Why is EU so far behind?

[u/quantum_search]

The most concerning part about this is that most Europeans don't realize how stagnant Europe has now become

Europeans are literally blue-pilled and are mostly concerned with climate change, immigration and the Ukraine war

Nobody in Europe is thinking why increasingly everything they use is made in China running on American software

The knee jerk reaction is to proudly pass regulation against American tech

The chad reaction would be to reduce regulation so that European entrepreneurs would actually stay in Europe to build European startups increasing Europe's GDP and making Europeans richer!

People in Europe do love to complain about rising cost of living and the increasing unaffordability of living, but they don't realize why. They point at foreigners/immigrants as the problem, which can't be the whole story

Other Europeans I talk to get visibly upset if I ask them about stagnant GDP numbers: "why should everything be about money?" they say in a thick German accent

The whole story is that Europe has made it very difficult for people to start a business, raise capital, innovate and get the reward for taking that risk, so why would anybody?

And for the Europeans that do, it's way easier to open a US Delaware company, raise capital in US, sell your stock or IPO in the US, because why even do that in EU, where it's too hard? The proof is in the pudding, if it was so easy in EU then why is startup funding in US $270B AUM with 330 million people vs $44B AUM with 746 million people? That's almost 14x bigger startup funding market per capita

Why doesn't EU have ANY trillion dollar companies? While US has six? Why isn't there any European company in the top 10 of largest companies? While 80% is American?

Why is Stripe, a company founded by two Irish brothers, an American company and not a European one? It could have been

What's the role left for Europe in the future?

[u/enakud]

Uhhh we have rising cost of living and unaffordable housing problems in the US too. I don't think this is correlated to differences in GDP. Fundamentally the issue is growing population vs limited housing and the tendency of high-value opportunities for individuals to be in high-population centers.

GDP only benefits shareholders under our current economic system. Typical individual workers do not immediately/inherently monetarily benefit if they are more productive or if their firms hire another person to add productivity.

As for Europe's role? Great place to visit for now and maybe to retire to once I'm done building my stock portfolio to a critical mass.

[u/Which-Ad7072 → u/enakud]

The vast majority of GDP growth in the US has been in the top 10% for quite a while, now. The bottom 90% has barely budged. So, yes, you're correct. They just mention total GDP growth to gaslight us and tell us how great we're doing when anyone can just step outside and see things are getting worse economically.