We have yet more exciting economic news this morning! The eurozone released its Q1 figures for GDP and they were not good. Real GDP fell by 0.6% from the previous year while US GDP was increasing:
Assuming I did this chart correctly—never a sure thing when dealing with Eurostat figures—US GDP has outpaced EU GDP by more than 5% over the past few years, with most of the difference coming in the past couple of quarters.
Perhaps this will change as Europe recovers from COVID-19. In the meantime, US COVID rates are lower than Europe; US vaccination rates are higher than Europe; and the US economy is growing quite a bit faster than Europe's. Now do you see why I'm basically bullish on America compared to the rest of the world?
Why would you be bullish about the US vs China when China did far better than either the US or Europe?
That's a good question.
Keynes was right.
The EU's basic problem is the same basic problem the US has, it's constituent parts are expected to mostly be able to manage their own affairs, the way conservatives in the US think the states should be essentially independent countries, but imagining something like a border will be respected by a pandemic is simply burying your head in the sand, and this is true not just of diseases but of a lot of things that make the modern world work.
People who want to work and act like borders are meaningful inside a collective enterprise like the EU or the US are acting like what your arteries need is a good, solid wall.
Andrew Cuomo spent the past four years acting like he was the head of an independent country. Remember when he said he wouldn't trust any vaccine approved by the Trump Administration, and that the New York State Department of Health would have to approve it before it would be administered in New York? I don't think even the Europeans go quite that far, with a separate FDA for each country.
Each country in the EU has developed its' own response, and there has been little or no coordination between them. The EU doesn't have the authority to impose anything like that, though I think this illustrates exactly that it should.
Each individual country in th EU has it's equivalent of the FDA, and so does the EU which works primarily to standardize practices between them, as I understand it.
Andrew Cuomo said he wouldn't trust the Trump administration? What could possibly have made anyone say such a thing.
It is noteworthy that the accident of the Trump administration actually revealed an extreme condition where decentralization of state authority through fifty jurisdictions was able to prevent insane people from stealing the last election, but if our ridiculous system didn't give arbitrary privilege to states in the first place it wouldn't have had to have happened at all as the Electoral College wouldn't exist and Hillary would now be starting her second term.
Maybe I'm wrong. I'm no expert on European governance. Maybe each European country is as dysfunctional as New York State. God help Europe, if that's the case.
Did a Republican tell you that?
Europe and UK still under lock downs. Random Google searches, tourism ca. 4% of Europe GDP; 3% for US. (2018 numbers from???)
Different parts of the economy affected differently. Financial services (7.4% US vs. 4% for Europe) can be done with secure internet connections. Other areas, not so much.
Wait a minute. So, it turns out handing out cash to people not only helped the economy tremendously but it also saved a lot of people from financial ruin??? What is this newfangled type of economics called???
😏
Now do you see why I'm basically bullish on America compared to the rest of the world?
America is better off than most countries on his earth. But it's not better off than most of Europe. Europe's problems mostly flow from the coronavirus -- and this crisis will pass. Also, it's hard to imagine democracy being extinguished any time soon in most Europe west of the Elbe. That's not at all hard to imagine in the United States.
(There are close to ten European countries that, employing a Rawlsian veil of ignorance, a rational individual interested in maximizing personal well-being would opt for over the United States as a destination for their start in life).
Europe's poor showing is not only due to the coronavirus. It was the same after the 2007-2008 financial crash. It's largely the fault of the badly conceived euro, which was supposed to lead to fiscal unity after an interim period in which former hard-currency countries would be favored. Surprise, surprise, the latter wanted things to stay that way.
So, one: the euro never became a world reserve currency like the US dollar is, and Europe never had the same capacity to pull money from the sky. Two: suffering was not evenly spread, any more than in the US, but there was no automatic solidarity mechanism meaning northern opposition to large-scale stimulus. Three: deficit scolds were not sent to Coventry like in the US but are largely in charge.
I remember when the GQP was crowing in the Obama Error about supermodel Gisele Bundchen having requested all her contracts to be denoted in euros rather than dollars. It was a harbinger of American decline under nationalist-socialist dictatorship.
Looking back, & considering her MAGAT husband Deadbeat Dad Tom Brady, I wonder if that decision was less about speculative economics & more about making a political point & earning chits with the far-right for future U.S. Senator Tom Brady (Q - CA/MI/MA/FL) in his eventual campaign.
& more, considering Tommy Boy's National-Conservative feints & his wife's Brazilian birth, will it be any surprise when Tom's fellow Lusoamerican fetishist Glemm Greemwald endorses him?
LOL...you got a lot of hate.
Economic 'growth' is just about the stupidest thing you can use to measure the health of a society.