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Comment by NeverFade | Hacker News Reader

The only problem with this model is that it doesn't seem to be working long term. Economically, Europe has been stagnating for a long time, and recently its been in a decline. So it's a nice model as long as you can maintain it, which doesn't seem to be very long.

https://archive.ph/5eZjb

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The linked article shows that Europeans are only becoming poorer since 2018, so the last 5 years.

The reasons offered are demographics, valuing free time, the pandemic and the Ukraine war.

This hardly suggests that the problem is the pooling of wealth or that it is not sustainable long term.

Their economy was stagnating for at least a decade before 2018. They've gone from near-zero growth to negative. It doesn't matter what the reasons are, really. The pandemic hit everywhere, and their choice to "value free time" is the problem here. Turns out you can't sustain a high quality of life without enough people working hard to produce the products and services that create this high quality of life.

Where’s the evidence Europe is failing to maintain it quality of life?

You’ve implicitly supposed that quality of life can’t be maintained without economic growth, but have provided no evidence or rationale for such a claim. Quality of life measures seem to indicate things are getting better not worse in Europe, and is leagues ahead of the U.S.

Yet if you look across the EU it's the richest countries that work the least hours. The people working long hours don't seem to be getting much benefit from it at all.

You seem very confident that the economic problems are entirely due to valuing free time.

Do you have any evidence to back up this assertion, or is it just instinct?

It depends on what you value, right? There are hard limits on the number of people any plot of land can handle and feed. Stagnation is probably a good thing. Always “doing more” isn’t always a good thing. It’s not a zero-sum game where there is some kind of competition.

Stagnation isn't "a good thing" when you're comparing to societies that are progressing. And it may be a zero sum game, when stagnating nations are drained of talent and brains, so this model is even less sustainable, as anyone who can do better leaves, and the rest are left to support those who don't do particularly well.

Yes, but what is “progress” right now? Move to a country where you can make infinite money (a gamble) but lose it all as soon as you get sick? Or move to another one where every move is monitored and watched? Or where you need a phone to do the most basic things, where you are stranded with no way to eat until you charge your phone?

Progress may not always be good, at least in today’s times it basically means “more efficient extraction of wealth from the middle class”.

Let’s assume what you’re saying was true: doing less is better. Well just mechanically, a “evil” society that does more will attract more labor and capital than one that doesn’t. Any area of competition except “goodness” will be won by the evil country, such as space races, weapons development, and new technologies. That means the society which chooses to do less will be culturally, technologically, and militarily at the whims of the evil society. So the power dynamic will definitionally belong to the doing more society at the expense of the doing less one, and in the final state the goal of goodness by doing less has failed. This is a contradiction disproving the assumption .

Does a society “doing more” actually attract talent? I left one of those countries and essentially being called a 100x dev (not my words, I’m not convinced). I have many friends also leaving that country to come to the EU… so, I’m not sure that part of your premise is valid.

Sure if you can find a geography where your benefits are greater than your costs compared to a different, by definition that is doing more - efficiency is great. Reducing costs doesn’t always mean a net reduction in output; if I can work 1 hour a day and earn enough to fill my remaining hours with happy activities, that’s clearly less productive than working 8 hours a day and not having time to do what I want. Of course usually what happens for many people is they work less, get less, and don’t find a way to happily use the free time. That’s why people are constantly trying to migrate to countries with relatively higher productivity. Obviously not your case.

> Economically, Europe has been stagnating

thats since 2008, when ECB and most of european governments have decided to go full Aysterity and cut all kinds of investments. Prior to this idiocy EU economy was actually larger than US economy.

These ecents are notbrelevant to the taxation model, which predates them by decades

The EU economy fell way below the US (after being roughly equal) because they were never able to compete in the new digital economy. All the big tech companies are American. You also have to ask yourself why the ECB and European governments had to cut spending. Perhaps because the levels before weren't sustainable? Perhaps because you can't just keep living beyond your means, as eventually you'll run out of other people's money?

It is now pretty much accepted that the European reaction to the financial crisis was massively worse than the American. A big and expensive error can have long lasting effects - perhaps no need for beyond means, digital etc. but that is rather a result not a cause.

The big and bad error that caused European bad reaction to the financial crisis was the introduction of common currency. Eurozone does not form Optimum Currency Area, under Mundell's definition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimum_currency_area), so any significant crisis is made worse by "asymmetric shocks".

I disagree with that, the policy errors where far more direct (and well analyzed). For example: poor bank recapitalisation, wrong incentives about balance optimization, ECB even raising rates in the beginning of the GFC

"Full austerity" is wildly hyperbolic. Here's EU government spending as share of GDP: https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/government-spend...

Try to click on MAX and spot when governments went "full austerity".

What austerity? In Spain’s case, both debt to GDP and tax revenue to GDP ratios has been increasing since a decade ago. That’s the contrary of austerity.

tax revenue to GDO? how is that relevant to government cutting spending? I never said they've cut taxes.

If economy collapses, state recenues drop, ofcourse debt will grow

> it doesn't seem to be working long term

Define "Long term", it's been working pretty well for over a century.

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