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Europe's incomes outpaced the rest of the west in 1990-2002
sometimes I think Fez is really Markos trying to amuse members of this site. Thank you, Markos great marketing
never thought of that
"I have been reading up on the universe and have come to the conclusion that the universe is a good thing." -- Dissident "I never had the need to have a boner." -- Dissident "I have never cut off my penis when I was upset over a girl." -- Dis
Originally posted by Flubber
How would the numbers differ if you had not adjusted them? ( I am not saying the unadjusted numbers are more reflective, again just curious as to how things were done)
Not too much for the EU as a whole (the change in the output gap was of a similar magnitude in 1990-2002 as in the US)
GNI per head as % of US level, 20021990
Canada: 80%76%
United States: 100%100%
Australia: 77%68%
Japan: 77%77%
New Zealand: 59%55%
Well it is more plausible than him being a real person, no?
Originally posted by Serb:Please, remind me, how exactly and when exactly, Russia bullied its neighbors?
Originally posted by Ted Striker:Go Serb !
Originally posted by Pekka:If it was possible to capture the essentials of Sepultura in a dildo, I'd attach it to a bicycle and ride it up your azzes.
I was a bit surprised after reading this thread. Just this week I saw figures that Europe was the slowest growing region in the whole world. So how can this difference with your numbers be explained? In an attempt to understand, I have some questions. I know little about economics, so please forgive me if I ask stupid questions.
First, what's the difference between Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Gross National Income (GNI)? From what I read in this thread, am I correct it's the following?:
1> Gross National Income counts the incomes from people with the nationality of the countries you mention. So a Belgian living in the USA all his life would be included in the Belgian GNI instead of the US GNI.
2> As GNI is measuring income and not domestic production, a Belgian gaining income from having stocks in a company located in China would count as Belgian GNI.
3> GNI counts "beschikbaar inkomen". "Disposable income" in English I think, meaning available income you can spend directly after taxes are deducted?
As much as I would like the EU to grow fast of course, If the above three assumptions are correct, I'm questioning whether your research can be used as evidence the EU is doing well, as you seem to say in this thread.
Consider:
1> You can hardly consider a eg Belgian living in the US all the time as good for the Belgian economy. That's why GDP is used more than GNP these days AFAIK.
2> If getting income from stocks of a China-located company counts as national income, once again this would not seem a good indicator of a country's economic performance. After all I assume GNI is the sum of all incomes of all national citizens of a country. In that case relocating a factory from Europe to China where there are lower wages could increase profit levels and thereby increasing the incomes of the couple European-national stockholders of that company. However at the same time the factory relocation would mean lots of people in Europe would lose their job and income... Not good for Europe... Not good at all. Especially if the European-national China-company stockholders don't invest their extra income in the European economy, but continue to invest in low wage countries.
So do you have some figures how income is divided within the countries? If the above scenario is true, the income of a small elite would increase, while the income of the general population would decrease.
3> If GNI is measuring disposable income, how do you deal with the effect of govnerments increasing or decreasing tax levels? This would artificially change the GNI of a country, saying nothing about its economic performance.
How do the incomes figures between the US and Europe look btw if you count 'free' government services paid with the taxes (eg cheap healthcare, education, public transport...) as part of the income? At university I got a pro-American professor who claims the USA is the land of milk and honey, and who says the American poor are richer than the European poor. When we students asked a little further about it, it appeared he was only counting disposable income, so not including all the social security benefits people get here in Europe.
Anyway, I hope you can shed some light on my questions, or point out major reasoning mistakes I made. Again, while I would love your analysis to be true, I fear Fez may in fact be right here for a change: Europe is going dooooooown!!! (Though that doesn't mean we should follow Fez' ideas to solve that problem )
Well I'm from Europe and it concerns me just as much as anybody else. Europe is suffering from slow growth and has been for quite a few years now. Additionally, the population is going to decline in the next few years. My ideas call for lowering taxes on businesses and improving business environment.
For there is [another] kind of violence, slower but just as deadly, destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions -- indifference, inaction, and decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. - Bobby Kennedy (Mindless Menance of Violence)
Originally posted by Giancarlo
My ideas call for lowering taxes on businesses and improving business environment.
Then you must like the Lissabon Strategy?
Personally I'm for the opposite: more EU protectionism to protect our social model! Liberals can rant all about the goods of free market all they want, but I don't think it's positive that foreign companies compete European enterprises out of the market not because they provide better quaility products, but because they pay their employees less and have less strict environmental laws.
