The Founding fathers had it right. Time and time again STATES RIGHTS trumped Fed Over-reach. And that is how it should be. As long as that holds true we will be fine.
Europe has fallen behind America and the gap is growing
- Thread starter buster
- Start date
Does that mean that California is twice as productive as Germany per capita? Not necessarily, I suppose - GDP is also influenced by a society's tendency to save vs. spend.
No, per capita is a different measure; it is a ratio by population size. Please see @alarmguy post #20.
Some people like to consider CA as 2 "states", Northern and Southern CA. If you did that, NorCal per capita GDP would be astronomical.
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The problem with GDP is that it includes govt spending and the reserve currency status of the USD allows the US to spend more than other countries.
Taking a look at gross debt as percent of GDP maybe better. The US is No 7 (Higher = more debt).
Japan
Greece
Eritrea
Venezuela
Italy
Singapore
(US)
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What in the cornbread heck does the District of Columbia "Produce" in terms of goods and useable services??
Yeah, it doesn't take much when the denominator is small. Statistically DC is an outlier. In statistics and business we consider "relevant range" to make comparison meaningful. Outliers are important but skew data.What in the cornbread heck does the District of Columbia "Produce" in terms of goods and useable services??
Add in your total healthcare costs and if you have student loans, add in a significant portion of those too. What would your effective rate then be? Mid to upper 30's is my guess if not higher and you are then pretty close to what the average EU citizen pays (it's not 50% as posted above). Total healthcare costs including doctor co pays etc etc, was probably near 10% of my total salary in the US. I pay more in taxes here in Sweden as my effective rate is about 33% not including sales taxes but that covers most all healthcare and schooling. However, my quality of life is far far higher and I had it very good in the US where I lived for about 36 years. In the same field I also seem to be able to afford just as much stuff and am able to save just as much money. People also forget that when comparing the US to the EU to take into consideration how much of the development in the US is financed by debt that has yet to be paid back, ie the US debt to GDP ratio is worrying and should factor into the comparison.
Nothing is free. You paid for it via taxes including your fellow citizens. The lecturer didn’t do it for nothing, the building you were in was heated or cooled depending on weather.
Hope you had a good time.
It's not that high, and it seems many in the US miscalculate when trying to compare to the EU. What is your effective rate in the states (ignoring sales tax)? Now add in your healthcare costs including what your employer pays for you, or at the very least, what you would pay completely by yourself if you had to buy insurance on your own, and if you have student loans, add in a significant portion of those. I would then bet that your effective rate would become upper 30's or higher, which puts you at or pretty close to the average EU citizen. Sales tax is another variable which favors the US in a big way, but suffice to say, the taxes are higher in the EU, but it's not as much higher as many Americans think. Quality of life for the average citizen is arguably much higher in the EU.
Italy!
Sure. And it is money well spent. The whole world prospers from the CA education system. People come from all over the world to go to school here. I remember all the Vietnam vets attending West Valley College near me in Saratoga; those vets fueled the Valley!
The lecture was incredible. The questions posted at the end were soooo far above my pay grade. Blew my mind!
Europe has fallen behind America and the gap is growing
From technology to energy to capital markets and universities, the EU cannot compete with the USwww.ft.com
From the article:
The Ukraine war has revived the transatlantic alliance. But the relationship between the US and its European allies is increasingly lopsided.The US economy is now considerably richer and more dynamic than the EU or Britain — and the gap is growing. That will have an impact well beyond relative living standards. Europe’s dependence on the US for technology, energy, capital and military protection is steadily undermining any aspirations the EU might have for “strategic autonomy”.In 2008, the EU and the US economies were roughly the same size. But since the global financial crisis, their economic fortunes have dramatically diverged. As Jeremy Shapiro and Jana Puglierin of the European Council on Foreign Relations point out: “In 2008 the EU’s economy was somewhat larger than America’s: $16.2tn versus $14.7tn. By 2022, the US economy had grown to $25tn, whereas the EU and the UK together had only reached $19.8tn. America’s economy is now nearly one-third bigger. It is more than 50 per cent larger than the EU without the UK.”The aggregate figures are shocking. Underpinning them is a picture of a Europe that has fallen behind — sector by sector.The European technology landscape is dominated by US firms such as Amazon, Microsoft and Apple. The seven largest tech firms in the world, by market capitalisation, are all American. There are only two European companies in the top 20 — ASML and SAP. Whereas China has developed domestic tech giants of its own, European champions are often acquired by American companies. Skype was bought by Microsoft in 2011; DeepMind was bought by Google in 2014. The development of AI is also likely to be dominated by American and Chinese firms.The leading universities that feed the pipeline of tech start-ups in the US are lacking in the EU. The Shanghai and THE rankings of the world’s top universities both have only one EU institution in the top 30. (Britain does better — courtesy of Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial and others.)In 1990, Europe made 44 per cent of the world’s semiconductors. That figure is now 9 per cent; compared with 12 per cent for America. Both the EU and the US are rushing to build up their capabilities. But while the US is expected to see 14 new semiconductor plants come on stream by 2025, Europe and the Middle East will add just 10 — compared with 43 new facilities in China and Taiwan.Both the US and the EU are looking to turn this situation around with ambitious industrial policies that provide public finance and incentives for chip manufacturers and producers of electric vehicles. But the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency gives the Americans the ability to finance their ambitions, without spooking the markets. As one European industrialist puts it: “They can just