Comment by somenameforme

This somehow reminds me of that Winston Churchill joke:

    Churchill: Madam, would you sleep with me for $1 million?
    Woman: Why Winston, yes I would.
    Churchill: How about $10?
    Woman: What sort of woman do you think I am?
    Churchill: We've already established that. Now we're just negotiating the price.

With countries all things are relative. A rich country isn't rich because of some specific number, but only relative to another country or countries. And in this case the EU is objectively in decline. From there we can debate about whether it's due to the more rapid rise of other countries, bureaucracy imperiling innovation, or whatever else - but those are the details, and in reality it's almost certainly going to be a bit of everything.

Something I'd emphasize is that the main reason that China/India are rising is simply because relative tech disparities between nations are fading rapidly. And once you have at least remotely comparable tech, the size of your economy is going to be heavily dependent upon your population. The US has 340 million people. China and India have about 1400 million. That's a losing battle. But notably the EU has 450 million. That's well below China/India, but well ahead of the US. That should count for something, but for some reason it seemingly does not.