Posted on 03/12/2005 8:04:52 AM PST by Alex Marko
BRUSSELS - The US economy is 20 years ahead of that of the EU and it will take decades for Europe to catch up, according to an explosive new study published on Friday (11 March).
The survey, unveiled by pan-EU small business organisation Eurochambres, is intended as a sharp "wake-up call" for EU leaders as they gather on 22 March for a summit on how to boost growth and jobs in the EU economy.
The EU's current performance in terms of employment was achieved in the US in 1978 and it will take until 2023 for Europe to catch up, the report shows.
The situation is scarcely better when it comes to income per person. The US attained the current EU performance in 1985 and Europe is expected to close the gap in 2072.
But the bleakest picture comes when comparing the two economic blocs in terms of research and development. Europe is expected to catch up with the US in 2123 and then only if the EU outstrips America by 0.5 percent per year in terms of R&D investment.
Presenting the survey, Arnaldo Abruzzi, the Secretary-General of Eurochambres, said, "the current EU levels in GDP, R&D investment, productivity and employment were already reached by the US in the late 70s/early 80s".
"Even the most optimistic assumptions show it will take the EU decades to catch up and then only if there is considerable EU improvement", he concluded.
Furthermore, the survey points out that enlargement will make the EU's mountain even harder to climb.
"Data clearly suggest that including the 10 new member countries in the comparison would further deteriorate Europe's position compared to the US for all four major indicators", says the report.
The survey was conducted using a method called the "time distance measure", pioneered by Professor Pavle Sicherl at Ljubljana University.
Eurochambres called for EU leaders to focus on concrete actions to revive the EU's economy and for a communications strategy to lay out the economic challenges facing the EU.
The group represents 18 million enterprises across Europe.
I read your bio and as a self described moderate, you are closer to castro than to tony blair. In reading all your postings today, the only thing missing is a direct quote from "Das Kapital". How does someone that escapes a communist country end up being a socialist? If you can't even understand the purely economic definition of productivity or the difference between 7.6% vs 5.4% unemployment because you view the world through the eyes of the oppressed world worker, then calling you a socialist is being kind. Truth in posting demands that you re-think and re-adjust your bio.
The EU's tax harmonization policy, that essentially forces all countries to raise taxes to the highest current rate, will ensure that they never catch up.
Between bad economic policies and a few thousand “French exceptions” to EU laws, I have to think civil war will eventually end the EU.
These are national averages. There is no evidence that suddenly the Dept. of Labor has changed its methods for determining the number of hours worked, and sohehow has suddenly begun ignoring hours worked that were previously counted.
And you think the DOL is unaware of that in calculating productivity? Please.
When you first posted to the effect that productivity only had gone up because people were working longer hours, you clearly were arguing on the assumption that productivity was equal to the total value of goods and services produced, no matter how long it took to produce them?
When I explained that the definition of productivity was the value of goods and services produced divided by the the number of hours worked, you switched to the "uncounted hours" theory.
So your theory is that the reason productivity has increased is that the Labor Department has suddenly stopped recording a significant number of hours worked?
If that were true, there would have been a sudden jump in productivity after the adoption of the law to which your referred. Instead, productivity has been increasing at a steady pace for decades.
A socialist by your own following words:
"That productivity is being whipped off the backs of American workers. We are working longer, for less, in fear of losing our livelihoods, as we are hammered deeper and deeper into public and private debt. Productivity is a double edge sword; there is much merit in having a productive organization; but, it matters how that productivity has been achieved."
Whipped off the backs of workers... a slavery analogy, nope, American workers are more productive because of education and technology, not whips, we stopped using those years ago.
You are free to be what ever you choose to be, except by posting here, your own words show you being what you take umbrage at being called.
"EU economy 'at least 20 years' behind US"
......and they are working half-days to catch up
<< Read the sentence again. The EU is "20 years" behind the US economy and it will take them "decades" to catch up.
For the mathematically challenged, 20 years = 2 decades.
The department of redundancy department strikes again. >>
Nope.
It's you who is wrong -- your math addresses the wrong half of the reality -- and your reaction is ill-informed.
The average gap between the Brussells/Strasbourg Neo-Soviet and America is actually closer to twenty-five years -- to thirty in some areas of our relative developments and the reason it will take the Euro-peons MORE THAN ONE HUNDRED YEARS to "catch up" [Even if there was a chance of that and there is not because they are going backwards!] is that we are not standing still.
If they were to "catch up" at the rate of - say - half a percentage point per year, it would take them about a hundred and twenty years. [That's "decades!"]
Fat hope!
In 1776, it would have taken us nearly half a year to have the same exchange!
This kind of instant worldwide communication is breaking down all the barriers that kept us apart. In a few years, as computer programmers perfect programs that can translate our communications into any language, the language barriers will come down as well and I'll be communicating with a Russian-speaking person from Moscow just as easily as I am conversing with you. Before too long, language will no longer be a barrier.
You have already seen how the EU and a standard currency affects trade on your continent. Over here, we have our NAFTA and I believe a merging together between the nations of North America is not that far off. This will only be the start of things...
Their military spending goes into social programs instead.
Until Europe reforms their labor practices, gets rid of the morass of EU legislation governing businesses, and lowers their taxes, their economies will keep sinking.
Germany has a trade surplus. Everywhere I turn in the US, high end, wonderfully engineered German products are sold, Yet they have at least 12% unemployment.
Studies show that productivity is inversely proportionate to tax rates.
A step in the right direction would be a forty hour work week.
Good news but the cumulative EU (includes recent add ons from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe) runs much smaller trade deficits than we do.
Post anything to the contrary
Didn't Kruschev or some such person once say that socialism will come to the United States but when it does it will be called Capitalism? I think that day has arrived.
"Those are paid hours, or part of the cost of goods sold. If you are working 60 hours a week and getting paid the same amount that you were being paid for 40, that's productivity."
There it is, this is happening and few are willing to address it. I can show you people, and I am one of them, working 60 hours for far less than the people who were doing the same job 3 years ago were paid for forty hours. This is fact and it is happening at other places as well. On top of this current employees are expected to also turn out more work per hour. The reason for the overtime is that people leave at the first opportunity and we are never fully staffed.
What will we do and when will we do it? Will we have a repeat of the 70's anti-commie wars in the region?
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