[strken]

I don't know if back of the napkin maths helps understand exactly what the US is doing right.

You can point to a sector with high GDP, sure. But US tech ascendancy has its roots in DARPA spending around the bay area, which was enabled by US economic and military supremacy, which was in turn driven by the US having a lot of oil and staying out of WW2 and a host of other factors.

I agree with the point that investment vs austerity looks more impactful than the history of DARPA spending, but I just find economic analysis an overwhelming problem to even think about.

[alephnerd]

The EU and the US had a comparable GDP and population size around 2007. The gap between European and American performance only arose in the 2008-13 period when the GFC and Eurozone Crisis occured.

As such, it is important to dig into how the US and the EU approached these crises, as both took entirely different approaches.

The crux of the EU's laggard performance arose during that period.