Europe’s GDP is keeping pace with America’s just fine. Why do we constantly hear the opposite?
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Europe’s GDP is keeping pace with America’s just fine. Why do we constantly hear the opposite?
Because we have a lot of neoliberal to economically conservative governments in Europe who want us to work more, harder and for smaller wages.
Thank you for sharing this. The explanations were very clear and made me aware of a measurement issue in GDP statistics that I’ve never heard of before.
We hear the opposite because it’s in someone’s interest we hear the opposite.
Interesting article and comments.
Question that someone with more knowledge may be able to answer; why are we measuring in goods produced when much of the workforce moved from making things to utilizing brainpower?
GDP includes services as well. As long as they are sold that is.
And if GDP wasn’t keeping pace, why would that be a bad thing? It’s not like growth has meaningfully improved peoples lives in the last couple decades
The issue is that Europe has a relatively good social safely net. An economy with little growth and more of its people retired are going to cause a decrease in benefits per person.
We have PLENTY of average benefits per person already. Currently most benefits go to rich people in the form of public investments in private companies, subsidies for often harmful industries, and a plethora of tax breaks. Growth is not the problem.
Very interesting. I’ve worked with the data mentioned before (as a student) and never really thought about such problems. Will do so from now on.
It would be interesting to see this methodology applied to other countries, since it paints a picture that the current economic understanding is wildly incorrect.
