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| 5/24 |
| 2005/2/2 [Politics/Foreign/Europe] UID:36033 Activity:insanely high |
2/2 In spite of what libertarian commentators like to claim,
Europe is outperformaing the US economically by almost
any measure:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17726
\_ What do you define as "Europe"? France, Germany, Poland, the UK,
Luxembourg and Greece are about as heterogenous economically as it
gets. That aside, there is a raft of problems (and advantages) not
present in the US. The key word you're looking for is "different."
As for the libertarians, there are some areas where "European"
bureaucracy is oppressive to business compared to the US, and
others where companies have a very free hand. YMMV. -John
\_ Germany has highest unemployment since WW II. I do not envy
Europeans. Only the massive US debt is an issue for Americans.
If that can be tackled then the EU has no hope at all. If it
can't then it still might have no hope.
\_ The Europeans are now more productive per hour than the
Americans. They used to be less, much less productive.
How is this trend in our favor again?
\_ They still work fewer hours and fewer of them work. The
real threat now is China, not the EU.
\_ I believe OP's contention is not about the EU as threat but
rather as a possibly superior economic model.
\_ "Economic threat"
\_ Well OP makes the stupid mistake of taking "EU" and not
"aspects of certain EU countries". -John
\_ http://www.thinkandask.com/news/jobs.html
What are the comparative employment rates?
\_ http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/41/15/32504422.pdf
\_ GDP growth. http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/0/17/19230458.xls
country:2002q4:2003q1:2003q2:2003q3:2003q4:2004q1:2004q2:2004q3
US:0.2:0.5:1.0:1.8:1.0:1.1:0.8:1.0
France:-0.2:0.2:-0.5:1.0:0.6:0.6:0.6:0.0
Germany:0.0:-0.4:-0.2:0.3:0.3:0.4:0.4:0.1
\_ What is comparable GDP/person? We all know that the
population growth rate is higher in the US. That does
not really help me as an individual worker. Over the
last decade, twenty years, thirty years and fourty
years, GDP growth per person has been comparable.
\_ Not growth, but only Norway has a higher GDP per capita than
the US. http://csua.org/u/ay0
\_ The statement is based on data from csls.ca . (BTW, they misspelled
the title of the csls paper. It should be "Output per Hour" instead
of "Output per House".) Given the higher relative cost of labor
in Europe, it is completely reasonable that Europeans are more
productive per hour. (Similarly, Europe's relatively rare farm-
land are more productive than the US.) The scarcity and the cost
of the resource guarantees the employer (and the farmer) invest
more in productivity. In fact, if you look at general labor
productivity (not per hour), The US has been outperforming EU
by large strides in the last couple decades.
by large strides in the last couple decades, most of that based on
the large number of hours worked by US employees.
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/5/47/2483871.xls
It is perhaps more accurate to say that Europe has been outperforming
the US economically in *one* measure that is not significant at all.
\_ No, you either did not read or did not fully understand
the URL provided. In GDP/person, the EU has grown faster than
the US in the last 15 years. In productivity per hour worked,
the EU has gone from behind the US to leading the US. In
ROI, the EU has been catching up. In total public debt, the
EU has caught up. In short, every significant comparable economic
measurable, the US has gone from a large lead to a small lead
and in some cases no lead at all.
and in some cases to no lead at all.
\_ Hmmm, you are right. Europe should brace for the imminent
brain drain from the United Stated as more and more
professionals realize they are better off working for the new
winning team. -- ilyas
\_ My French coworkers here are all rather disparaging of
the countrymen they've left behind in France. Perhaps it's
an Ecole Polytechnique thing.
\_ My French coworkers here are all very happy to be
away from France. My French acquaintances still in
France are feverishly trying to get the hell out.
\_ That's sort of what I was trying to get at. If EU
economic model is so superior, why are so many
european professionals and scientists so desperate
to get out of there? -- ilyas
\_ Ummm.. because they're stupid?
\_ Perhaps you hang out with a desperate and
unhappy crowd. Do you have any evidence that
is not anecdotal that this is true?
\_ Do you have any non-anecdotal evidence that
points the other way? Or even anecdotal
evidence? All I see is a lot of foreign
professionals settling here to work, and
foreign scientists getting tenure here.
I don't see much traffic the other way.
Except John, but (a) he is a commie mutant
traitor and (b) .ch isn't even a part of
Europe, they are like their own planet.
-- ilyas
\_ Trust the compter. The computer is your
friend.
\_ Yes, read The Economist.
\_ On a slightly unrelated topic, I read
an article in the Economist on
'sister Hillary,' where the author
was gushing about Hillary's 'maturity
and ambition' as a politician, because
she decided to pay lip service to the
faith vote. I found that an interesting
comment -- she comes across as a lying,
insincere scumbag to me when she does
stuff like that. Kind of like her
husband. Of course, being the biggest
scumbag may be what maturity and
ambition means in politics. -- ilyas
\_ Take a look at the enrollment figures of
US grad schools.
