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Comment by Dah00n | Hacker News Reader

Sure if you are Bezos or Musk. Otherwise, no.

Gdp grew much faster in the US than in the EU. I believe the EU is the worst performer of the planet. No joke. And not surprising with the self destructive actions.

This doesn't really refute what Dah00n said.

Sure, GDP in the USA is growing faster than the EU, but the question is who is benefiting from the increased GDP?

The answer is in Dah00n's comment. The rich are getting richer, while the population gets scraps. Meanwhile, people in the EU get guaranteed healthcare, paid time off, maternity leave, better worker's rights, etc.

> Meanwhile, people in the EU get guaranteed healthcare

They had that 20 years ago? Since then the rich asset owners have been accumulating a bigger share of the pie in the EU as well, it’s just marginally less pronounced because there is less wealth to go about in the EU due to the multi-decade long stagnation (outside Eastern Europe and a handful of other countries). On the whole I find it extremely hard to view this as a positive without a huge amount of wishful thinking.

People in the EU need to start thinking about how to improve things rather than exclusively focusing on holding onto what they already have (which is slowly turning into scraps..). To a large extent the old EU countries just froze in time after the GFC.

Because as everyone knows, GDP is _the_ indicator for well being of its citizens. Nobody in the US is in catastrophic health related debt, because the US's GDP grew so much <3

The median person and especially those in the top 10th percentile are fairly well off and respectively extremely well off in relative terms compared to people in other developed countries. To bottom deciles are of course not in the best situation but for the most part the rest of the population find it fairly easy to ignore that.

The GDP growing faster while quality of life doesn’t meaningfully improve is a bad, bad sign. It means we’re burning extra money just to stay afloat and break even. That’s worse than if the GDP didn’t grow.

The EU is doing just fine economically. It's a great place to live which matters much more than money. Also, the US has 40 trillion in debt. Every taxpayer owes $280k.

The EU is not perfect and recently they took a turn for the worse with shit like ChatControl and the ppwr killing small businesses.

But economically it's not a problem. It's not a race to be the richest, though America always makes everything a contest. We just need enough to live comfortably.

GDP should be retired. It has become a very polluted metric. The average american is not making $100k of wealth per year, not even close.

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