Personally I'm for the opposite: more EU protectionism to protect our social model! Liberals can rant all about the goods of free market all they want, but I don't think it's positive that foreign companies compete European enterprises out of the market not because they provide better quaility products, but because they pay their employees less and have less strict environmental laws.
Lissabon strategy? If it is pro-business then I'm all for it.. because businesses provide jobs. Your ideas of protectionism will however not protect or provide jobs. It will rather lead to an outmoded economy like that of Eastern Germany's. I think it is positive European companies compete with European companies. It raises the standards for those companies competing with European companies.
Protectionism is exactly part of the problem that is leading to a slow decline in Europe.
For there is [another] kind of violence, slower but just as deadly, destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions -- indifference, inaction, and decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. - Bobby Kennedy (Mindless Menance of Violence)
The "Lissabon Process" is a (stalledish) attempt to harmonize and liberalize European economies. It's broadly pro-business.
Why can't you be a non-conformist just like everybody else?
It's no good (from an evolutionary point of view) to have the physique of Tarzan if you have the sex drive of a philosopher. -- Michael Ruse
The Nedaverse I can accept, but not the Berzaverse. There can only be so many alternate realities. -- Elok
Originally posted by Giancarlo
Your ideas of protectionism will however not protect or provide jobs. It will rather lead to an outmoded economy like that of Eastern Germany's.
Protectionism protecting technologically inferior industries would indeed lead to an outmoded economy. Eg the USA protecting their steel industries. However I do not see how protectionism with as reason to protect our higher wages would lead to an outmoded economy. You have to look at the instrument of protectionism on a case by case basis in my opinion, and not reject it completely without further thought. Since the problem with European competitiveness is not inferior technology (AFAIK at least) but high labour costs, protectionism seems ideal to me.
I think it is positive European companies compete with European companies. It raises the standards for those companies competing with European companies.
I agree (as long as the same business laws count over all of Europe). I'm talking about protectionism against the non-EU world.
Originally posted by Maniac
First, what's the difference between Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Gross National Income (GNI)? From what I read in this thread, am I correct it's the following?:
GNI is GDP plus net primary incomes from the rest of the world, these are mainly profits of multinational companies remitted home and also the remittances of workers.
Countries with net foreign assets usually have a positive net primary income.
Originally posted by Maniac
1> Gross National Income counts the incomes from people with the nationality of the countries you mention. So a Belgian living in the USA all his life would be included in the Belgian GNI instead of the US GNI.
Nope, this is not correct - in fact as GDP is measured mainly using company estimates of their value added it would be nigh-on impossible even to compile this data.
The way in which the above mentioned Belgian worker could countribute to belgian GNI is to send money home (to his/her relatives for example) or to found a US subsidiary of a Belgian company which will send some of it's profits back to Belgium.
Originally posted by Maniac
2> As GNI is measuring income and not domestic production, a Belgian gaining income from having stocks in a company located in China would count as Belgian GNI.
That would count towards Belgian GNI as it is profits remitted from China to Belgium
Originally posted by Maniac
3> GNI counts "beschikbaar inkomen". "Disposable income" in English I think, meaning available income you can spend directly after taxes are deducted?
Nope, there is no consideration of taxes.
GNI is is the income of the nation as a whole, individuals corporations and government etc.
Originally posted by Maniac
How do the incomes figures between the US and Europe look btw if you count 'free' government services paid with the taxes (eg cheap healthcare, education, public transport...) as part of the income?
The simple answer is I don't know - it's difficult to put a price on these services as they differ greatly from nation to nation.
I remember reading a study that said that if you count this and the extra leisure-time that europeans enjoy then their income is only 5% to 10% lower than american's.
The simple answer to your question is that the US and Europe calculate both GDP and inflation (which is used to calculate growth rates) differently.
Firstly the US uses a 'hedonic' deflator in it's GDP measures - this attempts to capture improvements in quality (for example the PC you buy today hasn't dropped a lot in price from that 10 years ago but it is vastly more advanced) - when the US switched to hedonic deflators in 1997/98 they reported inflation around 0.5% a year lower than using the previous measure, as growth is directly calculated from these deflators this also had the effect of raising the US's reported growth rate by 0.5% a year.
Whilst hedonic delfators are probably superior to the older method it does make comparisons difficult between those countries using them (the US, France and Australia) and those not (everyone else).
