Just think about healthier food, walkable cities, great public transportation, safety, free education and healthcare. The way I see it, life in Europe is less stressful and more enjoyable than in the US.
Having less money translates into having a smaller house or a car, but in my opinion that doesn't make you any less happy. You just need enough to live comfortably, which especially in tech is not that hard, and then you can focus on whatever gives your life meaning.
At some point, you need to have the mean to finance these services, so stagnating GDP is not that good.
Edit: I suppose it isn't just the transit and the architecture and the safety that's the draw. Many in America, even if they're "conservative" (whatever that means today), are willing to pay more in taxes if it means free health care and a functioning bureaucracy.
Next will be Kier Starmer for Labour who main promises seem to be to keep the policies of the incumbents.
(Health used as an illustrative area but this applies across the board).
Shouldn't a stagnating GDP translate to a stagnating quantity/quality of services? If things are getting worse while GDP stagnates, it appears that there is a gross mismanagement of the same amount of resources.
And I'd dare to say, that this mismanagement typically boils down to the privatization of (previously) predominantly publicly-operated sectors. A soon as the publicly-operated provider shuts down, profiteering starts.
I understand that you are in tech and are happy with your position, but consider the lives of millions who are unemployed, or those who can't afford to turn their AC on or fix their car when it breaks down. Not to mention how much prices have increased.
The last city I lived in the US was Seattle and there were people doing drugs on the streets in middle of the city and cops just walked by. Many homeless people actually have a job. Healthcare is insanely expensive. Education costs are a joke.
I'm not saying everything is great in Europe. The original point I was trying to make is that comparing salaries/wealth alone completely misses the point. Quality of life is more complicated than that.
They’ll mention how about they have great cities/safety/etc but you’ll notice they never say which city/country exactly they’re talking about (as in let’s pretend all of Europe is Switzerland)
> walkable cities, great public transportation, safety
These are great upsides for sure, no arguments
> healthier food
As I said, only if you can afford it. I would guess about 70-80% of the population can't - they shop at discount grocery stores and get cheap foods, usually of terrible quality
> free education and healthcare
Healthcare is a sham. Pray that you don't need anything 'complex' ever. The GPs will talk to you for 2 minutes max, tell you something generic (go rest, green tea, ibuprofen) and tell you to be on your way. Getting appointments at specialists usually takes weeks on average and can often take months. It's very good if you have a costly treatment for a chronic disease, however.
Education is severely underfunded and getting your kids into a good kindergarten is a massive undertaking, especially in a large city. You have to start usually an year in advance. Higher education, while free, is likewise underfunded (look at any university rankings for research output)
The collapsing population means that the pension liabilities of countries are growing quickly and pretty much everyone who's working age today should expect their pension to only cover 25-50% of their living costs. But, no one's saving anything and people don't seem to realize this fact.
Yes the quality of life is decent - for now. The trajectory of many things that make it so however appears to be going downhill. The worst part though that that most europeans have their head in the sand about it and as a result, no one's pushing for any changes.
I love living here but for all the things I said before, I don't think I'll stay.
No, it doesn't. I live in Austria and as a tech worker you're not in the 5-10% income. As a tech worker you earn as much as the unionized tram-driver, ~2500 Euros net/month.
Also, INCOME != WEALTH. It takes time and a big income to build wealth and we don't have that, and most wealth here is inherited cross-generation via zero-inheritance taxes. There's people making minim wages spending all day smoking weed and walking dogs, who's families own entire apartment blocks and several houses, yet you'll pay way more taxes than them and be financially less well off.
If you move here for work, the high taxes, low wages means you won't build any wealth (legally).
I agree with your other points. All the great social services in Europe are underfunded relative to their usage.
It is more like no house and no car. Prices of cars increased with 50 % .
So has real estate.
As someone who had a chance a decade or so ago to emigrate to the EU from the US, I regret not doing so every time I hear of a school shooting or visit the EU and see how much actual health/enjoyment for normal people I see over there that's not visible here.
