[FirmwareBurner]

> standards of living and disposable income have been rising in the West and all over the world for 50 years or more

Standard of living has been steadily declining in most of Western Europe post 2009: stagnating wages, exploding costs of living, declining public healthcare, pension and welfare funds, with longer waiting queues and scarcity in public services, etc.

Hence why so many people are mad and see globalization as one of the main factors. They feel rug-pulled: those with inherited wealth can relax and cash in on this new status quo, those without now have to compete with Asia as they no longer have a moat that guaranteed a good and stable income from basic low-skill jobs.

[spwa4]

> Standard of living has been steadily declining in most of Western Europe post 2009: stagnating wages, exploding costs of living, declining public healthcare, pension and welfare funds, with longer waiting queues and scarcity in public services, etc.

Actually this is because of how government financing works. Globalization, if anything, gave Europe another 50 years of growth (since this really should have become a critical problem in the 1980s) by providing very cheap products and services.

The economic theory ("capitalism") that the west supposedly lives by is that in times of excess (like the last 80 years, or since 2008 at the very least) the government saves up enormous amounts, because they can easily do that, so that when international trade causes problems again that built up wealth can buffer against shocks by having the government directly finance a significant portion of GDP.

The EU itself is a massive force of globalization of course, if countries join the EU they can go a lot deeper in debt. So really ... they shouldn't have done this (because if they join they can't avoid taking on extra debt).

Oh wait. European governments haven't saved - at all. In fact they are deep in debt. Well, then shocks are as unavoidable as they would otherwise be, BUT now there's nothing the government can do about it.

And while, yes, there is inherited wealth, frankly, it's a rounding error. Especially compared to the situation in "Asia". Not that I support inequality, I just don't understand why this is called out when it is such a small part of the problem. The problem is extreme government overspending through financialization. That is not an accident, it was (and is) deliberate policy.

The real problem is that labor "needs to become more efficient". A lot more of Europe's people need to work more and/or longer. Because underneath it all, it's not really a money problem. It's a problem that things aren't getting done because governments have built all of this on income tax - which has made many jobs impossible.

The situation is that we've come from a situation of growth, where everybody gets a little bit extra, and we're mostly just discussing who gets how much extra. Now, there's no growth. That means the only way pensioners get more is if unemployed people get less. The only way kids get more education is if we let more cancer patients die. The only way unemployment can go up is if we let the roads deteriorate ... And, because the governments are overfinancialized ...

I wouldn't worry about wealth. Wealth has to be tied up in ownership of resources. Houses, companies, ... And when everybody is forced to use less, the prices of houses, companies, ... where that wealth is tied up, will fall a lot more than wages will fall.

One thing I really hate is that people don't see what is coming. Now the argument is "we'll tax the rich". That will, of course, fail. If you steal all the wealth you've solved ... nothing. And ... you know what is a really easy, stupid job that can avoid all those tax problems? The army. And how will you finance that? "We'll just make those rich $neighboring_country assholes pay for it after we conquer them!"

In other words: what's coming in Europe is war. It'll take 2 decades, but it's coming.

[churchill]

Thank you; you summed it up perfectly. Globalization is the reason many Western countries still have the level of stability they do, since they can export their inflation to the developing world, while maintaining a consistent stream of cheap, abundant goods.

No amount of mass-produced goods from the developing world will ever be enough, as long as Western governments are committed to diluting the wealth of their people through QE.

The perfect example of a country playing globalization to their benefit is Singapore: started off manufacturing cheap plastic stuff; kept levering up, retraining their citizens, and aggressively pitching their country to businesses; maintained a levelheaded, business-friendly atmosphere; accumulated extremely deep reserves.

Singapore has like $2.5T in reserves, which is mind-boggling for a country of 6M that spends just 10-20% of GDP annually. In comparison, excluding the UAE, most of the Arab Gulf who literally dig up money from the ground, haven't accumulated that much in their sovereign wealth funds.

[FirmwareBurner]

Retirements and healthcare in Singapore are based on how much each person chooses to invest in it, kinda like in Switzerland.

Meanwhile in most of Europe it's based on socialist principles where everyone receives as much as they need regardless if they didn't contribute, a system which stops working the moment you have more people using it than paying in it, basically a ponzi scheme propped up by governments and voters.

