[jstummbillig]

Do you really? Or do you actually want to sustain your standard of living as safely as you can?

Because then the question arises: What if the current way of handling labor protection in the EU (as one of many components) leads to destroying yours and everyone elses standard of living, simply because it's unaffordable? Would you still argue that this is the way to go? Everyone going down with the ship together?

I don't know what will happen and what the root causes are (labor laws might not contribute much to the picture, I really don't know), but at least we should be somewhat cognizant of the fact, where the industries of the future are currently built and where they are not, and have a fantastic explanation of why this is not going to be a super big issue.

[bojan]

> Because then the question arises: What if the current way of handling labor protection in the EU (as one of many components) leads to destroying yours and everyone elses standard of living, simply because it's unaffordable?

It's quite an assumption that it's unaffordable. In the last decades efficiency has been only increasing, but working hours per week aren't significantly going down nor are the salaries noticeably higher.

Where does all the extra efficiency go to? It's pretty ok in my book if it goes to social security.

[jstummbillig]

It's absolutely fantastic for the people, as long as you get companies to agree with you. Looking at the EU market: Does it work? Is that your reading?

I am sure there are ways to try and force companies, but I would suspect it's fairly complicated politically, given that that's usually not how that goes.

[bojan]

> Looking at the EU market: Does it work? Is that your reading?

The EU single market isn't really single yet - and that is in my views the biggest obstacle to innovating start-ups being able to scale. If you want to release EU-wide you have to make sure you also comply to 27 national jurisdictions. It's hard. I work at financial services, and we really have to carefully grow and release per country. The UK would have been nice, but being even more different, for the company of our size they are a total no-go.

But I do think it works. The European countries with strong workers' protection are very attractive destination for knowledge immigration, they make a good chunk of top-10 in Human Development Index, and the whole of top-10 if you adjust it by inequality (so if you look at median at not an average).

> I am sure there are ways to try and force companies, but I would suspect it's fairly complicated politically

Less complicated in the EU than basically anywhere else in the world.

[jstummbillig]

> Less complicated in the EU than basically anywhere else in the world.

Oh, the idea was not that the EU couldn't compel companies to do things. They can. It's that companies can then go and move production somewhere else in the world. As they do.

[nomel]

> efficiency has been only increasing

Through innovation.

[WarOnPrivacy]

> Through innovation.

done by the workforce. The financial benefits of worker innovation flow upwards, first to shareholders then to executives. Whatever is left over is claimed by expenses, modernization and as low a wage as can be engineered.

[nomel]

Yes, the workers innovate, rather than the shareholders or management. I think that's the understood context of this discussion/reality. I think this is a tangent of the above.

[otikik]

> destroying yours and everyone elses standard of living, simply because it's unaffordable?

As opposed to what has happened in the US, where everything is happy and everything is affordable. Innovation!

[Akranazon]

Are you not aware that this is the case? Look up affordability statistics.

[WarOnPrivacy]

Not sure if your point was caught up in all the negating but for clarity's sake:

Me + USA = starkly unaffordable. Rents here have ~doubled in 6yrs and are up 5-fold from 2000. Wages grow at a much slower pace - insuring the gap between wages and expenses grows continually.

[otikik]

Before we continue, please clarify whether you detected my sarcasm. Without that information your comment could be interpreted in two completely opposite ways

[brabel]

The EU has been like this for a long time. If it was going to become unaffordable to sustain it that would have happened years ago. Of course in the longer term anything could happen but I find it hard to believe it would happen because of the EU labor laws.

[snapplebobapple]

One has to come to terms with the majority of people being better off in each individual interval under strong labor protections (because they are by definition mediocre) while likely being worse off over time as a group because of the pie not growing. Who gets the growth in pie is also highly unequal within the group large swaths can also be worse off over time. Ie third world labor got almost all of the pie that went to labor over the last 40 years. First world labor is at best treading water. Its still right to favor innovation because the group is better off and its more freedom supporting but lots of unhapoy people dowm that path.

