[tomrod]

What's funny is that many Europeans I have spoken with from across the continent have the attitude that you come to the US when you are young to make money then retire to Europe to take advantage of the social safety net.

Perhaps not yoir personal opinion, but definitely one that is anecdotally common among white collar workers.

[calculated]

@tomrod is completely right. Here in Bulgaria people have this exact mindset. Some also might just never return.

[tomrod]

Indeed. I've heard it from Serbians, Bulgarians, Irish, Scottish, Swedish, German, Italian, Romanian, and Belgian folks that I can recall offhand, maybe more that I'm not completely recalling.

[calculated]

I'm actually surprised of this since I've always though of Sweeden, Germany, Italy, Belgium as very good countries. I can only speak for bulgarians as I know how the mass thinks here.

[mantas]

Maybe they’re good precisely because of this mindset?

[api]

That’s very unsustainable for Europe and great for the US since the latter gets the most productive years.

[tomrod]

Right? European policy makers should look to determine what incentives they encourage that generates this fairly common attitude.

[mantas]

Maybe they just cater to their electorate. Democracy etc.

[tomrod]

Did the electorate vote on gdpr directly?

If so, I stand corrected.

If not, it was performed by representatives whose incentives are not aligned to the electorate (see Arrows impossibility theorem).

[mantas]

More direct democracy would be nice.

However, as a citizen of EU member, I’d say GDPR pretty well aligns with the general notion of the people.

Sometimes people ain’t happy when government uses GDPR as a scapegoat to keep iffy data private. E.g. hiding final beneficiaries of companies. But I don’t see people unhappy that GDPR prevents crappy software practices.

Same deal as credit cards. Here in Europe cards processing fees are capped. Thus we don’t have US-style kickbacks or points programmes. Which probably limits credit card issuers innovations and business models. But I don’t see people complaining about that.