Secondly the US treats business purchases of software as a business investment (which is included in GDP) wheres most other nations treat it as a business expense (which is not).
Business purchases of software make the US's reported GDP nearly 2% larger and contributed 0.2% a year to growth in 1990-2000.
These differences in methodology make direct comparisons of growth rates difficult, which is why I use the current-price GDP converted using the PPP's of the day (this also has problems as PPPs can also be inaccurate, so I don't use this for comparisons of a shorter time period than 6 years).
In 1990 the EU15 had a combined GDP which was 97.4% of the US level - using the reported growth rates that should have fallen to 87.0% by 2002, however when it was measured using PPPs it it was 97.8% - a difference of 1% a year - now this might have been due to inaccuracies in the PPP's in 1990 and 2002 - however the same 1% a year gap shows up when looking at the latest set of PPP's (2002) compared with the previous ones (in 1999 EU15 GDP was 94.7% of the US level and should, according to reported growth rates, have risen only to 94.9% in 2002 - not the 97.8% recorded)
This discrepancy shows up again and again - if you look back at articles written in the late 1990's they lamented that 'Europes incomes have been stuck at 65% of the US level since 1970', today you can get similar arguments saying that European incomes have been stuck at 70% to 75% of the US level since 1970 - these arguments are made because people are relying on the growth rates to be strictly comparable between the US and Europe, but as we have seen they are not.
In fact I fully expect to see articles in a decade's time bemoaning the fact that 'Europe's income has been stuck at 80% of the US's level since 1970' unless the growth figures become much more comparable.
A lot of Europe's supposed 'stagnation' is just a statisical illusion - this is not to say that we should not attempt to reform and deregulate our economies, if we have equalled the US's growth rate with our economies bound by so much regulation just imagine what we could achieve if they were set free.
I'm against any US protectionism of the steel industry. Either they upgrade their standards, or they go out of business. I think protectionism as you state it, is leading to a lot of problems in Europe. Let me explain. Other nations would buy cheaper products... the problem with European competitiveness is not inferior technology, but I fear it could very well be if protectionism is used on a broad scale. Protectionism would also lead to a decline in exports. Is a decline in exports really what you need?
I agree (as long as the same business laws count over all of Europe). I'm talking about protectionism against the non-EU world.
I mistyped. Yes I'm not against European companies competing with other European companies, but that's not what I meant to say. I meant companies from other countries... competing with European companies. It promotes economic growth.
El Freako is wrong on the fact that in recent years (since 2002/2003) Europe has been in huge economic trouble..
Additionally, a declining labor force and an increasing amount of people on welfare will also pose future issues.
For there is [another] kind of violence, slower but just as deadly, destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions -- indifference, inaction, and decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. - Bobby Kennedy (Mindless Menance of Violence)
Originally posted by Dauphin
Flagrant contradicting yourself within a thread is getting a bit trite, isn't it?
WTF?
For there is [another] kind of violence, slower but just as deadly, destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions -- indifference, inaction, and decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. - Bobby Kennedy (Mindless Menance of Violence)
Originally posted by Giancarlo
El Freako is wrong on the fact that in recent years (since 2002/2003) Europe has been in huge economic trouble.
I disagree, the current slowdown is far less severe than the 1992 recession (which led to very slow growth until 1997) or the 1980-83 slowdown.
Europe weathered that and saw it's economy keep pace with America.
As far as population and labour forces falling this has been predicted for many, many years - since the 1980's europe's population has been predicted to start to fall in a couple of decades, and again the predicted fall is still 20 years off, as such I think these forecasts are about as relevant as those saying when the oil wil run out (which has been 25-45 years into the future for a century)
Europe's labour force is currently rising faster than America's as it catches up in labour participation.
Indeed since 1995 europe has become vastly better at creating demand for labour than before - between 1960 and 1995 the total number of hours worked in the EU15 rose 2% a year slower than in the US, since 1995 the gap has been only 0.2% a year.
sometimes I think Fez is really Markos trying to amuse members of this site. Thank you, Markos 
great marketing 
So how can this difference with your numbers be explained? In an attempt to understand, I have some questions. I know little about economics, so please forgive me if I ask stupid questions.
)
Liberals can rant all about the goods of free market all they want, but I don't think it's positive that foreign companies compete European enterprises out of the market not because they provide better quaility products, but because they pay their employees less and have less strict environmental laws. 
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