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Where Is Europe's Silicon Valley?
An anonymous reader writes: A New York Times story delves into the conundrum faced by Europeans: Why are there few, if any, technology companies from Europe with the size and reach of American tech giants like Google, Amazon, and Apple? The article hypothesizes that, though employment regulations and other business and legal factors play a role, it's actually deeply embedded cultural differences that are the primary cause, citing less aversion to risk-taking, less stigma from business failures such as bankruptcies, little or no stigma from leaving and rejoining a company (seen as disloyal in European cultures), more acceptance of disruptive innovation, and a less rigid educational system that allows individuals to find their own form of success.
This is probably difficult to understand for Americans, but the key factor that makes SV so amazing is that venture capitalists over there are a century ahead in terms of taking risks than anywhere else in the world (save for, maybe China at this point). Instead of betting in a few large projects, they bet on few smaller projects. Most will fail but those that succeed usually return huge profits.
In contrast, everywhere else, investors are much more concerned about minimizing risk and focusing on commodities such as building houses, selling mattresses, etc. Silicon Valley is so different that you can find VC offices next to an ice cream store in the middle of the street.
In California! Of course! So is Russia's and China's.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Neither Google, Facebook nor Uber is about innovation. It's about implementing an idea that's obvious in its time and bringing it to customers. The 5% inspiration, 95% transpiration stuff. And they did it very well.
The US's distinct advantage: Immediate access to a 320M people market with the same language
and very similar culture. Thus able to reach critical masses much faster, hence ability to collect
more venture capital, grow bigger etc. Less need for internationalization in the early phases (no, it's not just
about translation!).
Other factors may also play a role, but I think the above one is the main factor.
No reason to worry, though, Frau Moser. Diversity has other advantages, and the world would be a boring place if
everywhere would be like Silicon Valley, even though I like it.
Why make a change (that no one wants, no one asked for) to a UI element that's served perfectly fine for 15+ years? Certainly it's not for us, the audience. Please Dice, explain.
You must utterly despise companies like P&G, G.E. and Dupont. Crap I mean they are so yesterday they actually make things.
All of with lead to a more equal society in Europe instead of a winner-takes-all-screw-the-rest situation like in the US.
I think this is because of a misguided desire to turn employment into some kind of welfare system.
I think a better approach is to combine a super-efficient hands-off capitalist economy with a highly socialized government. Regulation on business should just be to deal with externalities (pollution/etc) and to prevent the formation of monopolies (which even conservative economists will agree destroy free markets).
Then have a decent tax rate on that economy and use that to fund strong social protections, including programs like basic income. That alone would eliminate the need for a lot of business regulation. There is no need to have a minimum wage or safety protections in the workplace when people can still live reasonably comfortably without a job. Employers who offer only a pittance won't be able to hire anybody, and if an employee walks into the workplace and sees frightening conditions, they'll just quit.
In such a system there would be plenty of risk-taking, and the wealthy will be able to earn great deals of money. They would of course then pay a large portion of that back in taxes. However, we won't begrudge them the odd private jet if everybody gets decent healthcare and a roof over their head.
The problem with the US is that our social programs are even weaker than in Europe, and so are worker protections. We have that strong economy as a result, but the money just goes into the hands of a few instead of benefitting the many.
Watching things like Cringeley's two series about the start of the computer revolution I cannot imagine something like that happening in Europe because the culture here is so different. Apart from a constant desire for stability there are still people walking around saying things like 'my grandfather was a miner, I'm a miner and, by God, my son will be a miner as well'. In America that would be replaced by 'my grandfather was a miner, I'm a mine superintendent and my son will own the mine'.
Now not to sound like a bat crazy right winger. Europe does tend to go a bit to far in being pro-worker, and anti-corporation. To a point where there is so much stuff that running a business is harder to do in that area. When companies expend they like to try to go to Europe, however they find the rules to be prohibitive, and prevents actually getting to the goals.
Now I am not say we should let the Corporations do what they want as that will only create more business, because that is false. There is a balance that is needed, where employee are treated and compensated fairly for their work and are able to thrive in their area of living, however the company needs the freedoms to take risks and run their business and trying different ways to run it.
This is shown by the weaker EU members during the last recession, they had too much entitlements that cost more then what would cover when things are not working well. The larger EU members were big enough to handle such entitlements but the smaller members cannot. The US during the same crisis got hit but recovered faster because of a more conservative approach towards entitlements. Granted the US is the biggest economy, however if implements EU style entitlements you will find many States will have massive economic problems. Much like how the EU nations had problems. Richer states, NY, California, Texas, Illinois may be able to weather the down times, but Vermont, or Kansas?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Illinois has a $65bn (yes billion) deficit.
If you want to start an IT business here in the EU, it is hart to get venture capital. It is easier to go to Silicon Valley and get money from European lenders than to do so on European soil. While the US has such a good reputation for being innovative they have an advantage in getting money. The labor regulations are not a problem, because they are mostly ruined in the last decade and they only come into effect when your company is larger and your people work for longer time.
Then have a decent tax rate on that economy and use that to fund strong social protections, including programs like basic income. That alone would eliminate the need for a lot of business regulation. There is no need to have a minimum wage or safety protections in the workplace when people can still live reasonably comfortably without a job. Employers who offer only a pittance won't be able to hire anybody, and if an employee walks into the workplace and sees frightening conditions, they'll just quit.
Then why would anyone put in the not-atypical 60-hour work week or do tasks they didn't want to do?
As anti-business and anti-success as the American tax code is, the tax codes of most European countries, in general, are worse. When Hollande put France under a 75% top marginal income tax rate, even Sarkozy started making plans to leave the country. Think about that for a second. The ex-president was going to leave to avoid the taxes.
You're not going to lure top talent to your country to try and make a billion dollar business when you promise to tax most of their income at 75%. With proper planning, in the US you'll be paying about 50% tops in California, and 40% in some other states.
