[serious] Why is EU stagnating and what could/should be done? (datasource: World Bank)

https://i.redd.it/x9nz3846tdqd1.png

Posted by DrMelbourne

33 Comments

  1. I would invite you to look at the same graph inflation adjusted. Also adjusted for the workforce. If I find it I will publish it. Anyway as a rough gist you have USA inflation significantly higher than EU, and this drive USA GDP up, and EU workforce shrinking while USA isn’t. Please note I expect both these effects to be significant and reduce the difference but not to change the sign or even approach it to 0

  2. According-Buyer6688 on

    A lot of things to explain.

    1. Measures are shown in current USD level. In 2008 you could buy 1,5 dollar for every euro, now 1,1.

    2. EU Companies didn’t adjust since 2008 so well.

    Mario Draghi specifically called the solutions. Merger of the major companies, stock exchanges and less regulations. For me the major problem is the capital collections in Europe. We have 14 major stock exchanges where as US have only 2. I hate EU commission for blocking merger of German Stock Exchange and British stock exchange. Just imagine to have a list where Shell, Volkswagen, HBSC and SAP are in one place. That would be a game changer.

    Hopefuly EuroCTP (which is a consolidation tape for our stock exchanges) started in 2023 and is projected to be ready in 2025.

  3. No-Confidence-9191 on

    The EU missed an entire ecosystem with big tech, Look at the Apples, Nvidias, Microsofts, Alphabets, Metas, even Amazon with his AWS service…

    The entire technology sector which makes up our everyday life works without meaningful European input. Yes, yes, we have the hidden champions and “the suppliers who supply the customers” and whatever, but we are nearly 20 years in post web revolution and see it no longer works as an argument.

    Now we have reached a point where this industry has developed their own sub-industries (think about the entire gig-economy) and branched out industries (AI).

    The US is willing to throw an obscene amount of money at new markets. The EU fails to even get the barebone fiscal union starting. We are just starting to see the decline of the EU. Things will get much worse, due to the issue of no unified policy also holds true for several other aspects (geopolitics, foreign policy, military, migration and security…).

    We, as in our generation of the 20-45 year olds or so, will be able to witness the decline but not really be all too affected by it (same with climate crisis), as we can eat well from the more or less heavy substance of previous generations.

    But the young europeans who grow up now? We may see others overtake us and decline, but they will never know something different. A lost generation.

  4. Stabile_Feldmaus on

    The countries with low debt to gdp need to spend more. 80-90% debt to GDP is reasonable. Apart from that, we need our own tech sector. This is the growth motor of the US economy. There are several ideas to achieve this: Capital markets union, allowing state health- and pension insurances to invest in venture capital, an EU stock exchange for start ups, protectionistic measures against US and Chinese tech giants to give young companies space to grow, an “ESA for AI” which is supposed to develop foundation models that are then commercialized by EU companies

  5. Americans are more die hard in their believe about growth/profit over everything else. European countries tend to also find human lives important 

  6. reduce regulation and buerocracy, get a common eu stock market to attract private investment capital. pause deeper integration for some years (except where necessary to achieve economic goals)

  7. How long have you got?

    Simple answer is: divergent economic models and a single currency – that’s the quick answer.

  8. Obvious_Claim_1734 on

    It is simple. All the biggest cutting edge tech companies are American.

    Eu doesn’t have that luxury. We have many bad business decision examples why. For example Nokia sold out and messed up their phone industry when smartphones were just coming out. Nokia even had the first touchscreen phone prototype if i remember right. The ceo at the time didn’t believe in the tech.

    Also we have not invested heavily into semiconductors much at all just yet, so far EU has been much more into traditional tech and industries.

  9. we just don’t have the same startup and innovation as the US, major tech companies: apple, amazon, netflix, etc are mostly american. European inventors leave the EU for the USA [(page 91)](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.30.4.83) . Why this is the case? i don’t necessarily know, possibly over-regulation in the EU, possibly lack of finance available in the EU, part of it may also be cultural, the USA might just have a more ‘risk taking’ culture when it comes to business.

