Is it even measurable? Some try. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report Americans don't do badly - on par with Germans (who are close to the top as far as Europe goes) and ahead of the UK, France, Italy, Russia (to name the 5 Europe's major economies).
Incredible to read this... the top-15 of most productive countries [1] are all European save for the US and Australia, which are populated with a huge population of European descent.
> Right now, Europeans are still living off past prosperity, but if they don't build a real technology industry and innovate, then future Europeans will be much worse off.
As an American, I've heard some variant of this for literally my entire life.
Europe is technologically conservative in ways that the US is not. It's unclear that this has, is having, or will have any impact on the actual material wellbeing of the people who live there.
Compare life expectancy[1], or just about any self-reported QoL metric[2] (where the US doesn't perform badly, just not better!).
> there's a large majority of people in this country who A) Do not like being told we should be more like Europe and B) Don't mind the 5 day work week and have just as much joy and happiness as anyone.
Citation needed. From what I've seen the US underperforms on e.g. happiness surveys (certainly in an overall statistical sense - it's possible there are individual exceptions).
> While they were taking their siesta, the USA was busy being the largest economy in the world.
And what do you have to show for it? Has that large economy "trickled down" to the people in the street?
> If that was true Europe would have the highest productivity of the world, but it doesn't.
Depends on how you measure productivity. Per hours worked, the top 10 most productive countries is almost only European. Per capita the results are different.
>The top 6 in said index is occupied by European countries - and all 8 European countries ranked before the US in said index are routinely bashed in the US as being prime examples of "socialist" hellholes.
The comment didn't say "these select 8 European countries that are a mere fraction of the overall European population", it said "Europe" which last I checked was a continent encompassing dozens of countries with hundreds of millions of people, the vast majority of which are below the US in the ranking. If the comment was meant to be restricted to a very small subset of Europe then it should have reflected that in the wording. To which I can easily select a small subset of US states that would still outrank those countries. Without getting overly specific, do you really think you are happier than the average person living in Hawaii? Really? Really?? As far as your second "point", I didn't say anything about socialist hellholes so you're straw manning me. Also FWIW, none of those countries are actually socialist so if you're asserting that, you're again, flat wrong.
>Well, it's not that hard to beat European countries if you're working 300 hours per year more than them...
So the statement that "Europe" was more productive than the US was wrong. Yes, that is what I said. As an aside to your other point, according to my research, Germans work the least of anybody and rank lower in happiness than the US. Not to mention the western European countries like Portugal and Ireland that actually work more hours than Americans. I don't see you mentioning that but then that would be inconvenient to your narrative..
> and the core question is: how much of the US "productivity" originates from the scamming going on at Wall Street, i.e. it has no meaningful human labor associated by which this "profit" was created?
Those weren't questions I responded to but erroneous statements. But on with the goalpost moving. I love this one. Within a few seconds you say we work 300 hours a year more thus the obviously superior productivity (which is a bit disingenuous since we are more productive per hour and many countries outwork us in total hours) then you follow up with it's all a scam cuz "Wall Street". So which is it and does it hurt talking out of both sides of your mouth like that? Basically you don't want to be enlightened and correct your errors. You want to argue and bully your way into being right no matter what. Of course, just between you and me, what you really want to do is bash the US and feel oh so superior which is just sad and pathetic. Sorry it doesn't work that way. Europe is overall less productive and less happy than the US. Period. The denial of this fact is precisely what I responded to. Choose a small subset of the continent and I can play that game too. Funny how you like to make your assertions as if they are fact when it's just a bunch of received internet wisdom that doesn't stand up to the slightest scrutiny.
Just for fun, in the CIA world fact book, I looked up Liechtenstein which has the highest productivity per capita in not just Europe but the entire world and the District of Columbia which has the highest per capita productivity in America. Both are about the same size at 60 something square miles. I'll leave it to your imagination which has the higher stats. You guys think you are so much better than everybody else. You're wrong.
I apologize for not including links this time but why bother when you'll just try to move your intellectually dishonest goalposts again necessitating further refutation. Not that I'll bother. You were wrong then and you're wrong now. You base your new assertions on mutually exclusive statements that you wrote within 30 seconds of each other. You are laughable and not worth arguing with so go ahead and entertain other readers with your whining about how much """better""" you wish you were. I'm ignoring you since I have more "productive" things to do. Ha!
edit: I just happened to glance at the tag line in your profile and realized I've been sucked in to wasting 20 minutes debating an angsty teen.
> The US ranks 14th in happiness ahead of the majority of European countries.
The top 6 in said index is occupied by European countries - and all 8 European countries ranked before the US in said index are routinely bashed in the US as being prime examples of "socialist" hellholes.
> The US ranks 6th in productivity, again ahead of the vast majority of European countries and far ahead of the European average[1]
Well, it's not that hard to beat European countries if you're working 300 hours per year more than them... and the core question is: how much of the US "productivity" originates from the scamming going on at Wall Street, i.e. it has no meaningful human labor associated by which this "profit" was created?
> As far as know the amount of poor people in the usa is also way higher than in Europe. If we take that into account i'd say that Europe is doing just fine.
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.
>the US experiences significantly higher GDP per capita
This is to be expected, if Americans are working longer hours than their European counterparts.
If you do a little back-of-the-envelope normalization (GDP/capita/average hours worked), the results are much closer. Norway, of course, absolutely dominates by this metric.
> I’m using productivity as a measurement. Ideally, productivity accounts for inefficient work by comparing inputs (labor) to economic outputs. The U.S. is more productive in this sense, so it’s more than just butts in seats.
> Many workers are much better off in the US than in Europe as well
Workers are not better off, there are way worse off in the US. They get less money due to the minimum wage being very low and the cost of medical care, they work more in average, they have less holidays and less social mobility than in Europe.
Big businesses however are better off so I agree in part with your first paragraph.
> This assumes ex ante a similar quantity of wealth. Europe’s GDP per capita is lower than America’s.
European GDPs per capita have been by and large lower than the US one since at least 1900, so this doesn't tell us much.
You know, having a continental sized country with continent sized resources and a population all speaking the same language, plus the last conflict on its territory having happened 150+ years ago, seems to be paying off.
> The effect of this is visible, e.g. when you look at efficiency of e.g. german workers compared to their US counterparts.
Can you please then explain to me how ~ 332mm people in the US are more productive than ~448mm people in the EU by almost 5 trillion dollars if the Americans are less efficient?
> The more productive workers are, the more free time they’ll have to do whatever it is they want to do to make themselves happy.
Just patently untrue. The more productive you are the more work your boss will send your way, while walking away with fatter margins. If he can. Which is where EU regulation comes in.
Europe’s rules govern the balance between capital owners and labor. It’s far from perfect but it has resulted in fairly stable and happy societies. (At least apart from certain external factors)
Now there is of course nothing wrong with productivity. It is, as you say, very good in many ways. But you cannot look only at a society’s productivity metrics to judge success-and my by success I mean happiness, because that is my goal. Look at happiness in the US vs Europe for example. I know where I’d rather live.
>Our people are happier and more productive.
The US ranks 14th in happiness ahead of the majority of European countries. Europe as a whole ranks between 42 and 43[0]
The US ranks 6th in productivity, again ahead of the vast majority of European countries and far ahead of the European average[1]
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report#2017_Wo...
[1]https://www.expertmarket.co.uk/focus/worlds-most-productive-...
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