1. One logical type of location would be adventurous, investor-friendly corners of Europe: Ireland, Iceland, Scotland (which is already promoting a "Silicon Glen").
2. But a better bet might be industrial rust belts like Upper Silesia in Poland, or Birmingham, which like its American namesake is redneck heaven (the term there is "chavs"). These are places which already have dense industrial infrastructure like power and rail service, but it's now underutilized as the heavy industry has moved elsewhere. Tech could be a good replacement.
3. The Paris suburbs and Hauts-du-Seine: People don't realize how tech-friendly France is. It leads the world in applied nuclear and is a close second to the US in aerospace.
4. The Swiss watch country of Jura and Geneva: long experience in precision electrical and mechanical engineering. Rural towns like Lengnau are now looking for a clean industry to succeed it.
It's the only way to keep those pests at bay. If you give them a finger, they take an arm.
If you refer to Greece, you might notice that one of the core reasons they're in the slump is that they failed to grab corporations and shake their owed tax out of their pockets. If you look further for nations with an economy problem you'll see Italy, Ireland and some others, all of them either being very permissive and lenient when it comes to corporate behaviour or already pretty much owned by corporations because their governments were or are run by crooks that sold out.
The countries that are still doing ok are the ones where corporations lament how damaging consumer and worker protection laws are.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There are many reasons but I think the best one is that there is a brain drain.
Why set up in Europe that doesn't have good laws and tax breaks for start ups anyway... when you can just move to the US and be surrounded by the best and the brightest from the whole world?
Its worse than the europeans realize because we've pretty much filled SV to capacity and now we're seeding Seattle with more of it and Austin, Dallas, a little in Los Angeles, and even something in Boston.
The US draws them in like a loadstone. The Euros are going to have to offer very attractive subsidies to keep those people in Europe. Think of the sort of pull Europe would have to have to start pulling American tech startups to Europe. That is how hard the US is pulling... If the Euros haven't noticed this then they're not paying attention. The US wants ALL your bright minds. All of them.
America is drinking your mental milkshake. *sluuuuuuuurp*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Oh, you mean like Siemens, Philips, Ericsson, BAE Systems, STMicroelectronics, and Logitech? Or possibly much smaller ones like Raspberry Pi, Nginx, AVG Technologies and F-Secure?
Mostly, the big European technology companies actually make stuff.
Amazon isn't at all related to Silicon Valley either. Google is a new company. Even Apple wasn't even around when the term "Silicon Valley" was first used. So these companies come and go. The old silicon companies no longer dominated, though they're still around, but low tech stuff is taking over; web applications, social media, etc. Really, when people talk about high technology they're not first thinking about Twitter...
Meanwhile in Europe, Nokia was gang busters for awhile. Oh but wait, some say, it's defunct! But so are many other silicon giants that have withered away too. Besides, Nokia is still around it's just smaller. And while it was big it was a very large incubator of other tech companies. In Germany we have Siemens (not at all my favorite) which has fingers in lots of high tech stuff. Anyone working in a high tech company that actually makes stuff is dealing with other high tech partners and customers all over the world.
Isn't that where all the taxes go?
In Europe there are several areas where technology thrives. However, they are not in the area of Internet technology. For example the Southwest of Germany is a hub of machinery technology. And there is another cause: In Europe computer science is often called informatics and originates from mathematics. There is no mathematics industry (beside present day banking). In the USA computer science originated from electric engineering. And finally, we do not have one big market, we have 28 countries every country with its own language.
When I want to create a website for the US, you can start with an English only site and still there are 380 million people able to understand it. In Europe you cannot. You have to support different languages. Even if many people can speak English, you cannot address all people with an only English site. The news of country A will not report on a service in country B. And the US invented the Internet so you had an advantage in that area.
Europe 110 years ago ruled the world, period. Compared to that time, our influcence in the world is nothing. Since then we had a horrible 30 year war and countless genocides. America on the other hand never had any war on its main land. After that war, europe was split in two: one russian hemisphere and one american. And both americans and russians are clinging on their part, with now most of europe being an US colony. If we can't fight the russians ourselves, but have to hide behind the american army, how can we ever claim to be sovereign, and call the US an "equal partner"?
In the IT industry, I'm against of having our own "europe data cloud", like russia and china have them. The internet is something global. Rather, we should have a globalized market with different competitors from different countries. Also, europe is very strong in the free software world. Qt was initiated from norwegians, and stayed under control of european companies for a long time, KDE comes from Germany.
When many people learn english in europe, they favour united states english over british english, even if GB is in europe. This is partly thanks to hollywood, partly to the strong american economy. There is no inner-european patriotism at all. People are still thinking in their "nations", and reduce the EU to their negative parts. These all problems that have to be solved together, because they are interconnected.
Yes, the reason we don't have a lot of successful entrepreneurs is because of the social stigma of being rich. Why doesn't anybody step up for this repressed minority !
"Stockholm is the home of billion dollar startups in Europe, and by one measure the Swedish capital is second only to Silicon Valley as the birthplace for the world's most successful internet companies." http://www.zdnet.com/article/s... On the other hand there is a lot of other cities that also makes the list. Like London and Helsinki among others.
What I wonder is: Where is Texas' Silicon Valley or Oregon's ?
Why does California have Silicon Valley and Hollywood ?
I would hate to to inherit your code if you can't properly $camelCaseYourVariables. Sheesh!
Birmingham was the workshop of the world and the midlands still has a lot of tech industry a large number of the f1 teams are based there
You do know that for company formation the UK is scored better than the USA by some Rightwing think tanks - we don't have those dodgy judges in texas helping patent trolls for one.
This sort of comparison doesn't make all that much sense. First of all Europe isn't one country like the US. People in the comments here and in the New York Times article makes sweeping generalisations about tax rates, laws and regulations in Europe, when those differ substantially between countries. There is a lot of cherry picking here to make a point. Doing a startup or going a bankrupt isn't necessarily difficult all over Europe. I can only speak for Norway where I am from and starting a company here is not hard. I've done it at I have several friends who have done it. Some more successful than others and I've worked for multiple tech startups. Nobody here in their right mind would commit suicide over a failed startup.
