'The GDP gap between Europe and the United States is now 80%'
COLUMN. As after every crisis, Europe has been stalling since Covid-19, observes Arnaud Leparmentier, Le Monde's correspondent in New York.
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Why does it feel like I'm reading a weird right wing paper from France? This thing kind of reads like propaganda. America might have 14 trill gdp but our debt is higher...
Especially since government spednign might not be wise. Perfect current example is Russia. The GDP is not falling due to the government spending a lot of money on the war against Ukraine. I somehow doubt that building tanks, to be blow up by Ukranian artillery is making the next generations of Russians richer.
I heard somewhere that when the gdp measure was created some people advocated that the military expenditure should be subtracted from the total gdp as it is produced to be destroyed. So it would be fun to have a gdp graph where this is reflected.
Sure but Russia still managed to cut its losses. With the amount of sanctions it has to face and the cost of war, Russia should have crumbled by now, but thanks to their original low debt they managed to save their economy (at least in appearance). They may get their reckoning but their investment policy helped them resist the huge pressure the Western World put on them. Sure, they are only buying time, but imagine what Europe would do with that kind of ballsy investment policy.
Russia is fairly litterally blowing up its money and setting it aflame. That is not an investment. An investment should return more money in the future. I fail to see how destroyed T-90s do that.
But yes the fact that countries like Germany, with the great option of borrowing are not using that to make actually smart investments into things like railways, renewables, heat pumps and so forth is quite simply incredibly dumb.
In my opinion we should see beyond national investments: there should be more European funds for more European projets. It was strong 20 years ago but lately many projets fail or lag behind.
I somewhat agree. The only way forward in most areas would be European projects. But we are lacking competent and agile institutions. They got so big and bloated – that for me it looks like they are not able to reform themselves. So first we need good (european) organizations, then we can pour the money over them..
What has the debt to do in anything whatsoever?