Europe isn't a country. Where exactly in Europe did you move?
Btw, the main reason people think European food tastes better than US is because we enrich our flour with extra nutrients. You just don't like the taste of iron.
Fridge - regular sized ones (that is, full height) are not uncommon
AC - not a problem in the hotter places and it is getting better in the not so hot places (also if you're booking an Airbnb definitely check this)
"oh but the dryer doesn't do anything" it absolutely does, for most of them select the 'Iron' or 'Cupboard' level of dryness instead of the time. It does take a long time, so just throw it in the night and have a day/night or peak electricity contract. Unless you're overloading it or think someone would go out in 5C/40F weather with humid clothes
> The French are eating less foie gras and drinking less red wine.
foie gras involves torturing animals, and drinking less alcohol is healthier, so good for them!
> Across Germany, meat and milk consumption has fallen to the lowest level in three decades
yes, more people are eating less meat - good for them and for the environment!
> TooGoodToGo, a company founded in Denmark in 2015 that sells leftover food from retailers and restaurants, has 76 million registered users across Europe
using food at or past its sell-by date instead of throwing it away? Now we can't have that, can we?
At this point, I was waiting for a line about how so many of these poor, poor Europeans are now forced to use bicycles or public transportation, which must surely be because they can't afford a car or the gas prices. But luckily it didn't come (except for the poor woman who has to "share a car with her partner’s father").
She's volunteering at a food and clothes bank and noticed the increase in demand; even from the working class, the struggle is real. And, pardon me for the directness, but your patronising tone really isn't helping workers get on the side of what you see as "good".
I am a registered user and never used the service. I just forget.
As for "having smaller houses", that's not as much because people are earning less, but because housing prices have exploded recently - that's a real problem that the article completely fails to mention, because it doesn't fit into its narrative (it also happens in the US).
The struggle is real for non-wealthy everywhere as more and more is owned by fewer and fewer people. To paraphrase William Gibson: "the future is here, just unevenly distributed".
I would suggest that europeans try and work together in some sort of union of cooperation and mutual respect. If there was such a union then certainly the whole continent might fare better. Just a thought.
And pay no taxes.
In short, the article uses some nice ancdotes, throws in special cases, puts some statistics and numbers (without additional explanation of how those numbers are calculated) on top of all of that only to justify the narrative behind the headline. So, all the mortal sins (in my view) of numbers heavy journalism in one place.
Not that everything is rosey over here, but Europe is far from poor. And for some reason, we didn't have a recession yet neither. The article is well in line so with a lot of others pushing the narrative of neo-liberalism being the only saviour of a Europe on the brink of collaps (only a slight exageration).
I was visiting a med island recently with both Americans and Europeans, it was evident how wide the income gap was becoming. The American members of our group, working in comparable positions and industries, had significantly more spare cash than their European counter parts.
I honestly hope that Europe addresses this lack of innovation and economic decline instead of just propping failing industries. Although it's important to recognize that the issue is not just bureaucratic. It's more deeply rooted in mindset and creativity — which is arguably much harder to overcome..
Unfortunately, creating an environment that encourages innovation, startups, and tech adoption isn't particularly straight-forward (especially if you're behind). It requires a cultural shift, coupled with decent policies and investment in top-level education
What's missing is investment to increase productivity of costly public services. Sure there are billions of funds spent every year on "economic activity encouragement", but as you mention it just ends up propping up failing businesses.
Basically the healthy nice cities are still in a big ugly messy transitory phase. Trains as still fucking expensive and slow, so people fly and drive a lot. (Integrated ride sharing and overnight train service would be nice, etc.) And of course there's the issue of housing.
Pretty much yeah, but is it a surprise that people vote to keep their cushy standards of living from the past?
Sure, none of those voters cares that the economic landscape has changed since the boomer times when Europeans companies ruled thew world and brought in the most profits and tax revenue, which allowed easy funding of the generous welfare system we enjoy, except that now we're not producing the same amount of money to still afford this lifestyle, so something will have to give, since the current trajectory seems to be ever increasing taxes on labor to fund welfare, while economic prosperity and competitiveness declines.