I just wanted to mention these things because I think it is a tired accusation that Europe is failing in this area because it is not business friendly. That is frankly not the issue. The problem in Europe is that nobody has a 320 million market. Sure Europe is 500+ million people, but these are people in different countries with different regulations, cultures and languages. We have had a number of successful tech companies here in Norway but they don't show up on the radar because we are just 5 million people. E.g. we got a very successful company that does house listings, buying and selling, job adds etc. But such a company can't quickly expand. If they want to expand they need to learn about the laws and regulations of the next market. The jargon and language used etc. It is not easy. E.g. the way you describe house size in Norway is not the same as in the Netherlands.
A second major obstacle is that we don't have VC capital even remotely as accessible as in the US. That is simply a cultural thing. American's are of course much more risk taking than most other people on this planet. We also don't think as big as American's. We get content much more quickly. People are as mentioned also more loyal to their employers. You can't change that with business laws and regulation as that is part of the culture and it is not all exclusively bad. There is a flip side to everything. The US is a country which is poor at manufacturing while Germany and Japan excels at this. This is helped by a culture of loyalty which allows companies to spend a lot of money on investing in skills of employees without risking that their investment is lost because people suddenly leave for the competitor. As an employer you would not spend say 5 000 dollars a year on training if you could use that to increase the salary and steal skilled employees from somewhere else.
And thirdly while Europe isn't one homogenous mass that could be compared to the US, neither is the US really either. I'd go so far as to claim that Silicon valley is a west coast thing. Why is there no Silicon Valley on the east coast? Doing startups simply isn't such an honourably thing on the east coast. There is more status in being a big shot banker. In many ways the west coast of America has a unique culture created by all the luck seekers all the way back to the gold rush which can't be recreated easily elsewhere regardless of business regulation.
Trying to do this is really just stupid. Each country should find their own way. Denmark has a sort of food silicon valley. In Norway we have strong business clusters around oil technology on the west coast. Lots of different countries have different specialised clusters based on what they are good at. Replicating silicon valley when one already exists is a waste IMHO.
Didn't we have this discussion yesterday? Jimmy Wales told us it was London.
http://news.slashdot.org/story...
Actually a number of European countries follow an approach not that different from this. E.g. Nordic countries have more extensive welfare systems and higher taxes than e.g. southern Europe but it has far less business regulations and red tape. Laws are usually quite straightforward and governments are efficient. E.g. tax laws are much simpler in Nordic countries than the US. The whole welfare system is also much simpler. The US has a myriad of different programs overlapping in all sort of ways, while Nordic countries usually have a few big programs that most people understand roughly how works.
Nordic countries unlike the US e.g. don't have minimum wage. Firing and hiring is quite easy in Denmark through the flexiculture system. The idea is that companies should easily fire you but that the government should give you a lot of help to get back into a job. So Denmark spends quite a lot of job re-training programs e.g. and has generous unemployment benefits.
As for things like safety protection. You can't really deal with that in the way you describe due to the problem of tragedy of the commons. It is sort of like with pollution. As an individual I don't want to start cleaning it up but if others agree to help I will do it. That is the point of a democratic system and a society IMHO. Some things we just have to agree on together and do together. It can't all be about individualism. Imagine sharing a flat with 3 other people. You like to decide what to do in your own room and how to spend your own money. But how do you keep e.g. the shared kitchen clean without everybody agreeing on something. I guess Milton Freedman nutters would insist we could just create property ownership of different parts of the kitchen and sell services to each other. Like say I own the stove in the kitchen and everybody else has to pay usage fees to me while I have to pay the owner of the fridge to use it. It all sounds geeky cool in theory but it pretty retarded way to go about things in practice.
Apparently you haven't been reading the same news feeds I have over the past few years. The whole world's economy has been in the shitter for a long time now.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I'm going to assume you are talking about web-centric start-ups that become behemots (since you chose Google, Facebook and Netflix as example).
There are 2 reasons :
A. Europe isn't (as) unified a market as the USA. At least for consumer-oriented products/services. Different languages for one. Different legal systems and basically culturally it is much less uniform than the US. This is cruxial for your growth velocity. If you can target 320 Million consumers, you can get big faster than if you have to have a targetted approach for 10 groups of 30 million consumers.
B. Venture capital. More specifically series B and C of funding. It is so much easier to get $30 million from VCs in the US than it is in Europe. SO the market speaks and when you have a start-up in Paris and you need to raise tens of millions, you pack-up and leave for California or NY.
To clarify and respond to the morons who would say it is because of the evil socialist government and its taxes : Starting up in Europe it REALLY easy. it is actually MUCH easier and less risky than in the US.
In Paris there are at least 20 incubators where you can get 100-500 kEuros and offices for 18 months for 4-8% of equity. There are a lot of tax examptions for innovative young companies. Plus you are very unlikely to make a profit, and taxes are on profits...
Furthermore the E.U government has tons of funding for innovative start-ups. A company I interviewed for 3 months ago had just raised 800kEuros from private investors, after incubating for a year; In the same time it took them to raise that money, they won a challenge with 2 million euros prize for the government.
The thing is there is no VC in europe, and the BNP and RBS of the world don't want to lend money to start ups, because they don't understand their business models, and they cannot quantify the risks.
Europe does tend to go a bit to far in being pro-worker, and anti-corporation.
I do not think it is anti-business per se.
In one German book about business, in the basics, I have read that business is like a privilege bestowed for the benefit of the society. And imagine that: there were no mention of money nowhere near the definition.
In other words, it is not seen as a device for personal enrichment. And it is handled as such, at the very least, to cause no harm to people and society.