[analog31]

I think it depends on the industry. If it's printed circuit boards, then it's China. If it's software and financial services, then the US. If it's health and science research, then probably Europe.

In fact, where industries are built is even more granular: Shenzen and the Bay Area. Even within the US, big cities have tried building their own tech hubs, and failed. Economic policy may have played a minor role in building NYC or SFO.

[jimbo808]

I don't see a lot of Europeans trying to claw their way into the US, if that's any indication

[Muromec]

Why would it become unaffordable?

[jstummbillig]

Because labor protection costs money. If you get something from that, that's net boosting your economy, you have no problem. If not, you get social cohesion, at a price.

Somebody is paying that price. If it's companies they are disincentivized to employ people in your market. If companies go somewhere else to employ people, jobs disappear from your market. If the jobs disappear, so does the money.

[knowledge-clay]

> Because labor protection costs money

Labor protection does not "cost money". It is a limit on the degree to which workers can be exploited.

[dzhiurgis]

Sorry but 50% tax rate is exploitation. Especially so how inefficient government spending is.

[knowledge-clay]

European labor regulation and European tax rates have nothing to do with each other. The former is about restrictions on how employers can treat employees. The latter is about funding a robust welfare state. For what it's worth, both are good.

[disgruntledphd2]

I live in Europe and pay 52% marginal. I considered moving to California and it turned out that I'd be paying about 50% marginal. So not sure it makes that much difference.

[seec]

Even if this is completely correct, you would be paid more in California, right? Or at the very least have better purchasing power. That would come at the cost of security of course, but considering the state of EU governments it's no clear how long that security will last really...

[Muromec]

Labor protection costs money the same way monopolies cost money. You can have a strong cartel on the one side of the labor market or another, but there is a backed-in assumption that cartel of workers harms the economy more than a cartel of employers. This coming from a employers mouth is just negotiation tactics, nothing more.

>If companies go somewhere else to employ people, jobs disappear from your market.

Does this actually happen anywhere in the usual suspect countries? Doesn't seem to be. Quite the opposite -- they all import workers, because the actual pain point right now is pension fund deficit with the ration of retired to working being skewed.

[seec]

Yes that's the point. They import cheap labor ready to take jobs at lower prices than the native population because they don't have to live in the same social circles. It's almost the same as delocalization, it's a form of social dumping and all of this is possible because governments are both incompetent and addicted to the tax money. The pension deficit is the result of an overly socialized system where governments promised unrealistic benefits to a generation who fully profit from it and now let their children pay for it.

This is the result of relying too much on politics. If parents where to ask their children to pay for their expensive retirement benefits directly, most who tell them to fuck off, rightfully so. But since politicians have placed a level of indirection in between, it's not the responsibility of anyone yet everyone pays for it.

Socialist systems have a way of self-destructing after a while because nobody ends up being accountable for anything. Currently the politicians are good scapegoats but really the people who put those politicians in place bear as much responsibility.

If it had been about their own money, things wouldn't have turned out this way. Funnily enough since most people don't trust governments that much, they have double dipped, saving on top of retirement benefits and "investing" in real estate that they now rent at a high price to their children. This has created an obscenely well-off generation, that is now voting for immigration in order to keep their obscene retirement benefits, furthermore fucking their children.

[general1465]

Not mangling your workers is for free.

[knowledge-clay]

> Because then the question arises: What if the current way of handling labor protection in the EU (as one of many components) leads to destroying yours and everyone elses standard of living, simply because it's unaffordable?

The GDP/capita of e.g. France is 10x what it was in the 1970s. There is nothing "unaffordable" about the European social safety net, except that there are political pressures to dismantle it (right-liberals like the Economist)

[senordevnyc]

It’s about twice what it was 50 years ago when you adjust for inflation: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYGDPPCAPKDFRA

Your overall point might still be correct though.

[xela79]

> Do you really?

spotted the capitalist.

[Scarblac]

Our standard of living is destroying the planet and it needs to go down a lot anyway.