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Re:Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies by adventured on Sunday April 23, 2017 @10:52PM (#14181623)
> Europe is much better at this than the US.

By Europe, I think you mean 3 or 4 countries in all of Europe. Most countries in Europe entirely fail at what you're claiming and most are embarrassingly behind the US on: innovation, productivity, median incomes, unemployment, global & domestic corporate competitiveness, research spending (both public and private).

I wasn't aware that Russia, Ukraine, Latvia, Poland, Hungary, Croatia, Belarus, Lithuania, Romania, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Bulgaria, Moldova, Serbia, etc. had such stellar economies, that functioned at a high level with excellent competition and dynamism.

The majority of nations in Europe are backwards, poor (often extremely poor), mediocre at competition, with terrible median incomes, terrible median household net worth levels, perpetual unemployment problems, and very stagnant innovation within their economies. The results - among the nations I listed for example - when it comes to GDP per capita, median incomes, unemployment, exports, etc. all speak very loudly.

Many of the nicer countries in Europe, have rigid economic systems that are narrow industry dependent, non-innovative and stagnant. That includes Norway, Denmark and Finland (which is trying to crawl out of a ten year near-depression, and is heavily dependent on ancient industries like paper production). France has had a stagnant economy for decades with hyper low growth, rigid is an understatement there; if they grow median wages at 1/4th the rate of the US, it's considered a good outcome.

Germany would be in the middle of a ten year recession, were they not free riding on their Euro neighbors when it comes to benefiting from an artificially cheap currency (cheap for them).

Europe is not better than the US at facilitating competition, a very select few countries in Europe may be (Sweden for one). Europe is overwhelmingly dominated by dynastic corporations, handed down through the generations (Europe overall has a far worse stagnant dynastic wealth score than the US), and have almost entirely failed to keep pace with the US when it comes to spurring very successful new companies in the last 30 or 40 years. That proof is in how far behind nearly all (not all, nearly all) European nations are in rapid innovation fields like software, Internet, mobile, AI, biotech, robotics, VR/AR, etc.

But feel free to list all the amazing Internet, biotech, robotics, AI, Mobile, etc. firms in the highly dynamic & competitive Russia or Greek or Spanish or Polish markets.

If I was wrong, the results, the economic standing, for all those nations I listed, wouldn't be so horrible. Poland wouldn't have a $13k GDP per capita; Russia's median income wouldn't be 1/5th that of the US; Spain wouldn't have 20% unemployment (still); Bulgaria wouldn't have a median income that's nearly at third world levels; and so on.

Re:Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies by TFYS on Monday April 24, 2017 @07:16AM (#14183344)
> If I was wrong, the results, the economic standing, for all those nations I listed, wouldn't be so horrible.

What you are saying about the economies of those countries might be true, but it's not necessarily because they are worse at regulating capitalism. The effects of the Soviet Union, the size of the countries, language barriers, sanctions on Russia, problems with how the currency works, etc are enough to cause the things you mention even if they are better at making their markets more dynamic and competitive than the US. Countries with five million people like Norway, Denmark and Finland simply don't have enough people to have multiple strong industries simultaneously.

Re:Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies by llukas on Monday April 24, 2017 @12:00AM (#14181895)
If USA is so innovative and Europe so backwards how come USA has trade deficit with EU?
Re:Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies by briandear on Monday April 24, 2017 @04:38AM (#14182758)
The US has a $50 billion trade deficit with Mexico. Are we to argue that Mexico's business environment and economy is better and more innovative than the US? A trade deficit is not necessarily a bad thing.
Re:Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies by briandear on Monday April 24, 2017 @04:34AM (#14182744)
Why is this being downvoted? This comment is factually correct.