Why is producing big companies a goal? High standards of living for all seems to a much better goal. And that can be done with small or big companies - so long as economic production is high enough and distributed well enough.
European economic production is nowhere near high enough and now Europe is struggling to provide for its aging population and doesn't have enough good jobs for younger people. I support redistribution generally, but the wealth has to be created first or there won't be anything to redistribute.
But those are all low-marin chips. Qualcomm, Nvidia, Intel, AMD and Apple have much higher margins on their chips. They don't bother competing with the EU chips companies.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F3PGpsrWEAEiplB?format=jpg&name=...
Unless you want to say that the US was much poorer in 2017 than it was in 2022 that's a fairly ridiculous statement.
Also, the highest productivity places in the EU have much lower hours worked per capita than the US, with Germans on average working 25% less than Americans and the EU as a whole working 13% less than the US.
European Union gdp per capita for 2022 was $37,433, a 3.33% decline from 2021.
U.S. gdp per capita for 2022 was $76,330, a 8.7% increase from 2021.
It's not even close?
World bank data in PPP dollars is reported as 64,600 vs 45,900 here:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?...
Germany is at 53,900 there, but a good chunk of the difference is simply that US works more per capita. GDP per hour worked is 74$ in the US vs 69$ in Germany, 53$ in Canada. Sweden is ahead of the US. And the EU also includes countries like Bulgaria, which at 29$ is barely ahead of Russias 28$.
https://data.oecd.org/lprdty/gdp-per-hour-worked.htm
France is at 65$ per hour worked, but Germany and France also have significantly lower poverty and inequality rates by any measure you chose, with France more equal than Germany.
The US, of course, remains the dominant economy of the world by any measure. There is no question of that. But the exponential nature of economics, and the structural differences between these different economies, means that GDP numbers compared directly are fairly meaningless.
Edit: That last sentence is too strong as stated. GDP obviously matters a big deal in the grand scheme of things, especially as you jump from lower or middle income to high income countries. But it's all logscale. A factor of 2 is a big deal, a factor of 1.2 might not be.
For example Ireland has by a long margin the highest GDP/capita in the whole EU, and it would make you think the average Irish worker earns more that any other worker in the EU and drives a Lambo, but that's not what's happening. It's because most US corporations funnel their EU money through their Irish holding companies skewing the statistic.
No, Luxembourg does.
Can't edit anymore, but: That were nominal numbers, and thus useless. See here:
Also in terms of tech innovation: What part of the US-based tech innovation couldn't have been (and actually were) achieved with open-source solutions many many years earlier for a fraction of the cost, if we didn't have copyright?
Honestly, a significant chunk of the "innovation" seems to relate directly to maximizing advertisement opportunities and inducing increased consumption. Who cares if a website takes a second to load rather than 0.1 seconds? If it has content I want, 1 second isn't a big deal. If I don't care about the content, I lose nothing by being distracted by something else in that 1 second.
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More importantly:
European Economic production isn't high enough... by what standard?
https://data.oecd.org/lprdty/gdp-per-hour-worked.htm
GDP per hour worked is 74 in the US vs 69 in Germany and 54 in the EU. And the EU includes many large countries that emerged from communist dictatorship only 35 years ago, and are very much still in the process of catching up. Incidentally, the German economy is the result of the West German economy with 63 million people absorbing a failing economy hosting 16 million people in 1990.
The idea that the US is some promised land of economic prosperity while Europe is falling is entirely absurd. It's a narrative built on small relative differences and a US system that pressures people into working a lot more than Europeans do.
More importantly, even GDP per Capita wise:
https://data.oecd.org/gdp/gross-domestic-product-gdp.htm
EU per Capita GDP in 2022 is the same as USA 2016. Was the USA in 2016 struggling but now isn't?
This is all bullshit. Economic output is more than high enough and rising steadily. The problem remains solely in the distribution of
Absolutely the US would be struggling if the GDP was still 2016 values with today’s costs.
So it boggles my mind that your parent tried to make a point by equating USA 2016 with EU 2022 GDP/capita as if nothing's wrong with that. Are some people that oblivious?
Nominal: https://data.oecd.org/gdp/gross-domestic-product-gdp.htm
PPP/Inflation adjusted not so much: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?...
But pretty much all countries are still well ahead of where we were in 2017. If you feel poorer than in 2017 it's because you're getting less of a larger pie, not because the economy is producing less than it did then.
> More importantly, even GDP per Capita wise: > > https://data.oecd.org/gdp/gross-domestic-product-gdp.htm > > EU per Capita GDP in 2022 is the same as USA 2016. Was the USA in 2016 struggling but now isn't? > > This is all bullshit. Economic output is more than high enough and rising steadily. The problem remains solely in the distribution of the ouptut.
The conclusion that economic output has been rising steadily, even in the last couple of years, is true. But the 2016 vs 2022 numbers are nominal, thus useless. There is a much more significant difference over time when working in PPP/Inflation adjusted numbers:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?...
The overall point holds though: The economic output of the EU is at 45K per capita today, the level of the US in 1997. The US was not a poor country in 1997. Germany is at the economic output per capita of 2009.
Did the US in 1997 suffer from the problem that it didn't produce enough economic output? Of course not.
And given that, adjusting for inflation, GDP per capita is at an all-time high, the conclusion that you're poorer because economic production is distributed to others is necessarily true. And it tracks, too. Corporate profits and the Dow Jones are not down. The already extremely wealthy have accumulated nearly two thirds of the new wealth being created since 2020:
https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/richest-1-bag-nearly...
> Billionaire wealth surged in 2022 with rapidly rising food and energy profits. The report shows that 95 food and energy corporations have more than doubled their profits in 2022. They made $306 billion in windfall profits, and paid out $257 billion (84 percent) of that to rich shareholders. The Walton dynasty, which owns half of Walmart, received $8.5 billion over the last year. Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, owner of major energy corporations, has seen this wealth soar by $42 billion (46 percent) in 2022 alone.
Given these facts, if we have to accept lower economic production in the name of a fairer distribution of economic production, that seems more than acceptable to me.
The only real answer is protectionism, and there's a good chance that'll hurt more than it helps.
Currently EU welfare systems are under massive strain and huge waiting lists due to ageing population and economy that hasn't kept up to fund it.
There's no free lunch here. You need big companies with scale that pay huge wages as those mean a lot more tax revenue. Saying no to that kind money out of some made up idealism is just silly copium.
The EU income taxes paid by a single FANG salary employee would be the equivalent of the taxes paid by ~10 average workers. Pretty sure Germany and every other EU country would like to have such taxpayers contributing into the welfare system and not say no to it.
Europe's share of global GDP gas been on a constant decline at the expense of US and Chinese growth. Yeah it's nice to have a better welfare system than China or the US, but how will you fund it in the future if you keep having less money? Political idealism doesn't pay your food and rent.