I'm not sure how any one these is going to change.
It's not a bug it's a feature. We don't want an American-style society. Current developments should be enough reason to understand why (and the understanding that Trump's backers are part of a huge group of people on the low side of the wealth gap). If anything we have too much of that already hence the rise of extreme right here too. It's a result of the austerity movements after the 2007 crash.
But this new regulation doesn't invalidate employee rights no. It's just about registration and incorporation.
At some point Europeans need to look in the mirror, and understand that the last 30 years has been a vacation, and even worse, there is now a whole generation who was born on vacation and thinks it's the norm.
We'll have to scale this up now but it is not a big problem.
Population collapse is a good thing. We already have too many people in this world, causing environmental and housing issues. We can't keep ever growing as humanity, stabilisation or even a reduction is very good. It'll cause some short term cash flow and elderly care issues but we'll deal with that.
And AI so far is more of a hollow promise and hype. It's not a race, the way America is approaching it it's inevitably going to lead to a bubble collapse.
Saw this yesterday related to nuclear deterrence in Italy.
Are you going to look me in the eyes and say that you, and your general Euro brethren, have been pushing for a greater defense budget at the expense of greater social program spending for the last 30 years.
Please, please make that statement. C'mon...
This is the same Europe that thought it would be a good idea to buy gas from Russia, the same Europe that thought it would be a good idea to have a fully American tech stack, and the same Europe (whose largest company is an automotive one) that is importing cheap Chinese cars.
Anything to avoid having to leave their 30 year vacation.
However I don't think we need a huge military in terms of boots on the ground. We just need a nuclear umbrella to avoid the likes of Putin to roll into europe. Most of our foreign military adventures were requested by the US and only about oil, not safety related. Even the nato article 5 afghanistan trip was completely useless (bin laden wasn't even there, afghanistan had nothing to do with the attacks and since everyone pulled out things are 100% back the way they were).
And yeah we bought too much American tech and chinese manufacturing (but so does America obviously). Cars aren't that important to single out, a lot of us don't even have one.
And Europe was a lot more socialist > 30 years ago. It's the last decades that the neoliberalists (including the EU itself which has strong neoliberal underpinnings) have been hollowing out social protections in favour of business.
This is what I mean when I say the US model isn't necessarily the best. Americans are often completely convinced of that, that there is no other way than ultracapitalism and heartless social policies. I absolutely don't agree there. The US is best at making some people insane amounts of money but it's not great for social cohesion and a decent life for everyone.
Unless your welfare state depends on a growing population. Which is the case in many EU states.
I'd also argue that overpopulation is not a problem in Europe.
It's going to hurt, but that's what happens when people don't look to the future and do everything out of greed. The sooner we stop population growth the better.
It's not all about economy and getting ever more more more like the US. I'm pretty happy living here and I would never move to the US. In fact right now I wouldn't even visit it but hopefully the status quo doesn't last forever.
And it's not all about business. But about people, the employees.
Everyone here is missing this critical point.
The USA does not value human life as having value itself outside of what someone can contribute economically. Everyone talking about GDP, and "missing out" on AI, tech, etc.
Life has value outside of economic contributions. It's not a matter of "missing out" it's different priorities and philosophies of how to structure a human society.
Endless growth is not sustainable, and the late stage capitalism happening in the US right now is not sustainable. Why would anyone want to model themselves after it, seeing all of its failures and the enormous wealth gap it has created?
It's good for billionaires but not for actual people that matter.
Running a business is not something everyone should have to do anyway. It's good if it's hard. That keeps the cowboys at bay.
I would never ever want to own a business. I don't need that uncertainty. I just want a stable wage.
The prevailing idea here is that the US is best at everything and its model will always win. But in reality it's been in decline for a long time and it's become a pretty toxic society I don't want to see here in Europe. Trump is only a symptom of that but not the cause. The real cause is a top layer (which many HN commenters are part of) that is getting ever richer and a huge disadvantaged mass that is stagnant or declining. Their anger is what drives MAGA. Also called late stage capitalism. Going even more capitalist is not the way to fix or prevent that.
Sure we can get society to pick up the tab but the problem is that those cowboys are even more incentivised to be risky then. There should be a penalty for them when it goes wrong.