\_ I have, and the numbers are down.
\_ 'The numbers are down' because less
\_ fewer
people are being let in (due to
procedural post 9/11 issues), not
because less people want to come here.
No cigar for you.
\_ Bullshit. The "procedural 9/11
issues" are that the student visa
system is completely fucking broken.
I know grad students who are afraid
to even go to canada for a conference
because even though all their visa
stuff is ok, there's some random
chance that they'll get stuck in canada
for so long they have to go back to
their home country. For people from
countries where they're desperate,
they try anyway, and the acceptances
are down, but for countries like
germany you better believe people
are turning down US positions becuase
they don't want to put up with the
moronic bullshit. And applications
to Canadian schools are up. Our
broken-ass visa system isn't just
letting terrorists in, it's seriously
undermining American science. I'm not
pp, and I'm not disagreeing with you
about professionals in general, just
about students and post-docs in the
sciences.
\_ You do understand that does not mean
that european professionals are not
leaving in an absolute sense. Also,
rather unfortunately, I don't know of
any foreign student statistics that
breakdown based on the quality of the
local school (is the student attending
Joe's Foreign Language Institute of
Berkeley or UCB?). I would not lament
the loss of the Joe's Foreign Language
Institute of Berkeley population.
\_ Albert H. Teich, director of
science and public policy at
the American Association for
the Advancement of Science,
which signed the statement,
wrote that not improving the
visa situation "will do
irreparable harm to
scientific progress as well
as U.S. competitiveness."
Also:
"A survey of major graduate
institutions, conducted by
the Council of Graduate
Schools, found a 6-percent
decline in new foreign
enrollments this fall, the
third year in a row with a
substantial drop." -tom
\_ Mea culpa. I should have made it clearer. When I said
"general labor productivity (not per hour)", I was referring
to Annex Table 12 "Labour productivity in the business
sector", which specifically is *not* about productivity per
hour. In fact, I specifically allowed that the producitivity
per hour is lower in the US ("it is completely reasonable...").
However, the labor productivity per capita has been growing
much faster in the US, likely because of the greater number
of hours worked by US workers. Similarly, GDP per hour
worked is higher in many other nations, but US is almost
tops in GDP per capita.
\_ Granted. But how much longer will this continue,
with current trends?
\_ Well, GDP and productivity growth in the US has been
faster in the US for most of the last couple of decades.
And it's really not that we've been working *more*
hours, it's more that other countries have been
working *fewer* hours. The number of hours worked
has pretty much stayed unchanged in the US since 1980,
but has been dropping elsewhere.
\_ Thanks for this interesting info. This is the sort of
thing I was looking for. (why is this deleted? is being
polite a censorable offence on the motd now??) -OP |
| 5/24 |
|
| www.nybooks.com/articles/17726 Free World: America, Europe, and the Surprising Future of the West by Timothy Garton Ash Random House, 286 pp. Being largely without flav or it can be diluted to taste. It is the most democratic method ever devised for introducing caffei ne into human beings. Price-to-volume ratio is outrageous, suggesting indif ference to the consumer and ignorance of the market. The aesthetic satis faction accessory to the beverage far outweighs its metabolic impact. This contrast can stand for the differences between America and Europe d ifferences nowadays asserted with increased frequency and not a little a crimony on both sides of the Atlantic. The mutual criticisms are familia r To American commentators Europe is "stagnant." Its workers, employers , and regulations lack the flexibility and adaptability of their US coun terparts. The costs of European social welfare payments and public servi ces are "unsustainable." Europe's aging and "cosseted" populations are u nderproductive and self-satisfied. In a globalized world, the "European social model" is a doomed mirage. This conclusion is typically drawn eve n by "liberal" American observers, who differ from conservative (and neo conservative) critics only in deriving no pleasure from it. To a growing number of Europeans, however, it is America that is in troub le and the "American way of life" that cannot be sustained. The American pursuit of wealth, size, and abundance as material surrogates for happ iness is aesthetically unpleasing and ecologically catastrophic. The Am erican economy is built on sand (or, more precisely, other people's mone y). For many Americans the promise of a better future is a fading hope. Contemporary mass culture in the US is squalid and meretricious. No wond er so many Americans turn to the church for solace. These perceptions constitute the real Atlantic gap and they suggest that something has changed. In past decades it was conventionally assumedwhe ther with satisfaction or regretthat Eu-rope and America were convergin g upon a single "Western" model of late capitalism, with the US as usual leading the way. The logic of scale and market, of efficiency and profi t, would ineluctably trump local variations and inherited cultural const raints. Americanization (or globalizationthe two treated as synonymous) was inevitable. The bestindeed the onlyhope for local products and pr actices was that they would be swept up into the global vortex and repac kaged as "international" commodities for universal consumption. Thus an archetypically Italian productcaff espressowould travel to the US, wh ere it would metamorphose from an