A “competitiveness crisis” is raising alarms for officials and business leaders in the European Union, where investment, income and productivity are lagging.
Europe’s share of the global economy is shrinking, and fears are deepening that the continent can no longer keep up with the United States and China.
“We are too small,” said Enrico Letta, a former Italian prime minister who recently delivered a report on the future of the single market to the European Union.
“We are not very ambitious,” Nicolai Tangen, head of Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest, told The Financial Times. “Americans just work harder.”
“European businesses need to regain self-confidence,” Europe’s association of chambers of commerce declared.
Europe has a lot of things that are not reflected in GDP: health outcomes, good food, nice places to live, etc. There’s a reason why it’s a top vacation destination. China is not really comparable as most people would choose to live in Europe over China.
The US is more comparable, and is a better place to invest than Europe. But “competitiveness” is usually a euphemism for “cut wages and benefits”. I am skeptical about this.
I should be careful about talking about work-life balance, but the Americans just work harder
In other words, they have to have three jobs just to survive. NYT really cherry picking that phrase there
Indeed, working hard is not a virtue in and of itself.
Yup, if someone works “harder” they’re either being exploited or they live in a less advanced society where technology doesn’t help the working class as much.
Summary: Newspaper owned by american billionaire claims workers on the other continent should work harder.
I find it hilarious that they had to cherry pick some two-word sentences from those people to try and squeeze in the point, because otherwise their texts would’ve sounded more nuanced and we can’t have that in a hard-working society.
What is worrying though, is that europe’s share in the global market is shrinking, because at this point pretty much only they ( and to a lesser degree the US ) try to uphold somewhat higher ethical standards for the various industries. At this rate the world will be all abused workers and underwhelming products in just a couple decades.
Because dying for GDP is the only thing that matters.
Americans just work harder
No. Productivity isn’t raised by working harder long term. It’s raised by more and newer machines, more education, etc. A coal miner from 1900 cannot outwork a 2024 coal miner no matter how hard they work.
I wonder if there is some way to filter NY Times articles out of my feed
Nobody made you come into this thread.
Literally this
