from Hacker News

Europeans fail to understand how much they were fucked by the 2008 crisis

by Melchizedek on 9/3/24, 11:14 AM with 28 comments

• by rspoerri on 9/3/24, 1:12 PM

  I wonder how much of this GDP US growth is from big corps, instead of income increase of low and medium income households.

  Because if i look at the politics and the topics that are a huge problem in the USA right now, it's that those struggle equally or even more then the european households.

• by immibis on 9/3/24, 12:20 PM

  The only consistent conclusion I can come to with all of these metrics (not just this one) is that they're severely underreporting USA inflation, and therefore severely overvaluing whatever is happening in the USA. When I talk to people from the USA they don't feel twice as rich, although by the numbers they are. Instead I notice that a prepared meal that costs about €10 here costs about $20 there (€1≈$1), although junk food is still super cheap for them due to their government subsidizing it way more. It feels like the US$ should be valued about half as much as it is, to make all the numbers be consistent.

  And this meshes with the knowledge the USA has basically gone on a money printing rampage since 2008, more than any other country that shows up on these graphs. By the amount of money printing and the hypothesis that money printing is the cause of inflation, the US$ should be worth half.

  It meshes with the rise of the USA's stock market indices while most of the rest of the world was flat. If the US$ had halved in value (since 2008) but publicly traded companies were still producing the same real profits, indices would have about doubled (since 2008). They have.

  So why isn't the currency exchange rate reflecting that?

• by alephnerd on 9/3/24, 11:45 AM

  Plenty of older Europeans (and non-Europeans) remember the Eurozone crisis, austerity, and the North-South clashes - it just got memory holed by a subset of European techies.

  Take a look at the polling booths today to see those who remember the Eurozone crisis.

• by jc_811 on 9/3/24, 11:57 AM

  Does anyone have any good recommended articles/reads about why exactly the US recovered quite spectacularly (GDP wise) after the ‘08 financial crisis, while the EU stagnated so heavily?

• by kkfx on 9/4/24, 6:10 AM

  As an European: most in the EU have failed to understand that we was global superpower when we have had domestic industry and no, the country size count little, Portugal and the Nederland was two biggest world superpower despite their tiny size. For one.

  Secondary EU and USA interests are different, simply, we have still a bit of industry but not natural resources and space, Russian Federation have them and with our tech we could be again a balanced (no one of the two can oppress/rule the other) superpower no one in the world, USA and China combined, could beat us. We committed suicide with two world war, maybe it's time to avoid a third one.

  Tertiary UE dense cities are simply untenable and have no reasons to be kept in modern time, after globalization and IT/TLC revolution it's about time to stop wasting enormous resources in concentration and spread again. USA need cities to have large slice of poor easy to be used as Ford model workers because USA have domestic resources, we have not, we can't compete in that term, but we are capable of crafting things together, meaning we can cooperate in a spread and very diverse system, with different languages and laws as well.

  Sorry guys, that's is. The world is vary and anyone have it's own interests.

• by stranded22 on 9/3/24, 11:48 AM

  I was thinking about this the other day. The house prices in the UK have steadily risen way above salary. Could it be that the salary was screwed by 2008, but the house prices continued? Either via investments (buy to let as well as stocks etc), other home owners being able to sell / buy or international money?

• by iLoveOncall on 9/3/24, 11:46 AM

  There's absolutely no indication that what is highlighted in the tweet is due to the 2008 crisis.

  As a French, I can tell you that the reason the GDP doesn't grow is because France is absolutely failing at any sort of innovation. So are most EU countries.

  This is self-inflicted damage, nothing to do with 2008.

• by r-u-serious on 9/3/24, 2:01 PM

  If GDP rises but wages stagnate, where does the money go?

• by Loughla on 9/3/24, 11:46 AM

  Is GDP per capita a measure of anything real for day-to-day life?