Economic growth is stagnant because energy production and energy import are stagnant. This has little to do with policy. It's 2011 all over again, when we heard all sort of 'southern Europeans are lazy/corrupt' and other shit. I even bought it like a good child. No. Southern Europeans economies used to depend a lot on north sea and Sahara oil and gas, and the reserves (and production) started declining in 2008 and 2010 respectively. Only oil producers, Russian clients and 'nuclear-based' economies managed to avoid crisis.
What is funny now that everybody speak about how Germany economy is in crisis. Well yeah. Same causes, same consequences.
I really don't see how it seems no one gets it. I understand politics wanting to grandstand and explain how growth is caused their policies, but I mean, the data is available. And we have panda. Look at oil import data from Italy then look at growth, from 2010 to 2012,its obvious one of the two is driving the other. Check the other 'PIGS', it's the same.
> you'll be working right up until our government mandated retirement age
As will an american, unless they're going to go without healthcare? Unless you're doing some _wild_ saving, paying for health insurance as you age is going to necessitate working. Health insurance for a couple (assuming you can get it and it covers anything that you might have wrong) is about the same cost as my mortage here in the UK.
It's also not a government mandated retirement age, it's the age that the government will provide financial support to you. It's feasible for someone on a median income in the UK (where I live) to retire before they hit 66, as long as they prepare. Someone making a median income in the US is unlikely to be able to.
> which is increasing
Again, technically true but also misleading. It's not just steadily increasing, there's only so far it can go. The equivalent age in the US is already 70, fwiw.
> Our economic growth across the EU is stagnant
The horror. Personally, I'll take stagnant economic growth over statistics that get pumped by tech firms that are richer than entire countries in europe - Microsoft and Apple are individually worth more than Italy.
> These are not things to be celebrated.
US cost of living is skyrocketing (they're behind us at the moment, but their COL was already higher so the comparison is tough). Inequality levels in the US are still wildly higher than anywhere in europe (even the UK), the US has massive social problems that don't exist on the same scale here, etc.
These are not things to be celebrated either.
But then again, you don't blow half your salary in health care, don't risk having to claim for bankruptcy every time you get in an ambulance, you have access to the highest quality of education for basically free, and many others. You are also in an incredibly privileged job. In the real world, the US has a higher poverty rate than Germany does.
>you'll be working right up until our government mandated retirement age
So will most americans. And many of them will keep working past that age, because their pensions does not afford them basic living conditions. Just because you work in an extremely privileged sector where some of us can retire at 40 and do cocaine all day long doesn't mean the rest of the world can. Have some empathy.
>Our economic growth across the EU is stagnant.
growth growth growth must growth growth good growth necessary. This is the behaviour of cancer, not of an organised society.
>These are not things to be celebrated.
If you are unable to see anywhere past 5 meters in front of you and half an hour in time, indeed. For anyone with an inkling of reason an empathy, Germany is, objectively, a better place to live in in average than the US. And this is coming from a neighbour that can find plenty of reasons to shit on Germany.
In the US, most highly-skilled senior engineers will be multi-millionaires in their 40s which means that they can immediately retire and pay out of pocket for private health insurance covering the entire family without even making a dent on their principal. Even if that wasn't an option, one can get health insurance via one's spouse or work a few hours part-time for an employer that provides it.
I retired in my 40s and spent the last 10 years living in both the US and multiple European countries (with a lot of time spent in Germany as I have family there). While I've so far enjoyed living in Europe, the worsening downward slope in quality of life is more obvious here than in the US. Unrestrained immigration is a big problem that's going to get a lot worse in the next decades and is already rapidly eroding the much praised European social safety nets.
Ultimately, US offers optionality which means that one isn't chained like a slave to a grossly inefficient disintegrating socialist state for the rest of one's life.
What about the less capable though? Do we just forget they exist?
I don't think this conversation is worth continuing if you consider the US a bastion of freedom and the entirety of europe being entrapped to socialism.
I don't think workers' rights movements and government policies that promote said rights are really centered around uplifting highly-skilled senior engineers. Certainly if you have in-demand talent, migrate to whatever country pays the most for it. You have that luxury
Cost of living is skyrocketing where in the US and to what degree higher than its EU equivalent? The EU has borne the brunt of inflation so I'm having a hard time seeing where EU citizens are paying less to live than Americans.
> The horror. Personally, I'll take stagnant economic growth over statistics that get pumped by tech firms that are richer than entire countries in europe - Microsoft and Apple are individually worth more than Italy.
Ok. Economic growth is not a vanity metric for pumped up tech firms to move the needle on. Economic growth has direct effects on comparative quality of life. Trying to make some other, vaguely conspiratorial, equivalence is ignorant at the least.
Alright, very small proportion of the population
>senior engineers
even smaller
>highly-skilled senior engineers
I cannot even begin to tell you how small of a proportion it is. By the way, you forgot a factor:
>highly-skilled senior engineers that happen to live in the right area (read: SF or NYC) and that are in the right domain
cool cool cool, so a few thousand people per generation can retire comfortably at 40. I'm sure the other 300 million of americans are happy to hear about that. Anything as long as you got yours, right ?
I can't think of an area of the economy anywhere that is more policy based than energy.
Do you ever give a thought to the vast majority of Americans who make less than you? Or even to the vast majority of tech workers who make less than you?
Comparing economic growth to cancer is extremely incorrect. Cancer grows unchecked causing pain and then death due to a failure of the body's regulatory system. Economic growth happens broadly because your population is growing and you are keeping up production per unit of labor and/or because you develop technology/business improvement that increases production per unit of labor. The latter causes abundance and better life for everyone (even when an outsized portion of the benefit is captured by the creator of the benefit) and the former keeps the standard of living possible for everyone and are very good things. If you want to talk cancer in economic terms that would be market power abuse, not growth. Market power abuse comes in the form of monopoly/oligopoly and the pricing power that situation allows and almost always slows growth (as the monopolist/oligopolist raises prices and decrease production to maximize profits).
In the context of a functioning regulatory system growth is extremely good. Right now governments fail at regulating by regulating both too much (try getting a new drug through the FDA for example) or too little (why hasn't microsoft, google, amazon, facebook, etc. all been broken up by antitrust regulation???). It is correct to lay blame on the regulator and incorrect to lay blame on growth.
Wait until you find out about Prop 13 and how that new 80 year old $1.5m house you bought costs 10x in taxes what everyone else on the block pays because they got there in the 70s and 80s.
Area more depending on policy: construction, food production, Healthcare, education, military.