> Europe seems to be 20-40 years behind the US in various economic and social developments
That's one perspective, another is that US is 20-40 years behind Europe because the average person can barely afford to stay alive in the US right now, which is much less of a problem in Europe. But it all depends on what you value, I'm not gonna say one is more "correct" than the other, we all have our preferences and so on.
I wasn't talking about values. Yours or mines are largely irrelevant.
40 years ago, much of the US economy was made of stable jobs. Contingent jobs used to be few, labour unions used to be much stronger. Europe is under the same economic pressures as the US, and it's slowly trending in the same direction, just with 20-40 years of delay.
The US's HDI (0.938) is comparable to New Zealand and Liechtenstein [0], and significantly above Austria's (0.930), France's (0.920), and Italy's (0.915) [0], and the EU's HDI is itself 0.915 [1] - this puts the EU roughly in the same position as the US almost 16-17 years ago [2] despite both having a similar population.
That said, once you break the 0.900 range, the differences are essentially cosmetic so Europeans or Americans saying either are significantly behind the other from a developmental metrics perspective is dumb and deflects from issues that exist in both the US and Europe.
[0] - https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/country-insights#/ranks
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_European_Union
[2] - https://globaldatalab.org/shdi/table/shdi/USA/?levels=1+4&ye...
The only large European countries with a significantly better iHDI are Germany and the UK.
All this does is justify the fact that most EU member states have taken advantage of the peace dividend at the expense of countries that have heavily invested in defense capabilities like the US, France, and Italy which fuels anti-European sentiment that turned into the current diplomatic crisis.
Back in reality, inequality doesn't have an obvious relationship with country size or power projection, countries with superior inequality-weighted HDI like Germany and Poland spend more of their GDP on defence than Italy and the strengths and weaknesses of America's business culture, labour laws, welfare state, privatised healthcare etc (higher incomes for many but lower baseline living standards) really don't have very much to do with its military spending. If Americans want their government to tackle inequality they should probably back candidates advocating European-style policy over candidates advocating anti-European sentiment.
That's not what I claimed. Europe is 20-40 years behind in how the social fabric is being destroyed, making everything precarious and lives shitty, stressful and meaningless. Many good choices in Europe have slowed down that decay, but I'm afraid it's just slowed, not arrested.
And it's not so much as the "peace dividend" helping Europe, but the opposite: the US have made themselves poor because with the same economic framework as today, the US would be in a much better position if it had an efficient healthcare system, instead of one that spends 2-3x the European average for worse outcomes, and if it didn't drive up the cost of living by allowing boomers to print themselves money by restricting housing construction though zoning.
I'm just talking about holland here but all over europe the conditions are similar.
All the exceptions you mention were just sly ways the companies have tried to circumvent their responsibilities and the law has caught up with regulations to make those impossible or at least impractical.
And there are some exceptions yes. But those are mostly for in-between gig jobs. Not for stuff people make a career out of.
Of course there are also exceptions with easy firing for things like gross negligence. Though the employee always has the ability to countersue.
After the first extension the worker will not be hired again.
> Agencies can not be used indefinitely
Yes they can.
> A company is also not allowed to make an employee 'self-employed' by making them start their own company.
Wrong. I've seen this happening personally.
> I'm just talking about holland here but all over europe the conditions are similar.
You're talking about what you think is happening in Netherlands, and the conditions in many places in the rest of Europe are not like that.
> But those are mostly for in-between gig jobs. Not for stuff people make a career out of.
Not yet.
If the USA is in decline you must consider Europe a failed state at this point then? Nearly every wealth inequality issue is worse in Europe then the USA. Youth unemployment has become a permanent fixture of society, your housing affordability crisis makes the USA look really good, most of your nations can't afford to keep social services at current levels and will be cutting them over the next decade, and you need to actually spend on military now that's just going to happen faster.
It's kinda funny by trying to avoid "late stage capitalism" the EU is going to force themselves into it as quality of life and global relevance continue to fade.
And no, wealth inequality is much higher in the US: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/wealth-in... . And those are averages, we don't have people making 100.000x more than others.
