I mean, Europeans make less per hour worked than Americans, which is even more revealing since labor has a diminishing marginal product and Americans work more hours than Europeans and Europeans have a larger tax burden. It’s ultimately a political choice on how to structure social benefits and regulation but the fact of the matter is that Americans consume more per capita than Europeans, have more stuff than Europeans, and are more productive workers with more productivity growth compared to Europeans. The Europhillia, even on the U.S. left during Trump has substantially fallen off after many lost decades of European growth while the U.S. economy keeps chugging along with its extraordinarily high gdp per capita, highly efficient firms (of which Nvidia is only one of thousands) and 2% trend growth ad infinitum.
American Economics Thread
- Thread starter Bernard
- Start date
US households assets value are due to the printing of $US and US treasuries. Both of these are just paper assets supported by further printing of those assets. The US can't even afford to pay off its interest on all the US treasuries.
FriedRiceNSpice
Captain
Yes, it is a choice. Whether one system is better than the other is subjective. US economy grows through the promotion of consumption in order to maximize profits of cooperations. US model of urban development pushes consumption, people that live in suburbs have to have cars for each working household member and larger homes encourage people to fill them up with up with... stuff. US economy allows the top 5-10% to enjoy a very high standard of living at the expense of the bottom 50%. Many Europeans, though consuming less, enjoy far better outcomes related to quality of life. Higher HDI, longer life expectancy, higher reported level of happiness, and much more leisure time. Although the levels of affluence enjoyed by top 5-10% of Americans are out of reach for 99% of Europeans, the bottom 50% can enjoy much better lives than their American counterparts. In terms of social mobility and opportunities for the top 5% in terms of talent and work ethic, America comes out on top. For the bottom 50%, Europe is much better. And for the rest, it's subjective. And the US model really falls short in terms of ecological and environmental sustainability.
Processed foods are cheap... thats why they are produced. Proper quality restaurant meal is incredibly expensive in the US, most of that eating out is fast food level junk that's cheap and consumed due to many people not having enough time to prepare real meals due to long working hours and long commutes.
manqiangrexue
Brigadier
Exactly. Indeed, drug addicts have no need to sell all their shit, mug people and suck d*ck behind Walmart, etc, etc, etc, to get money to buy the next hit. But the high amounts of discretionary drug comsumption and activities related to drug acquisition, is indeed voluntary, right? That's exactly my comparison.
AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
high levels of discretionary drug consumption is a sign of the immense strength of the pharmaceutical supply chain, high R&D activity, boredom from mass affluence and a sign of the booming white collar white male middle class. anyone who is not a white collar white male doesn't matter.
Right: the biological process of addiction is exactly the same as it is when shopping. Shopping withdrawals are famously physically debilitating and require methadone treatment. Or households could just voluntarily spend money on discretionary items because they are confident in their future income stability. Really hard choice on determining which one explains household purchases.
In Europe and Japan, healthcare costs are borne by the state.
But presumably Americans have to pay for healthcare out of their disposable income?
If so, comparable disposable income in the USA would have to be adjusted downwards by 16% on average?