UK and EU are rich, even if their economy is not doing great.
But European salaries are stagnating and job security is dropping like a stone, while the cost of living is steadily rising. And public healthcare is getting terrible with months of wait for an appointment.
Spain is now used as example of a growing economy in EU but youth unemployment is high and rising and wages are peanuts compared to housing. A lot of native Spanish kids are just checking out. I guess the Spanish corporations and foreign investors are having a blast. And the boomers with their fat pensions and renting their real estate portfolio.
Of note, the same is happening even in China. I feel really bad for Gen Z.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_unemployment_in_Spain#....
Yes, cost of living got worse. This does not in any way make the EU poor.
Car discourse is another very good one. Apparently Europeans just really hate cars and take bikes/busses everywhere. They seem to genuinely believe that the US is the only country in the world with a car culture.
The richest Americans pay an outsized amount of taxes.
The upper middle class pays a very low tax rate. If your family income is less than $500,000 per year, your blended tax rate will be around 35%.
Europeans do pay taxes for their healthcare. You can't "hide" the taxes Europeans pay, that is illogical
Admittedly I did phone the surgery at 0800 to get it. But this is awful hyperbole.
Thatcher and the more recent 14 years of UK Conservative government seemed to have kicked it bloody and senseless like Alex and his droogs from the Korova Milkbar.
I often think the NHS was only founded as a result of the war, as an extension of the military and civilian healthcare needs for injury care. German bombers didn't respect the British class system.
No, but apparently you think that I think that. Perhaps you might like to work through that again ...
Leaving the state of the UK as a whole to one side, the NHS was actively kicked like a dog prior to Blair who did at least stop kicking it and attempt to reverse the decline with some, albeit limited, success.
Seems to be a postcode lottery
I see these uninformed comments all the time, and to be they suggest that the person in question has an intense ideological bent, but an aversion to evidence. As another commenter pointed out, a large amount of UK benefits spending (~£100bn) is on the state pension (the single largest benefit).
You are correct that there are a large number of economically inactive people in the UK (something like 20% of working-age people). We have had at least 50 years of government presupposing that the problem here is that these people are lazy, and a little stick will motivate them back to work. The mere fact that this has not worked (and we have tried it repeatedly) might suggest that the problem is a bit more complex than this.
One issue is that the general health of the population is very poor. Unfortunately, improving this is a very hard problem. I think people underestimate just how hard. If you could solve this, you would create hundreds of billions of pounds in value (I am not underestimating). Presumably some starting points would be working out how to lower the costs of fruit and vegetables and increase the cost of ultra-processed fast food. Not sure what else helps here. I would give this a read: https://billmitchell.org/blog/?p=61595
The other problem is that there are no jobs for the people in question, so even if they want to work (or are heavily incentivised to do so) they are not able to. The government can create some employment for these people, but a better vocational training system might help here.
The graft and living off printed money I do see is mostly in housing – people in the UK love to own and rent out houses. This means that (compared to e.g. Germany/Switzerland/Austria) there are very weak protections for renters. Additionally, when house prices are really high it makes it very challenging to build industries on top of this.
Britain has implemented a sugar tax, but I despair when even a right-wing governments attempt to make walking and cycling easier falls victim to culture war nonsense.
Of the others it's split between those who don't earn enough from work i.e. their employers don't pay them enough to live on so those benefits are essentially subsidising companies
And the other large chunk is people who aren't fit to work, this increased as a result of Covid but also the underfunding of health / social care by the previous government
The civil service isn't that big but the largest influx of people was caused by Brexit and the need to duplicate many of the things that didn't need to be separate when part of the EU
The people who've been living off printed money as those with assets, almost all the gains from the cheap money supply over the last 15 or so years has gone to the well off
It's hard to admit for French citizens but the EU significantly props up the French economy and reduces the structural issues of the country.
At least France has some things going for it, healthcare is still good, unemployment benefits are good, etc.
The UK has literally nothing to show for.
The top 8/51 states(+dc) generate 50% of US GDP, the top 3/27 EU generate EU.
The bottom half of EU states generate just 9% of EU GDP, but then the bottom half of US states generate 14%
How can you thrive and be competitive when your competitors in the far-east work for >60 hours per week with a solid ecosystem and generous support from the government?
I am specifically worried about the future of European engineering, unlike US you have much smaller capitals and moats. Many of the products are sustained mainly by legacy built by your predecessors.
If nothing changes then by next-generation most if not all would be devoured by chaebols, Asian Sovereign Wealth Funds, or American PEs. You'll have to work for >60 hours but they not you will enjoy the surplus. Take your poison.
Quantity has a quality of its own.
From an outside perspective it might appear like Europe is a true single market like the US but it isn't. Scaling to a European level isn't impossible but it is difficult. Some of that will just be difficult to do anything about, language, different cultures, etc. On the political side I'm sure there is plenty more the EU can do but I don't see the will.
Is it?
> Market fragmentation is a measurable phenomenon, as far as a language goes.
Market fragmentation isn't about language fragmentation – the EU has no single market for services currently, which means if you want to launch a product EU-wide you are effectively launching a product in 27 different countries. There is some harmonization, but not much. If you launch a product in the US you have a large fully harmonized single market.
https://single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu/single-market/ser...
They seem to have a lot of bases covered.