In the end, I do not see the lack of an overcrowded tech town as a shortcoming. If a packed tech community is your thing, then there are several cities with strong tech sector - Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, Dresden, Nuremberg, etc, their satellites - which provide enough opportunities for businesses and workers.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Europe achieves what progressives want: low inequality through redistribution, taxation, and other policies. That means that if you're below average, you get compensated better than you ought to be, and if you're above average, you get compensated worse than you ought to be based on your ability and productivity. It shouldn't be surprising that this is not an attractive proposition to people with skills and talents, so many leave if they can.
look man, if parent post wasn't at least partially true, you wouldn't have things like SF residents up in arms over companies like Genentech or Google using private busing. There is a very very clear differentiation between the haves and have not's. Kind of a bad comparison *now*, but prior to becoming the 'rust belt', the northern Midwest produced 'things', as well as a huge middle class across multiple industries.
Tricking people into clicking on ads, or electronically stalking them not only fails to produce wealth outside of shareholders, but it has a negative social value as well. (though that's arguably just an opinion.)
Yeah, Europe definitely has a problem with antisemitism. Not sure that explains what the article postulates.
Look to countries that are deregulating their economy for economic collapse followed by massive civil unrest up to and including civil war. You silly dipshit. Unless you were born prior to 2008, you literally just fucking saw what happened when countries let big business run amok.
Worker protection in the EU isn't the problem. There are all sorts of ways to go around the protections. If you had been in business here you would have noticed that. Outsourcing is one of the ways that "problem" gets worked around here. Worker protection for outsourced staff can be quite flimsy.
I would also say that bankruptcies actually happen quite a lot in the EU. What is much less common in the EU are successful restructurings or people who get back on business later and have success at it. Quite often it is legally easier to declare bankruptcy here than to restructure a company, especially if you have a large contingent of long term employees that would otherwise be hard to dismiss, while starting a new business after a failure can be quite problematic. Quite often in Europe people in the business know each other really well, it is a lot smaller, if people know you failed once they will be adverse to doing business with you again unless you provide extraordinary assurances that you probably wouldn't need in the USA. This is a cultural matter. I have noticed people in the USA usually keep to their own business and don't care much what happens around them but I can assure you the opposite is usually true in the EU. For good and bad.
The main issue in the EU is the lack of easy access to funding and the risk-adverseness of those with capital in Europe. They basically expect guaranteed returns on everything they fund. A lot of them got rich off the teat of the government or of government backed monopolies and are not interested in anything remotely competitive. So most innovation ends up happening with small enterprises people start on their own houses, much like in the USA I guess, the problem is then these small businesses cannot scale because there are no viable sources of funding to grow the business. So quite often either the business grows slowly and organically until it becomes massive (e.g. Ikea) or the founders just cash out on the business very early. But quite often the cash out isn't as gargantuan as what you see happening in the USA. It quite often ends up paying out like an order or two of magnitude less. If Facebook had been funded in the EU I bet if they did an IPO there people wouldn't have thrown them all that money just that. Then this money given to founders can be re-invested in new businesses. That's the main problem here. In Europe the founders never get quite enough to bankroll major new investments like what happens over there.
There are also infrastructure problems. The article talks about Silicon Valley. Well there aren't a lot of places where you can do silicon prototyping or manufacturing in the EU. There's Silicon Fen i.e. Cambridge the UK and Grenoble in France but little else. There are quite a lot of software hubs though. Like Silicon Glen in Scotland for games software, or Estonia (a place where Finnish investors usually go to because costs are cheaper and Internet access is fast) where Skype was located. etc.
Most of the "weaker" EU members during the last recession failed due to private banks failing and the state assuming their losses. Most of the talk about entitlements is pure bullshit.
That's the funniest nerd burn I've seen off of Silicon Valley in months.
You were critically hit for no damage. The bruise will look nice, and maybe the scars will make good party talk.
Then have a decent tax rate on that economy and use that to fund strong social protections, including programs like basic income. That alone would eliminate the need for a lot of business regulation. There is no need to have a minimum wage or safety protections in the workplace when people can still live reasonably comfortably without a job. Employers who offer only a pittance won't be able to hire anybody, and if an employee walks into the workplace and sees frightening conditions, they'll just quit.
Then why would anyone put in the not-atypical 60-hour work week or do tasks they didn't want to do?
They would need to be very well-compensated. Lots of people would still choose to work. They'd probably work a lot less, and they wouldn't put up with nonsense. You're not going to live in luxury on basic income, so there will always be incentive to do more.
Because we value our standard of health and living more than fat corporations.
You do know that for company formation the UK is scored better than the USA by some Rightwing think tanks - we don't have those dodgy judges in texas helping patent trolls for one.
Apparently you don't understand how well the right wing can disseminate propaganda. Part of convincing citizens that lowering tax burden and removing regulation is a good idea is convincing them these things are hurting businesses enough to damage the US economy. Telling people that even the anti-business EU has countries which beat us in company formation is a great way to do that. It works even better when people believe a right wing think tank would have some natural bias against giving credit to Europe, so the situation must be even more dire.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Piss off you southern shite.
Wish I had mod points.
I would point out though that Apple were one of the original investors in ARM. They even helped with the early (though not the initial) silicon design.
The article is also wrong on other points. I've had two companies in the UK, the first failed (and I didn't really feel any "stigma". It just didn't work out); the second (which contained mainly the same people as the first) was bought up, which is why I'm over in Sunny CA now rather than back in London...
The social net is actually a lot stronger in the UK I feel (as someone who's lived in the US for the last decade), so having a company fail on you isn't the enormous burden that it is in the USA. There's a lot of ways/government help to get back on your feet in the UK that still don't really exist in the USA; and, of course, there's things like government-sponsored healthcare so you don't *need* to be employed just to cover your arse on essential things like that.
Just my $0.02/£0.01 (rounding up)
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Illinois has a $65bn (yes billion) deficit.
It also happens to have some of the most powerful unions and pro-worker laws in the country. Chicago is basically the US equivalent of Greece.
lucm, indeed.