[FirmwareBurner]

>And when everybody is forced to use less, the prices of houses, companies, ... where that wealth is tied up, will fall a lot more than wages will fall.

If only house prices would fall.

>Globalization, if anything, gave Europe another 50 years of growth (since this really should have become a critical problem in the 1980s) by providing very cheap products and services.

My parents could barely afford a color TV or washing machine but they had their own home. What am I gonna do with cheap widgets from overseas when I can't afford a house? And which cheap services do you mean?

>The problem is extreme government overspending through financialization.

Maybe Brussels knows where that overspending is happening?

>A lot more of Europe's people need to work more and/or longer.

Younger generations of workers won't be liking this rug-/ladder-pull. And guess who they'll vote for to vent their frustrations that they've been strewed over? Another Austrian painter type of character. It's inevitable.

[spwa4]

> If only house prices would fall.

Nope, you don't want that. You want a house, and that's not dependent on price, though I understand why everyone feels it is. House availability is a function of supply and demand. That doesn't change with price. However, the actual amount is a function of what people can pay. What will happen is the government will cause a serious reduction in what people can pay, which will drop house prices.

But without building housing or reduction in people (or at least people being willing to live together again) affordability won't change. Only price.

> And which cheap services do you mean?

Services is simply anything you have/acquire that isn't a physical good. Like the internet. Your parents probably also couldn't afford a meal in a restaurant, more than, say, once a month. Or buying food near work (except in a factory restaurant). Maybe you're old enough to remember the necessity of buying food at a farm, or market, with very minimal middlemen, and to buy whatever is available (you know, the seasonal foods), so another (VERY) cheap service you have is supermarkets. Oh and you'd be walking or biking to the farm, so whether it's public transport or a car (or an uber) is another one of those services. You also "get" more and more management (and if you think it's bad at your private sector job, try working at the EU ...), and every company is further expanding it, mostly due to legal requirements, like dedicates psychological support personnel, which you also "get".

The reduction in prices will probably be masked by large inflation. Well, inflation without rising wages, and certainly without rising benefits. That would allow governments to pretend to avoid the completely unconscionable: live within their means ... In other words: governments sold you pension plans when THEY got money. Now that governments don't get money from it anymore ... "we must raise pension age", "we can't do inflation adjustments for benefits", "we can't ...". But of course, they ESPECIALLY can't reduce their own size. That isn't even being discussed.

> Maybe Brussels knows where that overspending is happening?

Wait you're not aware of this? Pensions. Governments promised pensions with total disregard for cost. People in the EU don't work from ages 0 to 20. And they don't work from 59 to 79. (59 due to the many times government has paid for earlier retirement). So working career from 59-20 is 29 years of working. You are dependent on services for 40 years. So the tax necessary to pay for only pensions without constant growth ... is more than half of your wage.

Second is medical expenses. I don't mean treatment. Actually making people better, at a doctor or a hospital is not the big deal. "Long term illness", between quotes because some 10% of the total active workforce has long term illness without being actually disabled (burn-out, psychological difficulties, ...). Great that we allow that, but it needs to be paid for. The problem, of course, is that medical insurance is about 10%, and the money is entirely eaten by people long term ill.

> Younger generations of workers won't be liking this rug-/ladder-pull. And guess who they'll vote for to vent their frustrations that they've been strewed over? Another Austrian painter type of character. It's inevitable.

Sure, and you can bet your firstborn that they will blame "rich Jewish bankers" again, rather than reasoning along the lines of: we, as a group, don't get labor-intensive services ... we also work less and less ... I wonder if there could be a connection. No no no, it's those rich bastards (the ones that match existing racist stereotypes) keeping us down.

[FirmwareBurner]

> So the tax necessary to pay for only pensions without constant growth ... is more than half of your wage.

Sounds like the easiest and fairest fix would be to slash the pensions and benefits of current retirees to match the current real world economic conditions, so that funds can be freed for economic investments in the future generations of people to allow society to evolve and not collapse later.

That's the only fair thing because the current economic conditions are the making of the generation of current retirees who built a system that only serves their generation and wasn't scalable, and it's not the fault of the younger workers of today that their parents and grandparent wrote cheques in their name that they now have to cash, which should be illegal since that would be like me taking a mortgage for a McMansion, and saying to the bank that my 3 year old and his grandkids will pay for it, not me lol.