elite preference into a popular commod ity, and then be repackaged and sold back to Europeans by an American ch ain store. It is not just that Starbuc ks has encountered unexpected foreign resistance to double-decaf-mocha-s kim-latte-with-cinnamon (except, revealingly, in the United Kingdom), or that politically motivated Europeans are abjuring high-profile American commodities. It is becoming clear that America and Europe are not way s tations on a historical production line, such that Europeans must expect to inherit or replicate the American experience after an appropriate ti me lag. They are actually quite distinct places, very possibly moving in divergent directions. There are even thoseincluding the authors of two of the books under reviewfor whom it is not Europe but rather the Unit ed States that is trapped in the past. its affection for guns and prisons (the EU has 87 prisoners per 100,000 peo ple; As TR Rei d puts it in The United States of Europe, "Yes, Americans put up huge bi llboards reading 'Love Thy Neighbor,' but they murder and rape their nei ghbors at rates that would shock any European nation." But it is the cur iosities of America's economy, and its social costs, that are now attrac ting attention. Americans work much more than Europeans: according to the OECD a typical employed American put in 1,877 hours in 2000, compared to 1,562 for his or her French counterpart. One American in three works more than fifty h ours a week. Whereas Swedes get more than thirty paid days off work per year and even the Bri ts get an average of twenty-three, Americans can hope for something betw een four and ten, depending on where they live. Unemployment in the US i s lower than in many European countries (though since out-of-work Americ ans soon lose their rights to unemployment benefits and are taken off th e registers, these statistics may be misleading). America, it seems, is better than Europe at creating jobs. So more American adults are at work and they work much more than Europeans. Back in 1980 the average American chief executive earned forty times the average manufacturing employee. For the top tier of American CEOs, the ratio is now 475:1 and would be vastly greater if assets, not income , were taken into account. A privileged minority has access to the best medical treatment in the world. But 45 million Ameri cans have no health insurance at all (of the world's developed countries only the US and South Africa offer no universal medical coverage). Acco rding to the World Health Organization the United States is number one i n health spending per capitaand thirty-seventh in the quality of its se rvice. As a consequence, Americans live shorter lives than West Europeans. Their children are more likely to die in infancy: the US ranks twenty-sixth a mong industrial nations in infant mortality, with a rate double that of Sweden, higher than Slovenia's, and only just ahead of Lithuania'sand t his despite spending 15 percent of US gross domestic product on "health care" (much of it siphoned off in the administrative costs of for-profit private networks). Sweden, by contrast, devotes just 8 percent of its G DP to health. In the aggregate the United States spends much more on education than the nations of Wes tern Europe; and it has by far the best research universities in the wor ld. Yet a recent study suggests that for every dollar the US spends on e ducation it gets worse results than any other industrial nation. Europeans are betterfairerat distributin g social goods. But there can be no goods or services without wealth, and surely the one thing American capitalism is good at, and where leisure-bound, self-indulgent Europeans need to improve, is t he dynamic generation of wealth. Europeans work less: but when they do work they seem to put their time t o better use. In 1970 GDP per hour in the EU was 35 percent below that o f the US; Product ivity per hour of work in Italy, Austria, and Denmark is similar to that of the United States; America's longstanding advantage in wages and productivitythe gift of si ze, location, and history alikeappears to be winding down, with attenda nt consequences for US domination of the international business scene. In the year 2000, European direct investment in the US exceeded American investment in Europe by nearly two fifths. Amo ng dozens of emblematically "American" companies and products now owned by Europeans are Brooks Brothers, DKNY, Random House, Kent Cigarettes, D ove Soap, Chrysler, Bird's Eye, Pennzoil, Baskin-Robbins, and the Los An geles Dodgers. Europeans even appear to be better at generating small and medium-size bu sinesses. There are more small businesses in the EU than in the United S tates, and they create more employment (65 percent of European jobs in 2 002 were in small and medium-sized firms, compared with just 46 percent in the US). The EU Char ter of Fundamental Rights promises the "right to parental leave followin g the birth or adoption of a child" and every West European country prov ides salary support during that leave. In Sweden women get sixty-four we eks off and two thirds of their wages. Even Portugal guarantees maternit y leave for three months on 100 percent salary. In the words of Valgard Haugland, Norway's Christi an Democratic minister for children and family: "Americans like to talk about family values. It was Winston Ch urchill who declared in March 1943 that "there is no finer investment fo r any community than putting milk into babies." To his self-anointed dis ciples in... |
