but as you mention it just ends up propping up failing businesses.
Basically the healthy nice cities are still in a big ugly messy transitory phase. Trains as still fucking expensive and slow, so people fly and drive a lot. (Integrated ride sharing and overnight train service would be nice, etc.) And of course there's the issue of housing.
Pretty much yeah, but is it a surprise that people vote to keep their cushy standards of living from the past?
Sure, none of those voters cares that the economic landscape has changed since the boomer times when Europeans companies ruled thew world and brought in the most profits and tax revenue, which allowed easy funding of the generous welfare system we enjoy, except that now we're not producing the same amount of money to still afford this lifestyle, so something will have to give, since the current trajectory seems to be ever increasing taxes on labor to fund welfare, while economic prosperity and competitiveness declines.
However, it means that Europe should invest more in nuclear and renewables to stay relevant. But the war in Ukraine is not helping I guess.
But the 2008 vs 2023 comparison is really sobering.
And before someone accuses me of not badmouthing "the enemy" enough, know that even Ukraine is still importing billions worth of Russian gas and petrol products and thus financing the war against itself. Funny how that works.
Ukraine doesn't want to cut of Europes supply of Russian gas until they are ready.
Russian gas transits via Ukraine but it remains to seen how long that will last for.
Yeah, but us humans live in that environment. I wonder hoe many years less life expectancy will be thanks to lignite burning and breathing in that coal dust.
Didn't happen. It's still being used but it didn't replace nuclear, lignite use is down, it was roughly constant until 2018 and is in decline since 2019.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
Except the global dip during Covid, development is either stable or slightly increasing. A 50% drop in production sounds like a strong claim, requiring equally strong sources to back up.
For all of these industries, you need a critical mass of specialists and capital, and so they can only be captured by very large companies. (Although SMBs can survive in some parts of the value chain, which is where Switzerland seems to live.)
Americans (and the PRC) are very good at creating large new companies. Europe not so much - we have the money and universities, but also a lot of German Angst and a complicated internal market, not to mention heavy regulation.
Being around startups, I’m also pretty surprised how unsophisticated many EU investors are - good ideas get severely underfunded, while everyone piles into random ML and crypto scams, only to loose all their money.
Over time, this adds up to missing growth compared to the Americans. And we're so used to being rich that we can't conceive of what the continent will look like once the money is gone, so long-term economic outlook doesn't get much attention from the electorate.
That said, yes, the startup scene in the EU is ridiculous, both investors and startups are subpar. There's too much nepotism and cronyism, entrenched interests, and other barriers to adoption for most products and services, and there's absolutely not enough capital for doing proper R&D, marketing and building a sustainable revenue stream.
Being the place where the modern world is designed means you get a say in how it runs. If we give that up, it'll be the yanks' world - we'll just live in it.
And similarly for chip foundries. Of course with chips the real trick is that the foundries depend on Europe due to ASML, but yes, your general point stands, and it's important.
What doesn't make sense is to prop up "domestic" companies that - in theory - play the same role in the global supply chain, but when actually it's time for them to step up, they just fell over and the whole things turns out to be three crony ducks, drunk on fancy local wine, playing big business.
There's no need to get the bleeding edge node factory here, but there's many advantages to having some capacity of the already well-understood high-efficiency high-productivity node here.
There's plenty of endogenous and unmet demand in Europe, but there's a lack of culture of providing long-termish solutions for it. (As in the EU funds very short-termist things, and there's the continuously ongoing land subsidy problem.)
This could just as easily be a graph exploring the effects of the pandemic. I doubt Germany’s last tick would be in that direction were it not for the pandemic, for example.
That's insane. AFAIK, Anesthesiologists in the US make $400k/year MINIMUM.
(I redacted their name to prevent them from backlinking to this site.)
In practice of course Brexit has done no such thing as the immigration rules in the UK are still optimized for mass immigration, as the Conservatives are so much not xenophobic that they prefer to enrage their own voter base than restrict immigration by even small amounts.
As for healthcare spending, the massive jump in NHS spending during the pandemic more than consumed the former EU contributions. The EU funds did indeed go to the NHS and then a lot more on top. If the UK was still paying in, then inflation would be even worse.
the guy in 51k probably just started in the job.
https://www.bmj.com/careers/article/the-complete-guide-to-nh...
The doctor quoted will likely be ST3 band, which means they've completed a 5 or 6 year medical degree, and then been a full-time "junior doctor" working in a hospital for 5 further years.
Doctors in the NHS are horrifically underpaid, and especially post-brexit there's a growing exodus to higher-paid countries (Australia, New Zealand, USA...).
Seems dubious and based of a drop of 3% or so in real incomes between 2019 and 2022 caused by covid and the Ukraine war raising energy prices. Those are mostly over now - covid and the energy prices - and Europe will recover.
[1] - Rapport Pisani-Mahfouz https://www.strategie.gouv.fr/publications/incidences-econom...
Since Jeff Bezos moved to our village, we're all multi-millionaires on average.
Funny anecdote, but realistically how many ultra-wealthy like Bezos live in neighborhoods poor enough to significantly, distorrt the localc market? I think you'll find the ultra wealthy generally live in similar locations, seme as the poor, same as the middle class, and that goes in every country, from the US to France.
In Austria, the top 100 richest families own 2/3 of the country's wealth, and spoiler alert, non of those are recently minted tech billionaires, but wealthy heirs from land and 100 year old businesses.
https://genius.com/Gina-rinehart-our-future-annotated
https://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2012/02/15/3431797.htm
estimated net worth > $27 billion.
No they aren't. Western European countries are getting access to the eastern european consumer market to sell their products, and to the cheep Eastern European resources, products and labor to prop up their shortages for industry, labor and social services at the expanse of their own, through the EU common market. It's why Eastern Europe now pays the same or more for food and energy than Germany when it used to be significantly cheaper.
There's no free lunch here. You're making it sound like westerners are directly putting their money in our pockets. I checked my pockets and I don't have any western money in them. Your comment sound like your average fake Brexit propaganda.
However, the funding of the East is spread across the complete taxpayer via EU contributions, which is in effect, a tax.
They also can afford elderly care and nursing because they can pay Eastern European workers less to suplement their ageing demographics and the shortages in their social care system, along with other lower prestige jobs that the locals don't want to do but are still necessary for a functional society (cleaners, delivery drivers, plumbers, builders, landscapers, etc).
You're making it sound like the money going to eastern block EU is hand outs. It's not. You're just misinformed or delusional. The money going to the eastern block for their development means more eastern consumers buying more western goods and services, which means more tax money and jobs in western countries. It means more labor competitive manufacturing so stuff can be made competitively in the union instead of manufacturing being offshored to China.
If you don't see these benefits, why don't you vote to leave the EU, maybe you'll see them then? Because it seems like you only want to have your cake and eat it too.
"The money going to the eastern block for their development means more eastern consumers buying more western goods and services, which means more tax money and jobs in western countries."
> Like when Poland buys American fighterjets rather than French or German one, or when Croatia has China build the Dubrovnic bridge - https://www.politico.eu/interactive/connecting-croatia-on-a-... ?
Why aren't you (or any other western EU country) leaving the EU if you feel like it's so bad for you and those lazy poor Eastern Europeans are dragging you down? Because it seems like you're the only one with this opinion so you must know some secret of prosperity the others haven't found out, including the UK.