Quite often it is legally easier to declare bankruptcy here than to restructure a company, especially if you have a large contingent of long term employees that would otherwise be hard to dismiss
The Mandriva Syndrome
lucm, indeed.
The point of employment should be that it is social and you feed and give job to the workers.
Nice pipe dream, but no, it's just not a realistic expectation, nor should it be. When you start a business, which is the most likely thing on your mind:
- "I'd like to pay a lot of people to do stuff"
- "I've got an idea that could revolutionize the way we do X, and make me a lot of money in the process"
If it's the first one (i.e, owning a business just for the sake of owning a business) then you're basically guaranteed to fail. The purpose of running a business is to create a product or service that people actually need enough to pay you money for.
The purpose of running a business is never just to give people jobs, and the only "businesses" that exist for the sole purpose of giving people jobs are scams (ask Google about "network marketing" "multi-level marketing" or "affiliate marketing" jobs. The only "product" they truly put out is to tell people that they have work for them, but they fail to mention that this work actually costs the "employee" more than what the "employee" actually gets paid.)
Like most Americans you seem to focus only on wealth as a measure of success. Having been to Europe and America (but being a resident of neither), I much prefer the European model. Sure there's less raw cash, but since when did money buy Happiness?
Whenever there's those OECD comparisons about things that I value: happiness, standard of living, access to health and education, low violent crime etc then North Western Europe along with Australia and New Zealand blitz those things every time.
So if there's one thing Europe shouldn't be doing, it's being more like America.
Granted the US is the biggest economy
Maybe I misunderstood your comment, or maybe this is a common misconception. You always hear that the US is the world's largest economy. Last time I checked, the EU had a larger GDP than the US.
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be working out very well for Europe. See, you can't make people well off by government decree.
And they own the current president.
It's working a lot better than in the US where the standard of health is at the same levels as a 3rd world country. Also where society is collapsing to the point where everyone is after each other and the police are shooting everyone, like a country ran by a tyrannical dictator.
You're just repeating uninformed anti-American beliefs common in Europe. In actual fact, Americans rank fairly low in terms of materialism:
http://www.ipsos-na.com/news-p...
You mean the OECD Better Life index?
http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex...
The US generally comes out near the top. But those numbers are dubious to begin with: high happiness numbers don't actually mean that people are happy, high voter turnout is not a good measure of civic engagement, staying longest in school is not necessarily a good thing, and high life expectancy and government-paid health care are not necessarily good measures of a good medical system. And comparing the US as a whole against individual EU member nations makes little sense either.
Because they have to eat and pay the rent. Here in London, because both major parties believe a housing shortage will help them*, and lies about it, rents are often more than 50% of salary.
It is not easy to get a job. If it was, things would change fast - mostly imigration would increase to bring in even more people who don't understand the cost of living until too late.
Conservatives thing rising prices will make existing home owners vote for them as it makes them "richer".
Labour think housing shortages will make those in social housing more desperate to vote for them.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
The idea that US social programs are weak is a fiction. Government social expenditure in the US is 20% of GDP, which is roughly in the middle of the OECD and Europe. But given that US per capita GDP is significantly higher than that of most European nations, that actually puts us near the top in terms of per capita government social spending. And that isn't even counting the massive US non-profit sector.
Chicago? i thought it was Detroit ... oh wait ... Greece has not failed, yet, it's just doomed.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Europe did not put its tech sector all in one basket; it is spread out instead of being all in one place.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I'd be interested in a comparison of what percent of that spending directly benefits the intended recipient.
In the US somebody who simply doesn't want to work has no real benefits available to them. That means that you spend a lot of effort trying to regulate the bottom end of the employment food chain, because people are desperate for jobs.
Also, healthcare is a big area of public benefit spending in Europe, but costs are much lower there. That means that you get a lot more care per dollar spent than you get in the US. Also, in the US it is hard to get socialized medicine unless you're elderly or disabled.
I don't think you can measure the strength of social programs merely in the amount of money spent.
There are plenty of locations all over Europe that pretend to be European Silicon Valleys.
The most obvious is Plateau de Saclay, in France. Having founded a software company there, I can tell you it's nothing like the real thing.
Their innovative gene lines either lie in the ground rotting, or they immigrated to the United States. Perpetual war has its consequences both in people and their culture.
E Proelio Veritas.
tell that to Greece, Spain and Italy.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
last time I did any serious coding IT WAS ALL IN UPPERCASE. ZX81 BASIC for the win!
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Boots have been going for 155 years purely off the back of innovative strides and some of the most amazing breathroughs in pharmaceuticals the world has ever seen:
Ibruprofen
Compound multivitamins
The modern cash prescription system
Vat-grown penicillin
Porcine insulin
To name just a few out of many. I'm pretty sure most readers have heard of Boots The Chemist? Founded in Nottingham, England, in or around 1860 when Jesse was just ten. Still headquartered in Nottingham, England.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
^^And this, folks, is why you sholdn't use Bing Translate.
The fuck did I just read??
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
*shouldn't.
New keyboard. Needs breaking in.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Have you run the numbers on that basic income idea? Just back of the envelope here, but take the US - 300 million population, give them $200 a week each, that's a cool $3 trillion dollars per annum, which is equivalent to the entire federal tax revenue in 2014. So, you're going to double all taxes to pay for this? Okay so let's cut out all those too young or old enough to already be on a state pension, as well as those who really don't need an extra ten grand a year (which in some places is nowhere near liveable), let's cut it down to 100 million people. That's a trillion dollars per year.
And this is before you start to consider the inflationary effects of pumping that much money into the economy, regardless of how recycled it is - most of that will be going to poor people who will mix it straight back into the liquid economy, taken from the mid to high level wealthy who tend to invest in property and stocks instead.
Basic income is not a workable idea, but fortunately we have social welfare nets that do approximately the same thing for people who actually need it.
Just back of the envelope here, but take the US - 300 million population, give them $200 a week each, that's a cool $3 trillion dollars per annum, which is equivalent to the entire federal tax revenue in 2014. So, you're going to double all taxes to pay for this?
