Why is European productivity so poor and how can it be improved?
commission.europa.eu
commission.europa.eu
Please rename to "The future of European competitiveness: A competitiveness strategy for Europe" which is the name of the report. @dang
Mario Draghi wrote a report on European productivity and on why there is such a glaring disparity in productivity with the US.
Mario Draghi is an Italian economist and statesman, who was credited with saving the Euro back in 2012. He made a famous speech saying the European Central Bank would "do whatever it takes to save the Euro", which is credited which restoring faith in the European financial institutions underwriting the Eurozone.
Until 2009-11 EU productivty and GDP was broadly comparable with the US. In the 1990s/2000s Europe had a chance to compete with the US in IT but in todays world that has largely ended.
The chance of creating an European hyperscaler for cloud computing as an example looks to be extremely remote.
Draghi mentions that the educational institutions are not competitive enough and that captial markets need to be integrated. Also that Europe needs to give up trying to create a new Apple or Google and just focus on using the innovations generated by the IT revolution such as LLM's to just leapfrog into future industries and Green technologies.
To retain key competencies in cloud computing but not allocating billions in the hope of creating a trillion dollar enterprise.
What would any posters here propose? Please refrain from doomerism or that it is hopeless.
German leaders deliberately slowed innovation to make more money in the short-term ( oh wow, whaaaat? ) and capitalise on the data-hungry US economy whose people and last remaining noble characters have much less respect for privacy and security than their European counterparts.
All that is a great opportunity for journalists and buffs to investigate these European leaders cooperative networks, which are all tied tight in the US.
There is no room for Doomerism or hopeless talks. The path is clear and almost entirely disconnected from anything Europeans "have not" done or "have done" to end up in their position, which is also totally fine because there is no European or even German thinking or economic identity, not in the cities, not in villages [ exceptions exist of course ] and that's all because even educated voters have not realised who blinded them and how [ von der Leyen is just one boring example ] ...
30 years of making lots of money and despite great opportunity, this entire area hasn't changed one bit and the cognitive decline or rather lack of 'evolution' is brutal, which can be said about many places, of course, but it's almost shocking that it happened to the Germans.
So all in all, foreign money, lower supply chain quality, an even lower product quality, less privacy and security, lower educational levels in all generations and a cultural demise accelerated by The Rights deliberately misdirected focus ( kindly supported by the liberals and conservatives ) will open the continent up for all the ways that made America what it is now.
We are already seeing an increase in heavy drug use, more and more teens end up in psychiatric institutions and are fed meds that slow down their brains and organs. Hospitals are closing because no German with money cares about anything "German" or their "Heimat".
Meanwhile the US Military is increasing presence and infrastructure and we are all quite happy that they do. Something happened to the German population ( including immigrants ) and there's no reason to believe that the German or European rich will ever want to compete with the US anywhere. They compare themselves only to the bottom, only to whats below or behind them, it's funny.
They are perfectly fine winning against those with less opportunity/resources, even if that puts them far behind their actual competitors in terms of competence, business sense, strategy, and grandeur and beauty of their orbit/ sphere of control ( German: "Machtbereich" ).
So just spare peoples minds with nonsensical talk about
> European hyperscaler for cloud computing or
> Europe needs to give up trying to create a new Apple or Google and just focus on using the innovations generated by the IT revolution such as LLM's to just leapfrog into future industries and Green technologies.
There is a valid point to be made in that direction, which is that the EU economy is slowing down because the availability of fossil fuel has gone down (the peak for oil was around 2007).
Not saying that they have been making 100% the right choices, of course. Just that it is wise to consider that the economy relies heavily on the availability of fossil fuels.
We can inch towards clean energy, but destroying our industries does not help with that. It's very difficult to make wind farms if you don't have natural gas to heat up the iron.
Even if we would get a magical device that would generate infinite clean energy for free we would have a huge problem on our hands with the fact that everyone has gas boilers in colder countries and it's not certain if the current electrical grid could even sustain the load generated by all the new electrical heaters.
It looks to me that Europe(including UK) is having the most out of touch leaders it has ever had.
In terms of economy and climate, yes. In terms of biodiversity, we would still be in a mass extinction. But that's tangential to this post.
The fact is that we can't remotely compete with fossil fuels. Don't get me wrong: we need as much clean energy as we can find! But we also need to accept that it will not compensate fossil fuels. Which means that we need to organize our society to do less with less. Doesn't necessary mean less happiness (if we do it right). But less consumerism for sure.
Europe is forced to think about that right now, while the US are not. If Europe manages to handle their situation, then they will be in advance as compared to the US. Because the US will also most certainly reach a point were their fossil resources go down.
The problem is that it's hard to handle the situation if our economy is collapsing and we have no way to produce the stuff that would help us be less reliant on fossil fuel.
> Which means that we need to organize our society to do less with less. Doesn't necessary mean less happiness (if we do it right). But less consumerism for sure.
We can't even heat our homes without burning natural gas, some people use heating oil, some burn wood while many others have windows that were manufactured before I was born.
I don't think there is a way out for Europe at the moment, we need to depend on at least one country which we despise, burn oil and natural gas and very slowly become more efficient and less reliant on these. I am shocked to hear these talks about net zero when we still haven't managed to insulate all the homes and I don't think we are getting closer by destroying our economies as a matter of fact I'm certain that if you give people a few cold winters their favourite song might become "drill baby drill".
> I am shocked to hear these talks about net zero
I am not saying that we must detroy our economies in order to save the climate. I am saying that our economies are going down because we have less abundance of fossil fuels. Again: it is not a choice: we can't drill because we don't have the resources (otherwise we would, we are not better than the US in that sense).
Instead of dreaming of building US-like startups that produce a ton of useless stuff and make a ton of money, we should work on what matters: insulate homes, build sources of clean energy (nuclear plants included), improve public transports and active mobility, etc. There is a lot of expertise to develop there, and it is absolutely certain that other countries (including the US) will need it eventually. So it may even be good for the economy (and climate) to develop that kind of expertise.
I think it's not completely weird to think that it is related.