Well, there are things like universal health care and strong worker's rights in Europe, so you can't really let people think too positively about it.
At least, that's what the cynic in me thinks.
At least, that's what the cynic in me thinks.
Back in the 1990s and early 2000s productivity wise Western Europe and the US were almost on the same level. Look at the gap now..
> universal health care and strong worker's rights
And generally low wages and high living costs. e.g. real estate is about 2x cheaper in the bay area or SF compared to Paris for instance adjusted by median income, while London, Munich, Rome and some other major cities are only 40-60% more expensive.
Even with an outlandish welfare state the German Economy kept steady throughout the last decade or two.
But what really breaks the German economy‘s back is energy costs.
Germany’s capability to fund a massive welfare state stems from its large industrial base, which is very sensitive to energy costs.
It’s those blue collar jobs the are getting completely f-cked by the policies elected largely by white-collar workers.
Of course, I find USA's situation a bit more unstable because remote work is getting more common. How much is the premium for having people in the same physical location anyway?
Why is that unstable?
Some of the misgivings of living in US is balanced by the high wages (example: living in San Fransisco vs San Fransisco wages); effectively firms are subsidizing US education costs and healthcare costs via wages (instead of taxes). With remote work being more common, people can start living in lower cost, more tax-subsidized areas while also being qualified for the high wage jobs. After a while, San Fransisco firms might notice that they do not have to subsidize San Fransisco landlords in order to get good developers. They can instead give a little less wages to equally good developers who live in less costly areas. If the wages are depressed enough, living in US might not make sense at all; after all you need to pay for your children's school, have someone drive them everywhere until they are 16, and account for unexpected healthcare costs which are already accounted for in Europe.
> account for unexpected healthcare costs which are already accounted for in Europe.
If you’re a software engineering you’re likely to already have good enough insurance and can save at least 20-50k for any unexpected costs anyway.
In theory yes, in practice it doesn't look like it's happening. I haven't seen a massive boom of US companies opening up shop in my EU neighborhood.
Those who wanted to hire EU workers have been doing it already. Plus, why would San-Fran companies move to Europe when haven't even exhausted all lower cost areas in the US yet?
Operating in Europe and hiring here opens up a lot of headaches and liabilities, other than culture and time zone differences, that many US businesses don't like (sick leave, parental leave, taxes, labor laws, more taxes, etc). It's not as easy to hire here remotely as you think.
You need to have an legal entity in each EU country if you want to hire in every country, or, the usual M.O., you open a shop in Dublin, Berlin or Amsterdam and hope people from other countries can stomach the housing market and accept to move there, but unlike the US, you can't remotely employee people in an EU country while they live in other EU countries as labor laws, tax and social systems don't easily allow cross-border remote work as every country expects you live and work locally or use the cross border commuter policies but for that you need to live near the border anyway.
You can still account for all of those thing.
As far as schools are concerned it’s highly variable in the US. There are certainly some very good public schools just living expenses are also likely to be much higher in those areas.
> It's just about which tradeoffs you are willing to make.
So a country with highly accessible social services must also have a stagnant economy and unaffordable housing? I don’t really see the link..
Schröder's infamous Agenda 2010[1] that sought to crush unions power, workers rights and welfare programs, in order to force more Germans off welfare and taking poverty wages to pump up the economy. It pumped up the economy indeed but it didn't have the promised effect of increasing wages of living standards, quite the opposite, the rich got richer and the poor were poorer.
When they ran out of poor Germans to exploit, they turned to Eastern EU workers form Poland and Romania. As those markets are drying up of cheap exploitable labor as well, they invited workers from Africa and the Middle east to make dangerous journeys to come to Germany, hence Merkel's Germany's famous open borders "Willkommenskultur", despite backlash from other Schengen and EU members who's borders and asylum centers got overwhelmed.
The unpopular opinion that nobody is allowed to discuss is the country is unsustainably addicted to cheap immigrant labor for its exports to be competitive and to prop its over-inflated housing market. It's burning the economic candle at both ends to pump up the GDP.
Why are you assuming a victim stance and wrongly so?
Remember the Wickard scandal when the Financial Times uncovered their dirt and instead of the authorities looking at Wirecard they turned at the Financial Times as if they were trying to Financially destabilize Wirecard?
The same thing repeats itself on every issue in Germany, like this topic. Just look at the top comment: "Something negative about Germany in the WSJ? It can't be true, it must be WSJ trying to destabilize Germany". Everyone keeps doubting that Germany is ever doing something wrong and assumes by default that all negative news must be incorect or have an agenda.
So which one is it? According to you Agenda 2010 helped Germany to run out of poor Germans. And you are right -- from the introduction of Hartz IV, German unemployment permanently fell by over 6% -- despite the mass immigration that you are complaining about.
The rich getting richer in the zero-interest-rate decade is a global phenomenon - unemployment declining by these truly immense amounts very much isn't.