>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.
>Where you got that number? UK has higher GDP per capita than France and it's lower than Germany but not by 30%.
because you're not looking at output per hour worked. The Brits work about ~1670 hours per year. The French about ~1470, and the Germans ~1360. If you look at the output per hour, The UK comes in below Euro average, roughly on a level with Italy and Spain.
> the living standard in Europe are considerably lower than in the US.
Citation needed, unless you're being sarcastic throughout your post (can't tell, Poe's law?).
If I get the 'rona, I might die but at least I won't go bankrupt.
Anyway, GDP per capita in Europe is not the best measure, because there's still a massive economic disparity within Europe; the east is still feeling the effects of the Soviet Union (and Russia's influence), the south has been struggling financially for a long while now (Greece had to be bailed out). The West and North are doing all right for themselves; Germany has a GDP per capita of $46K, 10K higher than the number you cited. Netherlands is even higher at $52K, Switzerland does $82K, Ireland, the base of operations for a lot of US companies has $89K and Luxembourg, a tiny country, trounces the whole world at $114K per capita.
> 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.
> Most industrialized nations have stronger restrictions on free speech than America, for example.
Yet, most have a higher quality of life. France (for example) works the fewest hours per week, yet the highest GDP per capita (EDIT: added hour) hour. They get 5 weeks minimum for vacation per year, plus 22 days more if you choose to work more than 35 hours per week!
"Think about it. Nationmaster ranks France as #18 in terms of GDP per capita, at $36,500 per person, yet France works much less than most developed nations. They achieve their high standard of living while working 16% less hours than the average world citizen, and almost 25% than their Asian peers as per UBS. Plus, if you visit France you'll also realize that their actual standard of living is probably much higher than GDP numbers would indicate.
Thus, if one were to divide France's GDP per capita by actual hours worked, you'd probably find that the French are achieving some of the highest returns on work-hours invested. Labor Alpha, if you will.
We can actually calculate this Labor Alpha using statistics from Nation Master.
France has $36,500 GDP/Capita and works 1,453 hours per year. This equates to a GDP/Capita/Hour of $25.10. Americans, on the other hand, have $44,150 GDP/Capita but work 1,792 hours per year. Thus Americans only achieve $24.60 of GDP/Capita/Hour.
This puts the French Labor Alpha at about $0.50 GDP/Capita/Hour over the US. It may sound small at first, but add that up across millions of people, and a few decades. Now you've built a lesson for the rest of the world to learn."
> 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?
> Also notice that some of these countries have higher or similar GDP per capita to USA.
In the US, households have 10% more money than the second closest competitor (Luxembourg), and 20% more money than next closest (Germany & Switzerland).
I think that's a much better comparison than GDP (which isn't necessarily connected with employment), and shows how these tradeoffs work.
>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.
> Also, the two links you provided show very different ranking of countries
Different years.
> At the same time, I don't know how to properly measure human productivity. I mean, how do you compare productivity of people working at OpenAI to productivity of people working at Walmart?
Exactly. Just because Ireland has a lot of services HQed there due to a beneficial tax regime doesn't make an Irish person working 40h at Google who count all EU revenues there more or less productive than someone working at a midsized German manufacturer of critical car components (say brakes).
GDP per hour worked is the least bad way of measuring we have, and I'm not aware of other ones. It can easily be skewed though, because it relies on a poor metric at its base, GDP.
My point was just that the difference between US and EU is minimal, with the imperfect way of measuring it. If anyone has a better way I'm all ears, but I highly doubt it will show anything different.
My guess would be that it is catching up, but still much lower.
However, productivity per hour (in US dollars) is still much higher in the UK than e.g. Australia, the EU-28, the OECD or Canada. I'm not sure why this study took 2010 as a baseline though, it seems to be a bias towards how well countries copied with the financial crisis.
Germany is somewhat on the low side in terms of work hours[1]. Their economic gains are from a rather complicated history.
I don't mean to insult Germany - I think their ranking here is actually a good thing. I'm glad they have found a way to keep work from taking over their lives.
> the only country in Europe who are capable of sustaining themselves.
That would be because of the insane class-specific "put option" we call the Euro that was really a disguised bank bailout. German economic policy (be a competitive net-exporter) isn't possible is everyone tries to do it. For a much better explanation why Europe is screwed economically, see Mark Blyth's (prof. econ. at Brown) talks[2] on the subject, which is much better than my rushed explanation.
>on a side note France (and Germany) ranked very high in output per worked hour the last time I checked, way higher than the US.
I am not trying to start an argument with you (and France seems like a great place to live and work) but in Googling around, I found the following, which reports that German GDP per hour worked is .92 of the American and French is .958 of the American:
If you click on the "Show information" tab on the right, you see that "At the beginning of the year 2012, GDP per hour worked was significantly revised for a large number of OECD countries". Could it be that you relied on the "pre-revision" figures?
More generally, do you remember where you got your data?
Where are you getting that from? Average American wages are $63,000 per worker. Higher than any country besides Switzerland, Iceland and Luxembourg[1]. To compare to this five largest EU members: Americans are paid 28% higher than Germans, 41% higher than Frenchmen, 59% higher than Brits, and 64% higher than Italians and Spaniards.
Now compare GDP per hour worked:
* https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/labor-productivity-per-ho...
* https://time.com/4621185/worker-productivity-countries/
Germany and France are basically equivalent to the US. Some of the other larger economies (UK, IT, ES) are further down.
Those 4+ weeks of vacation make a difference. :)
Also, who gets to actually keep all of that GDP?
* https://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/pikettys-inequal...
* https://voxeu.org/article/exploding-wealth-inequality-united...
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