this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2024
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Free lunches, brain breaks and happy teachers: why Estonia has the best schools in Europe (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 7 months ago by CAVOK@lemmy.world to c/europe@feddit.de
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[โ€“] KevonLooney@lemm.ee 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Your first article just shows the EU growing at 1% and the US growing above 2%. That's not plunging at all. By definition, 1% growth is increasing. This indicates to me that you either exaggerate pessimistically or believe article headlines. It's the same thing.

Your GDP chart is a bad comparison for two reasons:

  1. You didn't use PPP to compare them. With PPP numbers they are closer. Unless you are looking at government budgets for buying jet fighters or something, you have to use PPP to compare economic strength accurately.

  2. You should compare median personal or household income instead of GDP. GDP is influenced by large earners like billionaires, which the US has a lot of. Median income measurements are not. Which country Bill Gates calls home doesn't affect your personal economic situation.

[โ€“] nivenkos@lemmy.ml -1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Your first article just shows the EU growing at 1% and the US growing above 2%

This means that the gap between our economies is growing. And a lot of countries are in recession (or bouncing in and out) - like Sweden, Germany and the UK.

Median wealth and income are arguably worse:

Income: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_wage

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita#Table

Wealth inequality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_wealth_inequality#List

Sweden is far worse than the US for example - with much higher wealth inequality and much lower median purchasing power.

I don't think you can find a single area where the EU is performing better economically.

[โ€“] KevonLooney@lemm.ee 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You didn't post anything about PPP median income. As I said earlier, you are being extremely pessimistic without any data.

I looked it up for you: the US is fifth in the world in median income. Switzerland, Norway, and Luxembourg all have higher median income than the US. That makes sense intuitively too, as those countries all have extremely high quality of life on many measures.

https://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/10-richest-countries-by-median-income-1248583/6/

Here's another source with older data, but it's easier to rank countries. The rest of Europe is very close to the US.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/median-income-by-country

[โ€“] nivenkos@lemmy.ml -2 points 7 months ago

A 33% difference isn't exactly "very close".