16 years ago, the EU and US economies were neck and neck. Now the US one is 50%>

Either this is a bad faith comparison, or there is some serious financial illiteracy involved.

2008 was the year the US dollar crashed. If you take 2008 as the baseline and measure things in US dollars, your conclusions will be nonsense. European economy was never as strong as the 2008 figures suggest. It was the time when the US had already been hit by the financial crisis, but nobody knew if it would hit Europe as well.

You get different results if you use 2005 as the baseline. Back then, the exchange rate was pretty stable for a while.

Or you could use 2002 as the baseline and get really weird results. When the euro became a real currency, it was often valued below $0.9.

Grass is always greener on the other side. Lots of Americans wish our country could take a few cues from EU regulatory frameworks and social safety provisions.

Editorialized a bit to have a clear title.

Brexit

This reads like a re-telling of Atlas Shrugged, dressed up for the 21st century but the causality runs from lack of government spending throughout the decades after the Great Financial Crisis. The EU deliberately chose to starve itself of government spending while the US swore off austerity after a very short period. The net result is a debt-to-GDP ratio for the EU around 89% while the US is at about 124%. So for all the clutching pearls about innovation and anti-capitalism, it really comes down to whether the state is prepared to inject demand into the economy via deficits - the US decided it was OK and the EU (mostly Germany) stubbornly stick to their "Schwarz Null" policy of balanced budgets.

Contrary to this thread, the EU needs more productive investment from governments, not less. And while we are it, the dystopian hellhole that the megacap growth tech companies have created in the US (and dominate valuations for the broad US indices) is something the EU should pat itself on the back for having missed.

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