We also have wayyy less violent crime: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/violent-c... , and much less people in prison per capita
LGBTQ+ rights are way better covered here (with the exception of a couple countries that should really be booted out of the EU). Also really important for me.
We're doing pretty good, we will have some challenges going forward but that's always the case. Military equipment is something that we're now buying a lot from the US where prices are really high, and once we move that to European vendors we can get a lot more for the same money (this is similar to how Russia manages to have so much military power on a country with a GDP similar to Italy: they make it themselves with their own purchasing power).
The one challenge to the EU is not to fall into the austerity trap as they did in 2007 though. And we don't need so much. I don't need or want a car, a big TV, daily takeaway coffees etc. Less consumerism is also a good thing.
Absolute numbers don't matter as I was saying the issues caused by wealth inequality such as housing crisis are much worse in the EU.
> We also have wayyy less violent crime
Fair but I will say ours is very concentrated to specific areas / demographics so the average person rarely has to deal with that.
> LGBTQ+ rights are way better covered here (with the exception of a couple countries that should really be booted out of the EU). Also really important for me.
So they are worse?
> Military equipment is something that we're now buying a lot from the US where prices are really high, and once we move that to European vendors we can get a lot more for the same money
That's a two decade plus plan that hasn't even started and is already running into issues. Doesn't help that the EU needs weapons now not in 20 years.
> And we don't need so much. I don't need or want a car, a big TV, daily takeaway coffees etc.
It's one thing not to want it's another to not to be able to have.
Only lazy people want to be employed for life somewhere. All the benefits, no responsibility.
Only France really has a bit of the latter.
You can get rid of employees. You just have to show to the court that is necessary. Circumstances depend on whether it's individual performance or business need etc.
But the at will is very harsh and we don't want this here.
The most annoying people, which we didnt have many but still a few, are the ones who, right after the trial period, or when they smell a rat, will go 'oh no, i feel something behind my eye and in my wrist, your work made me ill' and then go home. you would have to pay them and be nice about it (not threaten them with a beating).
But this is the status quo in Europe. Companies are forced to take failure into account before they dive in deep, because it will cost them. Provide benefits for their employees, etc. This is good. Companies exist to provide jobs. Not only to make money for the owner and externalise all the negative effects on society.
I just don't understand the desire to turn the EU into the US. If you like how business in the US works, just start your business there, not here. Meanwhile I as a worker would never consider moving there. This way we can both get what we want.
I think it's safe to say that the one who starts something has the privilege to make the call on its purpose. And I'd bet most if not all people who start companies do so in order to make money for themselves, and providing jobs is a means to that end.
So, if a company could make profit without employing a single person, it would still serve its purpose.
There are plenty of workers that would not mind carring a little more risk in those companies for better pay, and those companies could offer better pay if not made to jump through loops.
Classic Example is the "Consultant" contracts.
Companies are paying through their nose to hire "consultants" because it's the easiest way they can try a new idea that might not work.
Company A pays Company B 1k/day for that "consultant", Company B does not have enough capacity so gets that "Consultant" from Company C for 700/day. Company C does the same and gets the consultant from Company D for 500/Day. Company D actually employs the consultant and pays him 200/Day. In this whole useless chain build to avoid the "can not fire even if your projects doesn't work" Both Company A and the actual Employee are losing big, Both would be much better having a direct contract for 500/day with the understading that this might not work after all.
Notice that for that Employee, stability is not there even now. yes he continues to be employed by Company D When Company A stops the contract but he is effectivly moved to another Contract with Company X. he is effectivly changing Jobs, new reposnsabilities, new collegues, new rules etc. only in the eyes of the state he is not changing jobs.
But from the perspective of the individual worker, a much more important continuity is the one of salary, insurance, and pension. This is the stability that the employee continues getting at Company D.
in the current scenario of contract works, the employee is getting all the negative effects of changing a job without any upside.
of course I am not talking about complete US style firing, but something in the middle. The option to fire with adequate notice let's say 3 months and adequate compensation, let's say 3 months of compensation after finishing your time. This way, the employee has 6 months of job Hunting, (I think that is a sweet spot to make it reasonable for both the company and the employee)
Companies also currently aren't completely banned from firing people. If and when they do, it can look like you described, with adequate notice and compensation.