swipe the credit card.” The EU, by contrast, has a much smaller budget and has only just begun issuing common debt.Private capital is also much more readily available in the US. Paul Achleitner, chair of the global advisory board at Deutsche Bank, says that Europe is now “almost totally dependent on US capital markets”. He tells me that Europe has very few of the large pension funds that give depth to the US capital markets, adding that: “If you want to get anything sizeable done — whether it is an acquisition or an IPO — you always go back to American investors.” The EU has spoken a lot about creating a “capital markets union” to give Europe some of the scale of the US. But progress has been feeble.Unlike Europe, the US also has plentiful and cheap domestic supplies of energy. The shale revolution means that America is now the world’s largest producer of oil and gas. Meanwhile, energy prices in Europe have soared. The Ukraine war and the loss of cheap Russian gas mean that European industry typically pays three or four times as much for energy as their American competitors. Gloomy European bosses say this is already leading to factory closures in Europe.Some in Britain may be tempted to see all this as proof that, inside the EU, Britain was “shackled to a corpse” and that Brexit was a good move. But, outside the European single market, Britain suffers from an exaggerated version of the problems of scale that are hobbling the EU itself. British industry is already falling behind, as a result.So are there really no areas where Europe is a world leader? Some point proudly to the fact that the size of the EU single market means that companies all over the world have had to adopt European regulations — the so-called “Brussels effect”. But it would clearly be better to lead the world in creating wealth, rather than regulating it.Europe does outperform in “lifestyle” industries. Almost two-thirds of the world’s tourist arrivals are into Europe. The luxury goods market is dominated by European companies. Football, the world’s most popular sport, is dominated by European teams — although many of the biggest clubs are now owned by Middle Eastern, American or Asian investors.Europe’s dominance of lifestyle industries underlines that life in the old continent is still attractive for many. But perhaps that is part of the problem. Without a greater sense of threat, Europe may never summon the will to reverse its inexorable decline in power, influence and wealth.
Wait...now the same entity that bragged they had the largest economy in the world when adding state members is now hampered by a small budget?
Europe is in a situation entirely of its own making driving out investment from the weight of their own experimental feel good policies.
I don't have student loans. I'm 52. That BS wasn't much around when I was 18.... Not sure anyone I went to school with went on to higher education on a student loan....
My healthcare is mostly paid for as part of my salary...employer-paid. No government entity pays my premiums, deductibles or co-pays.
You sound like you are very much in favor of "the government" running most of your life. I suggest you move to a location on the globe where that happens. Don't report back, I don't care. I've never seen a government do anything right, much less within 50% of what the private sector does.
The US Government was never established to support the livelyhood of it's citizens. It was established to protect this country.
I went to college in 1995 (fall). I intentionally commuted to avoid massive studient loans. I worked through college and came out with just $13k in loans. Paid them off immediately. I had friends that came out with $100k+ in loans for a stupid BA degree. Bad decision making.
Wow, you got me wrong. I actually moved out of the US to a very rural extremely small town where I am more I charge of my own life. For example, I literally have a freezer full of moose meat shot by a relative, and will eat it with home harvested potatoes (enough to last many months) and wash it down with smoothie of personally picked blueberries (also enough for a few months). But don't get the idea this is all I eat, that would be insane.
I am just pointing out that many people compare US tax rates incorrectly to EU tax rates. If you want to make a fair comparison, take what your employer pays for your healthcare every year and add that to your taxes, then recalculate your effective tax rate. Using this more fair comparison, it is probably a lot closer to the average in the EU and most americans don't realize this. My point about student loans is that they are a real thing and many young americans have very high monthly payments, For that group, they should also include much of their loans if they wanted to do a reasonable tax comparison.
You must be in complete disagreement with Social Security, Medicare/medicaid, and the VA because that's all socialized, and per capita, those programs combined spend multiple times more per person on healthcare than any other country by far. You must also be pretty isolated because many countries in the EU have a much higher quality of life, a lower debt to GDP, and far better health than the overweight diabetic US that is running on debt it won't be able to pay back. If you want to climb a corporate ladder or get fat and have relatively little vacation time, the US is ahead, but if you want true quality of life, the EU is miles ahead.
The only person I've ever known to be on Medicaid once racked up an amazing 70 emergency room visits in less than a year. I suspect he would've gotten a pysch eval in the EU after the 10th visit.
That's 27K in today's dollars which is pretty low for today's school costs. It's doable but the cost of tuition, books etc, has outpaced not only inflation but also wages, so if you did today exactly what you did back then, you would have quite a bit more debt today (more than 27K). Just pointing out that it's harder today to get out of school with little debt if you don't have help.
Sounds like my dad (in the US). To be honest the quality of healthcare here in Sweden is decent for some things but absolutely remarkably terrible for others. The level of care new post partum moms get here in the hospital (which I have first hand experience with as my wife is a nurse) is appalling compared to the level of care in the US, but the outcomes are better here and I can only assume because the patients are much lower risk (ie, not fat, diabetic, unprepared, borderline retarded, etc etc). Her former US post partum coworkers were shocked at how bad the care here is when she discusses with them. This level of care in the US would results in multiple times more deaths.
You’re hard earned taxpayer money!!!!What in the cornbread heck does the District of Columbia "Produce" in terms of goods and useable services??