    Secondly is language and immigration. The reality is that a huge portion of the world ( despite what you may see) would give up everything to move to the USA, this means that the US can basically choose it’s immigrants, and pick the extremely wealthy and educated ones ( who are also educated in english) meanwhile learning a language like Dutch, German, Swedish, etc is pretty uncommon in a lot of countries outside of the EU, all immigrants which know a european language typically know english so they’d rather just move to an english speaking country.

    Another reason i can think of, which ties into the first point is culture. When someone immigrates to the USA they know if they mess up welfare probably won’t save them, the US is still viewed as the land of opportunity, and the place where anyone can start a business and grow their wealth, which probably means the goals of immigrants coming into the usa is a lot different than ones immigrating to europe. Whilst the majority of immigration is beneficial, some ones are more so than others.

  10. Just a heads up. Just because ‘average’ goes up it doesn’t mean all benefit. And literally higher income doesn’t mean better as cost can outpace income gain

    Not to mention actual quality of life

    Plus, USA is gaining population much faster so growth has to be leveraged against other factors.

  11. I think because we reached our capacity in many areas (land, population, natural resources) 

    However, I really like Mario draghi solution on focusing on tech (part of his solution) 

    The workforce can work from home, doesn’t need raw resources, and etc. So I think it’s the best area for EU to focus on. 

  12. The biggest problems are very difficult to solve: 

    1. The EU is not as much of a single market compared to the US, due to different languages, governments, regulations etc. This makes it much easier for US companies (particularly tech companies) to quickly scale up in the US internal market, and therefore establish dominance. 

    2. Energy costs are much higher in the EU, because it doesn’t have the oil and gas reserves of the US (and Russian gas has been rejected / cut off). 

    3. Partly as a result of 1, the EU has almost completely missed out on the tech sector / internet economy with all the big companies being American. Other reasons for this include much more venture capital in the US, the environment of Silicon Valley, the wealth of US universities, and potentially more relaxed regulations. 

    4. The US government has far more money to stimulate / prop up the US economy, thanks to the US dollar being the global reserve currency. 

    5. The argument made by libertarian conservatives: the US has lower taxes and more business-friendly regulations (relaxed environmental rules, less worker protections, etc.) I’m less sure about this but it may play a role. 

    6. Problems compounding. Once the EU falls behind the US it is very hard to catch up, as US companies have achieved dominance and the EU has less money to invest / is less attractive to investment and start ups.

    I really see little hope of fixing these problems. 

  13. Tentacled_Whisperer on

    Disastrous US proxy wars. We’ve lost cheap energy and cheap raw materials, were flooded with refugees and major contributors like Germany are now deindustrializing.

  14. EU regulations is killing businesses, it is also not providing any funding to the small businesses there claim they are trying to foster. It is a little frustrating

  15. One significant factor is also the population growth, most european countries are experiencing significant overaging.

  16. Have more babies. Europe has a rapidly aging population meaning an every increasing proportion of people are unproductive. Immigration can offset this but Europe imports too many unproductive migrants, and all the very productive ones go to the USA because the salaries are 4x higher.

    Stop putting tech companies and factories in random boring cities with shit weather. Build silicon valley in Malaga.

  17. Valuable_Calendar_79 on

    Learn from each other. We don’t need to copy USA, there are plenty of strong innovative regions in EU to learn from.
    And also don’t forget the see-sawing Euro Dollar exchange rate. Add 10 % value to the Euro and suddenly that graph looks completely different

  18. Traditional-Storm-62 on

    a Union born of noble political goals

    often accused of neo colonialism

    unable to break its economic stagnation for decades

    with its population increasingly drawn to right wing movements some of whom argue for Union’s dissolution

    man this is early ’80s all over again, why’s real life so unoriginal all the time