As you point out many some of that existing $3T already goes to social programs, which would be partially redundant. So, the cost wouldn't be quite that high.
However, I'm more than happy to double income taxes to pay for this. I'd lower taxes at the lower income brackets (which gives people more incentive to work), and I'd raise it at the higher brackets (which is where all the money is anyway). The US GDP is $15T - we can afford to pay for food/etc.
And this is before you start to consider the inflationary effects of pumping that much money into the economy, regardless of how recycled it is - most of that will be going to poor people who will mix it straight back into the liquid economy, taken from the mid to high level wealthy who tend to invest in property and stocks instead.
I think our priorities are a bit different. I don't really see stocks and property as an end in and of themselves.
But, I'm all for rehab/etc for those with addiction problems. Also, people with nothing to do tend to have kids, and that is definitely something the system couldn't afford, so there would need to be measures to prevent that (if having kids doesn't cost you a lot, you'll tend to have them).
I don't know how old you are, but here's what I can say. I'm 33 and never in my memory has the economy not been in the shitter. For all of the 33 years that I can remember, we have been on the brink of total economic collapse. It's sort of how Armageddon is always just around the corner. Right now, I open up any news feed and I'll read how bad the job market is right now despite the fact my company needs to hire 40+ people, are offering huge referral bonuses, and I can't capitalize on them because I literally don't know anybody without a job. I just finished a masters degree in CS and the CS department had a 100% job placement for graduate students by the time of graduation and a 98% placement for undergraduates, yet even with that, I constantly hear how bad the job market is. The average taxable value for homes in my state has increased something like 25% this year, houses are on average on the market less than a week before going under contract, yet according to the papers, the economy is bad.
Maybe you should stop taking your news feeds at their word and apply a little critical thinking.
Basic income is not a workable idea
Considering if it hadn't been for Watergate we'd have had that, since Richard Nixon thought it was a good idea, it must have been thought workable. We still have the pilot program, we call it "Earned Income Credit"
He was also in favor of single payer government run health insurance for everyone, the stickler was the details. Teddy Kennedy blamed himself for it not getting enacted, since he was holding out for more concessions towards the lower income folk...then Watergate happened and that ended any cooperation with Nixon.
You can blame the international banking cabal for that. European countries ceded sovereignty to the EU, and the EU marches to the orders of the banks and Washington.
Well then, might as well dismiss the US' GDP because of bankrupt states like Illinois, California, Pennsylvania, and almost 30 others.
"American tech giants like Google, Amazon, and Apple..."
All those mentioned are located in Luxembourg, where they pay their taxes.
Detroit is interesting because unions played a major part in destroying its car industry. At a time where US car companies badly needed to adapt to the new Asian competition, most of their money was spent paying for pension and benefits of people who had left the workforce years or even decades earlier. So they entered the death spiral of downsizing, outsourcing and such.
Same thing happens with civil servants and public workers in many cities in North America. Not only are the services severely downsized (such as in Chicago where they had to reduce the school calendar to be able to afford the gold-plated teachers conditions), but in many cases the cities have to spend tax money on pension and healthcare of retired employees who did not work harder than current ones, but simply happened to be in the workforce when the economy was booming and the unions had the cities by the balls. The result is that people who can't themselves afford a pension plan or decent healthcare and who will live in poverty when they retire have to pay for those lottery winners.
Another issue with unions is the lack of flexibility. They hold onto job descriptions to a point where it becomes totally absurd. Such as in the case of those people working in one of Warren Buffet's newspapers (I think the one in Buffalo); when the newspaper brought in a new machine to fold papers, they couldn't change the job of those poor union workers who used to fold newspapers manually. So until they retire, those people stand in line besides the conveyor belt where the newspapers exit the folding machine and in the air they make a move with their hand that is similar to what they used to do to fold the newspapers manually. They are known as "the blessers", and they are the perfect example of a situation where employees become wards of the company, not part of a team that is there to help the business.
lucm, indeed.
I think our priorities are a bit different. I don't really see stocks and property as an end in and of themselves.
Don't put words in my mouth. Although as it turns out you might want to look into where pension funds put their money.
Also, people with nothing to do tend to have kids, and that is definitely something the system couldn't afford, so there would need to be measures to prevent that (if having kids doesn't cost you a lot, you'll tend to have them).
Great, so phase two of your economic masterplan is to make sure the system bankrupts itself within a generation. Hint: people are producers as well as consumers.
Wrong, Detroit designed cars that people didn't want to buy, nothing downstream of that made any difference.
What I understood was that Detroit had no problem designing cars that people wanted to buy. SUV's were and still are very popular. They just weren't able to make a profit building and selling them.
No from a progressive pov the uk does beat the USA in a lot of ways especially in the taxation of share options - no massive tax bill on now worthless stock. Only have 1 set of employment laws instead of 52 also helps.
The SUV didn't exist when they started their decline with the import flood beginning 1969
Your comments just demonstrate your utter and complete ignorance. Really, people like you make me embarrassed to be a European. Crawl back into the ignorant chauvinist hole you crawled out of.
Europe's Silicon Valley is NOT possible;
Unlike US dollar, Euro is NOT pegged to OPEC Oil;
Casteism
I don't know what that means, but welfare payments are generally much lower, and there are almost no in-kind benefits like food stamps.
Costs are much lower because services are limited and prices are fixed (resulting in shortages). And health and life expectancy may well be (slightly) better because people receive less medical care.
Indeed, you can't. I just gave you the overall number as a summary. You have to do a lot more research to figure out what's going on on the ground. There is a lot of crappy writing by hysterical left and right wingers, but there are some decent and well-reasoned analyses, like this one: http://www.spiegel.de/internat... (I'm not endorsing everything it says, but it's a good start).
