Congrats Europe, You Finally Are Catching Up W/ the Rest of the World

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/...us-economies-bounce-as-china-stalls-1.1473620

Europe might finally be out of recession. I think it's time to give our socialist-leaning friends a big round of applause; we have the worst financial crisis of our lifetimes 4+ years ago and climbed out of it in less than a few years, despite having a commie president trying to hold us back in the name of economic and social justice. Meanwhile, Europe has just re-emerged and is *GASP* showing positive growth as a whole.

We should all give Europe a round of applause; their policies work so well, and their economic systems are so robust, that they are finally coming out of the recession. Maybe we should emulate them like some Euros suggest; after all, our economy is only #1 in the world by a long shot.

 

Maybe you should adopt Australian economic policies - 22 years without a recession and still going strong. Good luck when you have your next down turn in 4 years

 

Maybe we should compare a country with a population of ~20-30 million to a region with 300 million+. Next you'll tell me to emulate Sweden.

/argument

 

And perhaps you should do the same. How many European nations have a population of 300 million?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_European_Union

Learn. Read. EU GDP per capita - ~25,000, population 400million+. THAT'S how you compare regions. You don't go 'OOOOOOH LUXEMBOURG IS PROSPEROUS'. That's like looking at people who live in downtown Manhattan, or the Upper East Side. See, when the little economists like myself get together and discuss prosperity, they discuss it on similar terms. What they do is try to get comparable regions (like the EU and the US) and THEN they compare them.

Right now I think the EU is far behind, in terms of net prosperity and in terms of recent or long-term growth. Especially the more industrialized countries as a whole. Europe needs to grow up, they're becoming decadent with their socialist policies and it'll be the end of their power eventually (not the muslims)

 

Australian policies? Interesting. I wonder if they include trillion dollar deficits, strangling businesses with new mandates during a soft economy, and printing phony money backed by nothing? I have a feeling their policies are quite different from what we've been getting from Obama/BushIII.

 

Canada is also doing pretty well.

While it is true that both Canada and Australia have far fewer people than America and have much better population/resource ratios than America, they are at least comparable with the US in terms of diversity.

Both nations have shown that fiscal responsibility can be achieved despite cultural conflicts and variances in personal values.

 

Why do you pride yourself on being an economist? There is nothing special about it, your predictions have been wrong for thirty years. They have not only a lack of foresight but an astonishing lack of hindsight as well. Mainstream economists championed the debt-fueled speculative boom that ended in 2008. Even the Austrians have more credibility than the MSM economists at this point, it's only these ivory-tower elitists that don't see it. I'm sure you are excited for Larry Summers to become the new FED chairman too.

 

Agreed on the fiscal responsibility part. Thing is, despite Obama being so irresponsible and despite Obama trying to implement his socialist policies, our capitalist spirit chugs ahead and we continue to be an unstoppable economic powerhouse. Europe is decadent, they're being phased out of the game and they are going pretty quietly.

- - - Updated - - -

I'm not actually an economist, just a guy with the right opinions lol!

 

The main failing of many European countries isn't specifically socialism -- it's a matter of ineffective tax collection.

Greece was somewhat generous in how early public sector workers could retire, but overall, they're less socialist than many of the Nordic countries. What drove them into bankruptcy was the fact that their shadow economy was huge (and still is). When a significant portion of your industry avoids taxation altogether but government spending doesn't decrease to account for this, then huge debts result.

The funny thing is that one of the aspects to our system that saves us is the vigilance of the IRS. As hated as they might be, if they were as lax as the tax collection agencies of much of Europe, we'd be in much deeper trouble than we currently are.

Minimizing the presence of the shadow economy is the key to maintaining fiscal stability, and the Nordic countries are quite good at this.

 

Our economy works well for rich people. Europe's economy, depending on the country, generally works well for the non-rich.

 

Agreed. Much freer economy, to the right of us for sure. Still a small economy, but heading in the right direction we can learn a lot from them.

- - - Updated - - -

They have lower PPP then us. Our poor live in bigger homes then their middle class. They get better medical care too. You haven't been to Europe. Plenty of broke people in Europe.