Readit NewsYou're conflating productivity and wealth, and wealth and happiness. These are, you'll forgive me for saying - very American fallacies. The productivity of a country says little to nothing about it's levels of relative and absolute poverty, social inequality, and capacity for social reproduction. Compare say Berlin - an historically 'depressed' city with a smaller economy than most German cities, with any first tier US cities. Free public kitas (similar to kindergarten), decent holiday leave, a significant amount of paid maternity / paternity leave, a large number of parks, excellent public transport, subsidised health care and (until very recently) affordable housing, make raising a family on a moderate wage possible. The overall potential for happiness and observable comfort and stress levels of the population are measurably different from a comparably sized American city where raising a family or living a normal adult life are compromised for a large percentage of the population by the absence of all or most of these things.
> Any society that opts out of seeking labor productivity will eventually see their wealth, living standards, and ultimately happiness decline. There is no way out of that trap.
I'd argue the reverse - any society that privileges productivity over social reproduction and liveable cities will never be able to tame violent crime, achieve real social mobility or provide a safe and enriching environment for a majority of its citizenry.
It’s real easy to say this right now, because the EU has only lagged its peers in productivity for only the last decade —- thus the compounding effects of lagging productivity are not yet evident. However several more decades of lagging productivity will eventually result in European living standards being several decades behind their peers.
If the EU thinks that low labor productivity is the path to happiness, going down that path is their prerogative, but long term that path will only lead to ruin. Lagging productivity has never in human history lead to civilizational success. Europe will be outcompeted and eventually dominated by its more productive peers.
> Productivity is ultimately the measure of the efficiency of human labor. The more productive workers are, the more free time they’ll have to do whatever it is they want to do to make themselves happy.
Due to the demands for constant economic growth increased productivity does not actually result in more free time, just more economic output.
The average human throughout human has existed at subsistence level. That means that nearly all of their time was spent producing/collecting the food to feed themselves.
The average American now spends just 10% of their wages on food. That effectively means, just 10% of Americans’s working life dedicated to food cultivation. That’s the result of economic productivity.
If an American is happy existing at a subsistence level, they’re free to slash their working hours to a tiny fraction of the average person. However, humans have unlimited material desires, which tends to keep us working.
Productivity is not a goal in itself. It is a means to a healthy and happy populace. Europe doesn’t have record breaking GDP but features many of the happiest people in the world. Different values result in different measures of success, I guess
Productivity is ultimately the measure of the efficiency of human labor. The more productive workers are, the more free time they’ll have to do whatever it is they want to do to make themselves happy.
In the short term, lagging productivity can be masked by debt spending and other measures, but in the long run, the only thing that increases human wealth and material abundance is labor productivity. Everything else is illusionary.
All human societies have sought to increase labor productivity. The first stone tools, agriculture, and nuclear reactors are all productivity-enhancing inventions. Any society that opts out of seeking labor productivity will eventually see their wealth, living standards, and ultimately happiness decline. There is no way out of that trap.
And to be clear, there’s absolutely nothing good about low productivity for workers. All that means is that you’re spending more time working for lower wages, to produce things of lower value.
I would much prefer that to living in a state where Apple holds the power to simply kill any law or regulation they dislike by threatening not to launch their products in the EU.
EU productivity is already lagging its peers. Being locked out of having the most cutting edge technologies will further plunge the block into a productivity decay. Less productivity means everyone in Europe will get poorer, with declining living standards. This is not an outcome Europe can afford, especially considering its aging workforce.
There is no silver lining to this. The EU has to stop strangling its most productive industries with onerous regulations, and allow markets the freedom to innovate and increase productivity.
There is an old saying: US innovates, China replicates and EU regulates.
EU will regulate themselves straight out of economic productivity.
Over the years, overregulation will continue to lock the EU out of bleeding-edge technologies. Every feature, every website, every innovation that doesn’t launch in the EU further plunges the bloc into technological irrelevance.
Not just battery and range.
I've had problems with the passenger side airbag not enabling, and turn signal not working. Both scary issues. Made appointments with the support. Both were cancelled outright by them (!). They tried to convince me that there was no problem, and it was all due to the way I use the car. They seemed to try everything to get out of appointments. My wife had to use the back seat for a month while I argued with them.
Eventually both problems were resolved by software updates, proving that the problems were indeed on their side.
The airbags needing a software update in the first place is terrifying.
Source!
> Less productivity means everyone in Europe will get poorer, with declining living standards
We have some of the highest living standards in the world. In caparison to the U.S.A. in particular, it's like a utopia.
> There is no silver lining to this. The EU has to stop strangling its most productive industries with onerous regulations, and allow markets the freedom to innovate and increase productivity.
The silver lining is American cultural imperialism is ended in Europe, and we live how we want to over here. There are different ways of living, with different values.
Give it a few more decades of compounding lagging productivity, and that will no longer be true.
> The silver lining is American cultural imperialism is ended in Europe, and we live how we want to over here. There are different ways of living, with different values.
Productivity has nothing to do with cultural imperialism. China has dramatically increased their productivity, and that story has nothing to do with American imperialism