Europe’s economic apocalypse

9 comments

1. > Put simply, Europeans [don’t work enough](https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2024/09/11/how-to-awaken-europes-private-sector-and-boost-economic-growth). An average German employee, for example, works more than 20 percent fewer hours than their American counterparts. 

   I am not the smartest tool but this statement confuses me. If the problem is that we don’t innovate how can this be caused by people not working enough? Isn’t more a problem of a company leadership not going in the right direction?

   What’s the point of working 20% more on a product or service that is not competitive?

2. Europe is not one single economy. Some countries struggle, some don’t. Germany struggles, while Poland does great and we in Sweden are somewhere in the middle but more towards the positive side since our dip 2 years ago (just perfect. We are “landet lagom” after all!).

3. To me looking from the outside it seems that Europe (In general, some countries are different obviously) has become way too apathetic and complacent about it’s interests.

   For example, Russia cutting internet cables and making war right on their doorstep and they struggle so hard to help protect Ukraine and are still buying from Russia and helping them in plenty of ways.

   The Houthis are hurting their trade to practically no reaction at all. Very bizarre to witness.

   Immigrants in many countries are problematic to integrate and so no effective measures are being taken while the problem is slowly becoming extremely dire.

   With the US trending more into isolationist attitude, I believe the pressure on Europe will just increase 10x in the coming decades. And I wonder what the damage will be to their safety, economy and world power by the time they actually wake up and unite to take decisive actions.

4. They could have stopped the article in the introductory paragraphs at this

   >For whatever reason, Europe appears to have done little

   It’s not going to be good for any of us in the western empire but can’t help feeling a bit of “I told you so” energy.

   In the US everything you hear about Europe is always so smug and looking down.

   Always about the US problems of healthcare, racism, guns, military, unregulated corporations and bragging about how they don’t have those problems. And for sure the US does have problems.

   But lately, I cannot help but view Europe a bit like the person bragging about their quality of life while maxing out several credit cards and their dad does the dirty work.

5. They got bored of economically scaremongering about a future Chinese economic collapse (“those Chinese work too much”) and now they have to start scaremongering about Europe (“those Europeans don’t work hard enough”)

6. Every couple of years it’s a new ‘apocalpyse’ or a ‘collapse’. I really wished journalists would turn it down a notch.

7. I legit make 10x as much working in silicon valley as I would working for a tech company in my home first class European country (If I had a well paying job there).

   The fact is that Europe’s capital is held by people who don’t understand 21st century innovation and are not willing to pay up to get smart people to get them innovative things to sell on the world markets.

8. I rather not work to death, and stock valuations means jack shit to me. Now what? Does the average American benefit from their supposedly superb doing economy? Oh wait, they just gave the middle finger the the current administration, memes are full of grocery and housing price, and one of them killed a top CEO, hmmmm.

   Yeah, I enjoy being stuck in the past. I rather have our whole continent become Italy (oh the horror, spending hour long lunch breaks sipping coffee and going home early, but i guess for shareholders thats really an apocalypse) than some kind of cyberpunk distopia (and not the shiny cool kind) the two superpowers are racing (devolving) into. I rather have AI companies regulated, my data not harvested and stored overseas than have a few big name tickers with trillions of phony valuations.

   Sorry, not sorry.

9. Fans of bidenomics ofc will find excuses for european economy.

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