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Comment by whimsicalism | Hacker News Reader

I think the EU is increasingly aware of its faults, especially in Germany & France. Happy to watch them cook and I say that as an American who has watched on with pain at what the EU has done to itself over the last decade+.

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Are their people worse off?

I can't speak for France, but for Germany, unfortunately, by most metrics that matter (affordable housing, infrastructure, subjective well-being, energy costs, labor markets, etc.) compared to 20 years ago, yes. However, compared to most other countries, Germany is still doing quite well. So it all depends on the context for how you interpret the data.

[1] https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2024/03/27/germanys-rea... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_economic_crisis_%282022...

It depends on what you are looking at.

For example there is increasing consensus that Merkel's "black-zero" budget requirements set the stage for today's collapsing German infrastructure and lack of productivity growth due to decreased public investment.

Think it has much more to do with traditional EU regulator attitudes around the dual of labor & capital markets. Both are very dysfunctional in Europe, with labor probably slightly edging out in terms of dysfunction.

thats also not helping, but it's not exactly a secret that German public infrastructure from roads to rails to electricity and whatnot are also all crumbling.

it's hard to build infrastructure when you have dysfunctional labor markets & your tax base is declining in real terms.

The black zero literally means that in real terms they have been decreasing government investment for years now.

"You eventually run out of other peoples' money"

And wait till the EU starts paying it's own defense bills without the US, which is what it wants to do. But with money from where? Education? Healthcare? Welfare?

I'm thinking about things like life expectancy, infant mortality, maternal mortality, health care, violent crime, suicide, incarceration, traffic safety...

According to this article, the answer is yes:

https://www.wsj.com/world/europeans-poorer-inflation-economy...

In my view, yes - especially when you subset to native born populations. Many europeans are a proud people though so I understand this is contentious, regardless of what the numbers say.

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