GDP measures the strength of the economy. The only thing the EU has to do to keep its quality of life, is to have a stable GDP per capita. Obviously having a stronger economy is helpfull, but it comes at a price. For example Germany is pretty close to as efficent as the US in terms of GDP per hour worked. It is just that Germans do not work as much as Americans, due to choosing to have more vaccation time and shorter workweeks on average. Hardly an awfull choice. To use another example. In the US you have to have a car, as everything is extremly car centric, but in the Netherlands you can just ride your bike to work. A car costs more then a bicycle and it requires fuel. Even better cars make people sick, due to bad air quality and well accidents. So bicycles, whcih provide light exercise actually are bad for the economy, as fewer workers are needed to put them together, provide fuel and provide medical services. There is a lot of stuff like that.

This is not to say that Europe can learn nothing from the US. The US ability to create innovation is great and only matched by a few European countries. That being said, looking only at GDP is like judging somebody only by their income. It just does not tell you, how good their life really is.

Comparing disposable income between US and EU is misleading, because Europeans are forced to pay for things like health insurance or unemployment insurance, while US-americans are free not to have them (and suffer the consequences). In reality every US-american that can, does pay for health insurance, and pays significantly more for worse coverage than Europeans. But in the statistic this is counted as a voluntary expense which is why the disposable income metric is misleading. There is more, like saving for the university education of the children, which again would be counted as disposable income. Europeans get uni education “for free”.

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That’s a 35% difference!

Relative difference between two values depends on the perspective. These numbers mean that the purchasing power in the USA is 35% higher when compared to the EU. Conversely, it means that the purchasing power in the EU is 26% lower when compared to the USA.

Math is fun. As a rule of thumb: If you have one third more than someone else, he has one quarter less than you. Perspective is often used in journalism to scew statistics without lying, so it’s nice to be aware.

The same is true for the “80% gap” posted in the headline of the original article. Without direction, a relative difference is incomplete.

Space? Europe recently landed on a comet, something no one else has done, something even NASA has never achieved.

Rosetta was the first spacecraft to orbit a comet nucleus, and was the first spacecraft to fly alongside a comet as it headed towards the inner Solar System. It became the first spacecraft to examine at close proximity the activity of a frozen comet as it is warmed by the Sun. Shortly after its arrival at 67P, the Rosetta orbiter dispatched the Philae lander for the first controlled touchdown on a comet nucleus. The robotic lander’s instruments obtained the first images from a comet’s surface and made the first in situ analysis of its composition.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(spacecraft)

Furthermore, do you know who makes the machines that TSMC uses to create the chips that power the worlds smartphones and countless other devices? A European company. Yes Taiwan makes the CPUs, but we make the CPU makers.

Europe is lagging everywhere : computers, phones, space, IA, etc.

Ehhhh silly take imho because while most of the big tech companies are headquartered in the US, microchip and computer technology is a massive multinational effort.

Europe is arguably more important, because it’s home to way more open source and open hardware initiatives, and the EU is actually regulating important sustainable pro-consumer features like replaceable batteries.

If you don’t want to see giant companies lock down every feature into a subscription (become a silver monthly member and unlock heated seats in your car!), then we need open source.

I heard somewhere that when the gdp measure was created some people advocated that the military expenditure should be subtracted from the total gdp as it is produced to be destroyed. So it would be fun to have a gdp graph where this is reflected.

Sure but Russia still managed to cut its losses. With the amount of sanctions it has to face and the cost of war, Russia should have crumbled by now, but thanks to their original low debt they managed to save their economy (at least in appearance). They may get their reckoning but their investment policy helped them resist the huge pressure the Western World put on them. Sure, they are only buying time, but imagine what Europe would do with that kind of ballsy investment policy.

I’m already eating my popcorn as it happens.