Comment by LaurensBER
1 day ago
European here.
I feel that our priorities have been on social/climate issues. For a very long time the feeling was that we had enough prosperity and that more was nice but that it was not as important.
There was some serious talk about "de-growth" and the trend (for some groups) was mostly towards working less but maintaining the same standard. Among left political circles it seemed that the focus was on doing the most good, for the most people and this focus often lay outside of Europe. To put this in a historical context, many Europeans (especially Germans) feel that we have historical sins to atone for.
We trusted the US and were happy to see them succeed. To a lesser degree we trusted China and Russia and we figured that they would make (economical) rational choices to codependency was seen as a strength and not a weakness.
It's very clear that we were in some degrees naïve and lazy and wasted opportunities and choices. Europe occasionally needs a good crisis to get going again, I'm glad we're finally getting one.
Stephen Kotkin, the historian, made a podcast comment that the US share of global GDP has remained about the same over time, regardless of politics/policy/crisis.
We Americans love our economic growth, for better and worse.
I used to manage software teams in Europe, Russia, North America and China/Taiwan. Quality of life seemed best in Europe, Asia seemed best for the young, and the US was the most business aggressive. I liked the Canadians. California climate (and innovation) can't be beat.
In my next life, I will figure out what's best...
You did the same dumb canada did, assuming usa would be happy forever taking care of the world while you focused on luxury beliefs. We are all paying now that usa finally figured out the arrangment was too costly given the impending doom of the ussr existing was gone. It makes me aad thinking about where we migjt be now if we had focused on actual progress rather than luxury beliefs. Chance is strongly non zero we would have developed the tech to solve our climate issues for example.