However, it means that Europe should invest more in nuclear and renewables to stay relevant. But the war in Ukraine is not helping I guess.
But the 2008 vs 2023 comparison is really sobering.
And before someone accuses me of not badmouthing "the enemy" enough, know that even Ukraine is still importing billions worth of Russian gas and petrol products and thus financing the war against itself. Funny how that works.
For all of these industries, you need a critical mass of specialists and capital, and so they can only be captured by very large companies. (Although SMBs can survive in some parts of the value chain, which is where Switzerland seems to live.)
Americans (and the PRC) are very good at creating large new companies. Europe not so much - we have the money and universities, but also a lot of German Angst and a complicated internal market, not to mention heavy regulation.
Being around startups, I’m also pretty surprised how unsophisticated many EU investors are - good ideas get severely underfunded, while everyone piles into random ML and crypto scams, only to loose all their money.
Over time, this adds up to missing growth compared to the Americans. And we're so used to being rich that we can't conceive of what the continent will look like once the money is gone, so long-term economic outlook doesn't get much attention from the electorate.
That said, yes, the startup scene in the EU is ridiculous, both investors and startups are subpar. There's too much nepotism and cronyism, entrenched interests, and other barriers to adoption for most products and services, and there's absolutely not enough capital for doing proper R&D, marketing and building a sustainable revenue stream.
Being the place where the modern world is designed means you get a say in how it runs. If we give that up, it'll be the yanks' world - we'll just live in it.
This could just as easily be a graph exploring the effects of the pandemic. I doubt Germany’s last tick would be in that direction were it not for the pandemic, for example.
That's insane. AFAIK, Anesthesiologists in the US make $400k/year MINIMUM.
(I redacted their name to prevent them from backlinking to this site.)
the guy in 51k probably just started in the job.
https://www.bmj.com/careers/article/the-complete-guide-to-nh...
The doctor quoted will likely be ST3 band, which means they've completed a 5 or 6 year medical degree, and then been a full-time "junior doctor" working in a hospital for 5 further years.
Doctors in the NHS are horrifically underpaid, and especially post-brexit there's a growing exodus to higher-paid countries (Australia, New Zealand, USA...).
In practice of course Brexit has done no such thing as the immigration rules in the UK are still optimized for mass immigration, as the Conservatives are so much not xenophobic that they prefer to enrage their own voter base than restrict immigration by even small amounts.
As for healthcare spending, the massive jump in NHS spending during the pandemic more than consumed the former EU contributions. The EU funds did indeed go to the NHS and then a lot more on top. If the UK was still paying in, then inflation would be even worse.
Seems dubious and based of a drop of 3% or so in real incomes between 2019 and 2022 caused by covid and the Ukraine war raising energy prices. Those are mostly over now - covid and the energy prices - and Europe will recover.
[1] - Rapport Pisani-Mahfouz https://www.strategie.gouv.fr/publications/incidences-econom...
Since Jeff Bezos moved to our village, we're all multi-millionaires on average.
Funny anecdote, but realistically how many ultra-wealthy like Bezos live in neighborhoods poor enough to significantly, distorrt the localc market? I think you'll find the ultra wealthy generally live in similar locations, seme as the poor, same as the middle class, and that goes in every country, from the US to France.
No they aren't. Western European countries are getting access to the eastern european consumer market to sell their products, and to the cheep Eastern European resources, products and labor to prop up their shortages for industry, labor and social services at the expanse of their own, through the EU common market. It's why Eastern Europe now pays the same or more for food and energy than Germany when it used to be significantly cheaper.
There's no free lunch here. You're making it sound like westerners are directly putting their money in our pockets. I checked my pockets and I don't have any western money in them. Your comment sound like your average fake Brexit propaganda.
However, the funding of the East is spread across the complete taxpayer via EU contributions, which is in effect, a tax.
