Innovation is important sure, but also efficient use of resources, including cramping down on negative externalities. That increases welfare and quality of life, ideally with no need to spend an extra dollar.
Yeah it's ineficient but it's the one we got right now. You're not gonna change it with your comments and beliefs. Meanwhile rent is due next month and you need to pay up by using these "ineficient" mechanisms set in place by powers higher than you.
You are welcome to point out flaws in my thinking.
So the thing about jobs is, we really need jobs that actually produce stuff. We don't just need jobs, we need somebody to create the wealth. First it has to exist, then we can worry about how it gets distributed.
So if you have a bunch of people who are not necessary, then the best thing to do is not to let them starve (which is also immoral), nor to give them pointless jobs (which is soul-destroying), but to find something useful for them to do.
This isn’t a production problem, it is a social problem.
Its because the person making the car doesn't want to make one for someone who isn't making something of equal value in return. It makes them a sucker for being the one to make the car.
You cannot legislate, policy change, indoctrinate, or force your way around this. It's why all attempts to do so always have failed. Every single time. Always.
The only way to create actual value is to put in actual work.
I don't think anyone is seriously claiming that there is no innovation whatsoever in the EU. Falling behind the US doesn't mean there is absolutely nothing. I think a lot of people in the EU would be fine with being 3rd on "productivity" if it was enough to maintain a high standard of living and decent competitiveness.
I never said that. Please follow HN rules and reply to the strongest interpretation of one's argument, not the weakest.
The EU economy was at the same level as the US economy 15-20 years ago., now it's only half the US. The EU missed out on all the major technological innovations in that time and therefore missed out on a lot of income for welfare while welfare expenses grew.
>Falling behind the US doesn't mean there is absolutely nothing.
No, it means less money for welfare. Especially with an ever increasing ageing population. If you want to take care of all of those retirees at a high quality of life, it's gonna cost you.
>I think a lot of people in the EU would be fine with being 3rd on "productivity" if it was enough to maintain a high standard of living and decent competitiveness.
They would be fine, if those productivity losses would be eaten up by the corporations, but they're not, they're being eaten up by the working class and the taxpayer who still expects the same welfare quality like in the good ol' days when the EU economy was as strong as the US.
Do you you see how this is unsustainable without economic growth?
> Without innovations and highly profitable industries generating well paying working class jobs, with what will you pay for that welfare and quality of life
Without presumes with none, and you're saying it like it's true.
> The EU economy was at the same level as the US economy 15-20 years ago., now it's only half the US. The EU missed out on all the major technological innovations in that time
Really, all major technological innovations? Why is the leading music streaming provider Swedish (Spotify)? Leading and most advanced airplane manufacturer European (Airbus)? Why are there so many fintechs which are a decade ahead of US counterparts (Revolut, Monzo, MyPOS, SumUp, Bunq, Qonto) and why is finance-related tech so much ahead - you can pay contactless pretty much anywhere in most of the EU and UK, you can accept card payments with your phone and just an app, all banks have to have an API with Oauth to be able to aggregate accounts and whatever? Also I'd like to add advancements in nuclear fusion. Also I haven't experienced healthcare in the US, but from what I've seen it doesn't look like there's anything even close to the seamlessness of Doctolib in France.
The EU is indeed falling behind, IMO mostly due to lack of capital, risk/gambling averseness, and the much smaller individual markets. But to say it has missed all innovations, or that it has no innovation is simply untrue. We need more of them, we need to invest into more of them, because there's a lot of potential that needs to be nurtured and grow.
Only if you want to be a sticker and take things literally while deliberately ignoring the context to score a cheap shot gothca, then sure, it then means without.
> Leading and most advanced airplane manufacturer European (Airbus)?
Because of government intervention, and moat of a highly regulated and expensive to enter industry that keeps new players out. Why is SpaceX ahead of EU aerospace companies?
>Why is the leading music streaming provider Swedish (Spotify)?
Spotify wasn't even profitable until recently and only made it where it is today, due to to massive capital investments form the US, not from EU investors.
>Why are there so many fintechs which are a decade ahead of US counterparts
Are they also ahead in earnings/profits too? Because you fund welfare with taxes on profits and on wages. You can't tax innovations that bring you no money.
That's where While you keep blabbering on about Airbus, Monzo and Spotify , have a look at the top 100 companies in the world by market cap and see how many are from the EU and how many from the US and that's case closed. AIrbus, Spotify, etc are the rare exceptions, not the norm for Europe.
“A system of non-competition clauses enforced by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) workforce suppliers is allegedly trapping aerospace professionals who work at ESA’s facilities across Europe in a professional dead-end street” [1].
Europe is absolutely riddled with this crap, and it tends to come top down from the EU.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/12/esa-workers-face-a-maz...
Here is the data: https://www.voronoiapp.com/markets/-US-vs-European-Stock-Mar...
If Europe is so innovative, why is US to EU stock market cap ratio is on a consistent upward swing by since mid 2000's?
Why do so many people, especially on HN, confuse market cap or GDP growth for innovation? Surely, especially here, people can realise that innovation can come in different forms, and some do not move the needle of a stock market or won't show up in GDP graphs. Is CERN not innovative because it's not a public company whose stock is growing?
It's not confusion. It's rather an acknowledgement to the reality that to fund a generous welfare state, one needs taxes. To tax, you first need a dynamic private sector economy. Taxing public sector is like shifting money from the left pocket to the right pocket.
GDP or stock market caps are just a proxy for the size of the private economy. Europe has lagged on both. Maybe there is something else which would indicate that European private sector is growing fine and dandy. I am not aware of it. Are you?
CERN innovation is awesome but it will need to be translated into private sector economic activity in order for the society to benefit from it; either directly via products and services, or indirectly via taxation and welfare programs based on that.
I gave concrete examples of European companies being significantly better than American ones.
Arguably, Japan has been doing this for two or three generations now. Despite a crazy debt, quality of life in Japan is still pretty great.
"There are four types of economies: developed, developing, Argentina, and Japan."
One must be very careful drawing conclusions for other societies based on Japan as a sole example. I somewhat agree that Japan illustrates that massive infrastructure investment, combined with diligence in maintaining functioning societal systems, does in fact yield a high quality of life that appears sustainable even if the metrics of economic growth look terrible. That's because GDP as a measure of "quality of life" is a shitty indicator IMO, but that's a whole 'nother rabbit hole to go down...
If the US took the entire medicare/medicaid budget and split it evenly per person it would be left with more money than the UK spends on healthcare.
Its not just how much you spend, its how much you waste.
Without innovations and highly profitable industries generating well paying working class jobs, with what will you pay for that welfare and quality of life? Billionaires and corporations certainly aren't gonna pay for it out if their profits, so the working class has to. But if the working class has no more high paying wages anymore due to stagnating growth , then your welfare budget also goes bye-bye.
You can't just vote yourself more welfare and higher public sector salaries and pensions out of thin air without an economic growth to back that up. I mean, you technically can, but it doesn't end well as was proven every single time this was tried.