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EU economy 'at least 20 years' behind US
EUObserver ^

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.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Foreign Affairs; Front Page News; Germany; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; United Kingdom
KEYWORDS: economy; eu; eueconomy; france; germany; uk
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To: ARCADIA

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.


41 posted on 03/12/2005 10:49:55 AM PST by USS Alaska (Nuke the terrorist savages - In Honor of Standing Wolf)
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To: Alex Marko
"Even the most optimistic assumptions show it will take the EU decades to catch up and then only if there is considerable EU improvement"

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.

42 posted on 03/12/2005 11:07:08 AM PST by RJL
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To: USS Alaska
How does someone that escapes a communist country end up being a socialist?

Be careful whom call a socialist. Our "conservative" President has done more to foster our dependence on the public teat then anyone has in a long time. Highway bills, homeland defense, medical prescription coverage, farm aid, education bills, expanding trade with communist and socialist nations: The debt just keeps on growing; has he vetoed anything yet?!

Sometimes, the voice of opposition comes from the right. Check your own twenty before you lob a rant; if you are blindly following the political parties, you may be standing well to the left of where you think you are.
43 posted on 03/12/2005 11:12:30 AM PST by ARCADIA (Abuse of power comes as no surprise)
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To: freedomcrusader

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.


44 posted on 03/12/2005 11:20:37 AM PST by governsleastgovernsbest (Watching the Today Show since 2002 so you don't have to.)
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To: governsleastgovernsbest
There is no evidence that suddenly the Dept. of Labor has changed its methods for determining the number of hours worked.

Perhaps this is part of it. The Fairpay Act was put in effect as of August 23, 2004. It limits and redefines overtime pay:
http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/whd/fairpay/fs17a_overview.htm
45 posted on 03/12/2005 11:34:39 AM PST by ARCADIA (Abuse of power comes as no surprise)
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To: ARCADIA

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.


46 posted on 03/12/2005 11:41:33 AM PST by governsleastgovernsbest (Watching the Today Show since 2002 so you don't have to.)
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To: governsleastgovernsbest
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.

I have been consistent throughout; that is what I ment by "working longer for less." By I apologies for not expressing myself more clearly.

Here is the definition from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

How are labor hours calculated?

The primary source of hours and employment data is the BLS Current Employment Statistics (CES) program, which provides data on total employment and average weekly hours of production and nonsupervisory workers in nonagricultural establishments.

For the quarterly productivity measures, the Hours at Work Survey is used to convert the CES hours to hours at work by excluding all forms of paid leave. In manufacturing, average weekly hours for nonproduction workers are developed from BLS studies which provided data on the regularly scheduled workweek of white-collar employees. For nonmanufacturing sectors, all employees are assumed to work the same hours as nonsupervisory employees. Because CES data include only nonagricultural wage and salary workers, data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) are used for farm employment as well as for nonfarm proprietors and unpaid family workers. Government enterprise hours are developed from the National Income and Product Account estimates of employment combined with CPS data on average weekly hours.

For the industry productivity measures, for manufacturing industries, the nonproduction worker hours are developed, similar to the quarterly measures, from BLS studies, which provided data on the regularly scheduled workweek of white collar workers. For nonmanufacturing industries, supervisory worker average weekly hours are a constant and total hours vary according the changes in employment.


Link:
http://www.bls.gov/lpc/faqs.htm#Q04
47 posted on 03/12/2005 11:56:20 AM PST by ARCADIA (Abuse of power comes as no surprise)
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To: ARCADIA

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.


48 posted on 03/12/2005 12:18:20 PM PST by governsleastgovernsbest (Watching the Today Show since 2002 so you don't have to.)
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To: ARCADIA

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.


49 posted on 03/12/2005 12:28:06 PM PST by USS Alaska (Nuke the terrorist savages - In Honor of Standing Wolf)
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To: Alex Marko

"EU economy 'at least 20 years' behind US"

......and they are working half-days to catch up


50 posted on 03/12/2005 12:35:44 PM PST by RFEngineer
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To: DustyMoment; Alex Marko

<< 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!


51 posted on 03/12/2005 12:49:03 PM PST by Brian Allen (I fly and can therefore be envious of no man -- Per Ardua ad Astra!)
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To: SamAdams76
Great Britain itself will finally join the U.S

Only if your government was placed back in London, ;-)

Jokes aside, why is this centralisation so inevitable?
52 posted on 03/12/2005 1:46:27 PM PST by pau1f0rd (a British citizen)
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To: pau1f0rd
I believe that centralization is inevitable because quite simply, the world is getting much smaller. Just think, you just posted to me here from England and here I am a few seconds later composing a reply from the United States having already received your message that you will receive in a minute or two.

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...

53 posted on 03/12/2005 1:56:32 PM PST by SamAdams76 (Bush Announces Exit Strategy For Iraq: 'We'll Go Through Iran")
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To: Chgogal

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.


54 posted on 03/12/2005 4:41:01 PM PST by dervish (Nihilism is dead)
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To: Alex Marko

A step in the right direction would be a forty hour work week.


55 posted on 03/13/2005 3:42:09 AM PST by hershey
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To: Alex Marko

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


56 posted on 03/13/2005 3:49:35 AM PST by dennisw (Seeing as how this is a .44 magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world .........)
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To: dennisw
The TRUTH about the trade deficit:

America's Maligned and Misunderstood Trade Deficit

57 posted on 03/13/2005 5:45:25 AM PST by Skylab
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To: gnsbhatti

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.


58 posted on 03/13/2005 6:55:19 AM PST by RipSawyer ("Embed" Michael Moore with the 82nd airborne.)
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To: ARCADIA

"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.


59 posted on 03/13/2005 7:07:14 AM PST by RipSawyer ("Embed" Michael Moore with the 82nd airborne.)
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To: SamAdams76
All while Latin America is leaning left again. The leaders of Venezuela, Brazil (both known Commies), Colombia, Mexico, most of Central America and even Chile are showing distinct signs of going Commie again. Eastern Canada is already a leftist state. Check out the news media in each country and you might understand this trend.

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?

60 posted on 03/13/2005 7:25:52 AM PST by Paulus Invictus
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