I have fairly conservative fiscal views. I think it would actually be great if the US adopted a German-style welfare system and a German-style health care system. It would greatly simplify our systems and greatly lower costs. But progressives in the US don't allow it to happen because it would result in massive cuts in benefits and two-tiered systems for the rich vs. everybody else; instead, they keep proclaiming the fiction that "Europe" has better benefits than the US with less spending.
Whatever that book is, it is propaganda and has nothing yo do with reality. A society only exists as long as there are individuals who want to enrich themselves and build products and services in pursuit of that goal. I lived in Germany for over 4 years in total and I know that people there understand that fact. Now, it is still not a free society in Germany, which is why I am not staying there though I come over periodically. The tax police in Germany is a fact of life that people have to deal with there and ratting out your neighbours is a national past time. It is a successful country so far but only because it is moving away from socialism mostly, not towards it. I prefer societies that realize that the individual is more important than the collective personally. It is hard to find and it is not a society bound by nation borders, it is a society above such notions and limits.
You can't handle the truth.
That is just a lot of rubbish. Nordic countries have the biggest welfare states and weathered this financial crisis better than most. If I sound grumpy it is because this myth of gets perpetuated indefinitely despite zero evidence. It is something the rich and powerful who don't want to giver workers any rights want to push. And unfortunately because they have a lot of money and influence they have manage to make it sound like it is some sort of well established fact, when it isn't. The size of the welfare state is not what matter here but the difference between income and expenses. In this regard the US is worse. Although the US has a smaller welfare state, they still have too low taxes and keep running too much deficit. Most nordics have well balanced budgets despite having a more generous welfare state. And this isn't really exclusive to the nordics. Germany is also a well functioning welfare state that manage this crisis quite well. You can't make sweeping generalization about Europe based on fcking Greece. That country has never function very well. When it joined the EU it was almost a developing country. It is sort of like making generalization about North America based on how things are run in Mexico. Utterly nonsensical.
Seems to be working okay. My country (The Netherlands) is consistently in the top happy countries, definitely near the top healthy countries.
You seem to be under the misapprehension that European countries are communist. We're not, but by and large we've heavily regulated and, in some cases, nationalized things that should not be run for profit, like health care. I'm still miffed that the train system was privatized. It's gone down-hill since then.
I'm not sure in what kind of barbaric anarchy you are living to give you that perspective, but you can't be more wrong.
The tax police in Germany is a fact of life that people have to deal with there and ratting out your neighbours is a national past time.
Again, Germany is highly individualistic. Respect for privacy is very high here. What you say is simply fictitious because most neighbors have no idea what other neighbors doing, because they do not poke nose in others affairs - not without an invitation.
But yes, if you do openly something illegal, just like in any other country, you would be reported to authorities. That's because law (which is the same literally all around the world) makes you an accomplice if you do not report crime.
If you were ever convicted in Germany, that might explain your sentiment.
I prefer societies that realize that the individual is more important than the collective personally.
Germany is highly individualistic. Yet, if you put individual over society, than it simply means that there is no cohesive society. And the society is there to deal with global problems of which there were plenty in recent times.
It is hard to find and it is not a society bound by nation borders, it is a society above such notions and limits.
Mafia? Organized international crime syndicates? Fit your requirements perfectly.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
The Netherlands is a wealthy enclave at the northern edge of Europe that is still reaping the benefits of its colonialist past and isolating itself through language and culture. And for every Netherlands, there is a Greece in the EU. If you want to make meaningful comparisons, start by comparing the EU as a whole to the US.
I'm under no "misapprehensions" about Europe because I'm originally from Europe. However, being from Europe, I have a pretty good idea what your misapprehensions are. If you think that anybody can mistake Europe for "communist", you really have no idea what communism is. No, Europe is statist and stagnant, which is much worse because it is so insidious.
Pension funds are required to be fully paid funded up front, unless you're a state government. That means that at any point in time, the expected cost of an employee who retired that very day has already been paid out. Retired pensioners? Not a single dime is paid out byba company--their last payment was made the day he retires.
The issues between unions and industry is much more complicated then industry let's on. Yes, unions sometimes ask too much. But companies can push back or compromise. German industry works hand-in-hand with unions, for example. And Germany is an industrial powerhouse.
I think our priorities are a bit different. I don't really see stocks and property as an end in and of themselves.
Don't put words in my mouth. Although as it turns out you might want to look into where pension funds put their money.
I'm well aware that pension funds tend to put their money into stocks. I still don't see them as an end in themselves. There really is no need for private pensions if you have basic income, but certainly I wouldn't ban them. I would tax assets though.
Also, people with nothing to do tend to have kids, and that is definitely something the system couldn't afford, so there would need to be measures to prevent that (if having kids doesn't cost you a lot, you'll tend to have them).
Great, so phase two of your economic masterplan is to make sure the system bankrupts itself within a generation. Hint: people are producers as well as consumers.
Most modern production involves capital more than labor. Resources tend to be limited, and if you endlessly grow population you end up with tons of unemployed.
Plus, regulating childbirth is actually a way to cut down on welfare spending. The pure-free-market approach would be to require parents to pay for the full cost of raising kids before having them, thus ensuring that kids are never a cost on anybody but their parents. However, I think it would probably make more sense to have a bit more diversity and have society kick in to let more people have kids.
True, the EU isn't a country. It's a union of European states... just as the USA is a union of American states.
There is a difference of course, in that the USA has a much stronger and more influential central government, with much less power afforded to its member states than in the EU; but in essence, the concept is entirely the same.
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
And comparing the US as a whole against individual EU member nations makes little sense either.
So directly comparing one country against another is not fair? Good luck with that argument...
Protip: when comparing two things with a list of points, state - ideally just before the list - which way round your comparisons are phrased. Wrong: Blah blah Tiger yada T34 yada yad. Yada yada yada yada. Slower. Bigger gun. More complicated to build ...
Correct: Although the Tiger had a bigger gun, it was slower than the T34, more complicated to build ...