| www.thinkandask.com/news/jobs.html US Unemployment Rate -- Tops EU Simple formula to understand unemployment rate calculation: Let us use simple terms -- for this example 10 weeks of employment benefits -- statistically it does not matter how many weeks benefits are given. We've used the same data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) to re-introduce professionals into the workforce; with equally shorter time to compensate for lost benefits. With a group of 100 professional men and women (non-farm labor,) working for a variety of different corporations, at the first of month No. With 96 people employed, 4 people are on unemployment benefits for the next 10 weeks. six people are on unemployment benefits for the next 10 weeks, and six weeks respectively. While 94 people are employed the unemployment rate has risen to 6 percent. With 95 people in the pool, our unemployment rate holds steady at 5 percent. One person fell off the benefits, three people are laid off and now, we only have 94 people to measure. Update: July 2004 US Labor Department numbers (which only report those unemployed profess ionals collecting unemployment) for June 2004 show that national unemplo yment remains unchanged at 56 percent. No offense to those living in North Dakota, where the unemployment rate i s 34 percent, but a strong economy is more reflective of the populated states... here is a look at some numbers from June 2004 using Labor Depa rtment figures. The actual numb er of professionals out of work is not tracked by the Labor Department. We have five people on benefits in total, and now with only 92 people to measure, our unemployment rates holds at 5 percent. And our unemployement rate has fallen to 4 percent while the number of people on benefits is at the lowest in six months. With a 4 percent unemployement rate, anyone could claim this is super news. Our total of employed professionals from the original 100 has dropped to 88. Four live on benefits and from the original 100 people, the actual unemployement rate is 12 percent.... While this example must not be taken to mean the BLS statistics should be multiplied by three, this model simply uses numbers to understand how the rate may appear positive, when in fact it does not provide an accurate picture of trends. The "official" unemployment rate in the United States is 55 percent (July 2004), a contradiction to the actual number of unemployed men and women in the United States which stands at 16,265,736. The United States government only keeps you "unemployed" for six months, whether or not you find a job. Employers added no hope, creating only 32,000 jobs in July 2004. and while the White House statisticians report continuing declines in the unemployment rate, during President George W Bush's reign, the economy has lost 23 million professional jobs. No matter which political party owns the White House, keeping the true numbers of unemployed artificially low boosts the perception of job creation and economic growth. Los Angeles Times, the true number of unemployed in the USA tops 16 million. The number of professionals in part-time or freelance work while waiting-out their job hunt is 49 million, and 15 million professionals seek jobs due to imminent layoffs, added too 9 million already unemployed -- the US-unemployment is the highest in 20 years. While democrats attempt to take the White House in 2004, candidates have hopped on the rhetoric of "creating jobs," although like the "official" numbers of unemployed is false, so it is too false that any single president would create substantial job growth. The only White House responsible for job creation was Franklin D Roosevelt's administration. Meanwhile, President George W Bush claims he is creating jobs. At one Maryland Home Depot, Bush said, "More workers are going to work, over 380,000 have joined the workforce in the last couple of months. What he didn't say is is that during the month of November, 2003, new job losses held steady at 365,000 per week. With 2 million professional jobs lost since 2001, no matter how well the economy recovers during 2004, Bush will either end his term or begin his second term with a net job loss. Economists are stunned that the media-hyped "booming economy" has actually produced few jobs. The National Bureau of Economic Research reports that they do not understand why the economy isn't looking better. If you only take what the White House says, you'd think we are in great shape, but that simply isn't true, said Richard Freeman, director of labor studies. The percentage of employed adults in the United States reached a high of 65 percent in April 2000 during a surging stock market; however that percentage fell to 61 percent in September 2003, the lowest in 10 years. However, the 4 percentage drop of employed adults translate to a total unemployment rate of 8 percent -- and yet during the Bush administration -- the unemployment rate never topped 7 percent. Where are the unemployed men and women in the United States? Are there 5 million idle millionaires who simply care not to work and thus miss the statistical counters? One way in which people drop out of the unemployed category is to declare themselves "disabled," which makes them eligible for government payments without being counted as "unemployed." During the past 23 years the number of professional workers receiving disability payments rose from 38 million to 77 million. Disability payments have also increased overall, cushioning the blow of losing a job and unemployment benefits. Men whom contract HIV qualify for full-time disability, as would anyone physically or emotionally injured on the job. Additional reasons that professionals drop-out of the market is due to disinterest or depression. Workers will stop looking for work officially -- thus fall off the government's tally -- return to school, work for cash, or work for temp agencies in order to "wait out" the economic depression. |
| csua.org/u/ay0 -> www1.oecd.org/publications/e-book/92-2003-04-1-7294/GD-01-2.htm Source: OECD, National Accounts and Labour Force Statistics, 2003. |