The European Union’s remarkable growth performance relative to the United States
The European Union’s remarkable growth performance relative to the United States
The EU has outperformed the US on per-capita output growth; in terms of output per hour worked, some EU countries are as productive as the US
The article chooses to take a metric that you usually do not see much: GDP per employee and per hours worked, at purchasing power standards
You're viewing a single thread.
I get the impression that the young people in the West are, in general, poorer than their parents were.
Compare how many days the generation of our parents needed to work to maintain a family to how many hours the younger generations work.
Our parents did it with 5 days of work (single income) and now we work 7 approximately (one full and one parttime or 2 parttime).
I am a Lithuanian living in Lithuania. I work from home and my SO works at a nearby city. It will be different if/when we have children, but we don't need to work extra hours to get by. Most people here don't have extra part time jobs, even with large families.
I mean days of work per family. Older generation used to be able to get by with a single person working 5 days. Now a single person working 5 days is not enough. Not it's 1 person working 5 days and the other works 2.. or in any other combination of days work..
The worst part is that technological advancements massively improved productivity. So nowadays you need to work 7 days to support a family instead of 5, but then produce the same in just 3 of it. Because the actual problem is that payment hasn't increased wiht output. That increase collects at the top as massive amounts of money for a very few.
The ones on top successfully convinced almost everybody that we need constant growth. Without, we could live perfectly well working 3 days, and payments wouldn't even need to increase because we wouldn't have to buy this ever increasing amount of stuff that is produced in ever decreasing quality so it doesn't last too long.
And if, due to some horrible error, it does last, the manufacturers will find ways to render it useless. By preventing repairs, not providing spare parts, software "updates" that cripple performance etc.
While there is valid criticism about constant growth, it actually exists. More is produced by less input in ressources, because we got better at it.
The actual problem I talk about is that this growth is not going back into the system but it accumulates at the top.
Definitely true, but valid on both sides of the Atlantic, there were a few articles on !personalfinance@lemmy.ml about cars and houses becoming unaffordable in the US
That is true for Southern and Western EU, but not for Eastern EU though. I grew up in the 90's. I am already richer than my parents were back then and it is true for almost everyone in my age group that I I know.
Oh yeah, definitely. I had a Romanian colleague who moved to Western Europe to give it a try. He went back to Romania after a few months, and when he explained me the way he was living there, I couldn't but understand.
Yep. Some people go to western countries, work a few years and save everything they can to make the initial mortgage payment back home. Western people don't have that option.
Sure we do (moving to the East with some capital, I mean)
Ah yes, welcome to Kalabybiškės, your monthly mortgage payment is 69 euros.
Perfect