At the bottom of the
I could not agree more with this sentiment; I don't know where GP got his warped perspective. As an US American and German that has traveled the world (mostly west Europe and north america), I can say I don't know a county that is safer and freer than Germany. I consider to have more freedom of speech and freedom of expression in Germany, than in free speech zoned Murica.
The tax code in German is reasonable and the fact that the agency that enforces it has police powers just a minor detail. This is not so dissimilar to the IRS, though they need to defer to local law enforcement for everything. (A team of people form the Finanzamt or a team from the IRS and some cops does not make a real difference.) In contrast to the USA, the Germans don't have the notion that I need to file a tax report even though I currently have no residence in the USA and am not earning money there...
If you want German nonsense, you should have noted their environment protection, food safety and similar laws. Not really the laws themselves but the bureaucracy that ensured. If you have a production line, they want reports and checks on everything.
Speaking from the UK (as a Software Engineer incidentally): the lack of tiny companies that take a vast cut of wealth while hiring very few people and not producing much of anything except abstract constructs like IP isn't really worrying me. And the reason is transparently obvious: WW2 moved a vast amount of the Europe's intellectual talent to the US, the Pentagon funneled massive funding to public sector research, then transferred the IP to the private sector.
I'd love to see a reference for you paper folders anecdote. It sure is a strong talking point...
Management has been very successful at demonizing unions for the past century. Now people are starting to catch on that management is a huge part of the problem as well. May you be as successful with your lies.
Cheap storage VM.
Because, if you want to live better than the government-designated minimum, you're going to have to produce. I like earning considerably more than the median US household income, because I prefer more money to less money.
If you want a whole lot money than I do, and many people do, you'll have to do something more special. This is likely to involve sixty-hour work weeks (on up), risk-taking, and intelligence, and almost certainly creativity.
One problem a government safety net solves is family risk. If a prospective entrepeneur has a spouse and children, said entrepreneur will be limited in the amount of risk he or she is able to tolerate. Provide universal health care, for example, and said entrepeneur can leave employer-supplied health insurance without taking risks with his children's health.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
No, your point was "Like most Americans you seem to focus only on wealth as a measure of success". You stated that without any evidence, and it is false. Yes, Americans are very wealthy, but that doesn't mean they "focus on wealth as a measure of success". In fact, the opposite is the case: Americans are fairly non-materialistic in comparison to the rest of the world, including Europeans. There are many cultural and historical reasons for that, but a very simple one is that if you're very wealthy, you can afford to be non-materialistic.
"Fair" has nothing to do with it. If you want to figure out what good government is, it simply doesn't make sense to compare the US as a whole to individual EU members. Individual EU members these days have less autonomy than US states, and the reason some EU members are doing comparatively well is because other EU members are getting screwed over.
The kind of European bigotry, ignorance, and chauvinism you display doesn't keep Greece in the EU and doesn't get down Spanish youth unemployment. Europe has severe economic and social problems that no pissing contest with the US will fix.
does their combined debt exceed the GDP of the entire Union?
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
I'd love to see a reference for you paper folders anecdote.
There's an summary of this incident in the book "Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist".
lucm, indeed.
Americans are very wealthy, but that doesn't mean they "focus on wealth as a measure of success". In fact, the opposite is the case: Americans are fairly non-materialistic in comparison to the rest of the world, including Europeans.
This is the country that gave us Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian and Real Housewives right? I appreciate not all of America is Hollywood and Manhattan, but you are joking if you don't think the US has the most materialistic people on the planet amongst it population.
The kind of European bigotry, ignorance, and chauvinism you display doesn't keep Greece in the EU and doesn't get down Spanish youth unemployment. Europe has severe economic and social problems that no pissing contest with the US will fix.
You seem to be confusing the EU with the continent.
You've also assumed that I'm somehow European which is also a common error amongst Americans. Poor geographic knowledge is common in your country, probably due to your second rate education system which Europeans definitely don't want.
I'm guessing the irony of your bigot, ignorance and chauvinism comment is lost on you...
You didn't say that the US has the most materialistic people, you said that "Like most Americans you seem to focus only on wealth as a measure of success". Are you familiar with basic English and understand the difference between those two statements?
And if you think that "Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian and Real Housewives" represent the epitome of materialism, you really can't be very familiar with European society, history, or media.
Not at all; the parts of Europe that are outside the EU are generally even more dismal.
Actually, I carefully refrained from assuming that. European bigotry also exists in former colonies (e.g., Australia, New Zealand), plus among many left-wing Americans. So, instead of beating around the bush, where are you actually from?
I'm European by birth and education, and American by choice.
Thank you.
Founded in i38o, the Evening News, which was establishment and Republican, had been run by the Butler family, which also owned a local television station and a fortune in American Airlines stock. In recent decades, the proprietor had been Kate Robinson Butler, a grande dame who traveled with her poodle in a Rolls-Royce. Butler had built a lavish printing plant, rimmed with distinctly nonnative tropical plants, and had gone to similar expense to avoid trouble with unions.* Employees who hac once tied the papers by hand had continued at their posts after the work was automated. As papers came off the runway, the workers would pass their hands over the conveyors, as if offering a sacrament. They were known as "blessers."6 But the family's stewardship had ended with Butler's death, in 1974. Now the paper was up for sale by her estate.
Sounds like classic mismanagement to me, less of a union problem.
Cheap storage VM.
European bigotry also exists in former colonies
"European Bigotry"? Can you even say that with a straight face?
I can easily say that with a straight face. Europeans have a long history of cultural chauvinism, bigotry, and ignorance about the rest of the world, and in particular about the US.
Haha you kill me. At least Europeans (and Asians,and Africans etc) can point out the US on a map. That's at least little bit less ignorant than a lot of Americans
You seem to be be sensitive to the US/European relationship, maybe because of your personal experience. But it take from me, everywhere you go there are good people and bad people. I forgot where this thread even started, but if you feel insulted by my anti-Amercan comments I apologise. I like the US, but I also love to point out its faults. Don't take it personally