I always found these sort of observations to be meaningless. 1 million to 1.5 million is far less than 100 to 1000. What's also the point of comparing the entirety of America to Western Europe? Why not do it by state then?
The author almost gets it with their comment:
> As a result, commentators and think-tanks have set about comparing the economies of some of Europe’s richest countries to those of America’s poorest states
In any case, all of the free stuff Europe (and any place, for that matter) gives their citizens will come to an end real soon once the population bomb explodes on the world.
> In any case, all of the free stuff Europe (and any place, for that matter) gives their citizens will come to an end real soon once the population bomb explodes on the world.
Presenting it as "all the free stuff" is a bit ideological I believe, it's not free stuff, nothing is free, it's indirect/socialized wage, and if you participate in the economy you are paying for it albeit indirectly.
A population bomb would affect the whole economy, it doesn't matter whether what's lost is social perks or a wage loss i.e. weath redistribution. And it may be just as well that the safety net will remain the same while the wages take a hit instead. It really depends on politics, what is the easiest thing to remove/the more palatable to populations (who do vote).
Then compare it to EU ... People ragging on US tend to forget that inequality between EU members is larger than US states and they are of comparable size. So much for the egalitarian utopia.
Plus the wars they had to name a few: Balkan, WWI, Spanish Civil War, WWII. Add to that a few dozen other smaller wars. Quite a mess and quite impressive to overcome in such a short time and not hate each other.
The latter. Though it's not really even about a decrease or increase. Even if the population stays the same, the share of young to old will change drastically and with the way the modern economy is structured - it's gonna be ugly.
That is true, but it hits developing countries more.
Compare USA, UK, France (which are past the demographic transition and are having pretty decent demographic structure) with China, Korea, Japan (which are at various stages of that transition and are around or sub 1.0 growth (2.1 is replacement level) and almost no immigration).
China and Korea will have it much worse than any European country did (in EU the worst countries are around 1.3 and it's caused by in-EU migrations as well as demographic transition - so the missing .3 from Baltic countries or Poland is reproducing in UK, Ireland or Germany).
While state level differences are real, the entire US shares federal taxation and federal labor law, and has freedom of movement, constitutionally limited barriers to internal trade. It’s a very natural unit of analysis.
I can't access the text because it's behind a paywall, but at least in the visualisation you see at least europes countries. And it's a headline, it can't reduce the complexity without loosing something.
> 1 million to 1.5 million is far less than 100 to 1000
this is very simplified and if there's a continuing trend then the first has an an abundance of money and the second just has a bit.
I don't think the critique is fair at all. These are statistics over a population, of course it's meaningless at first for the individual but that's just because of the noise. In the long run there's an impact.
The author almost gets it with their comment:
> As a result, commentators and think-tanks have set about comparing the economies of some of Europe’s richest countries to those of America’s poorest states
In any case, all of the free stuff Europe (and any place, for that matter) gives their citizens will come to an end real soon once the population bomb explodes on the world.