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Microfoundations of slow European growth
European industries seem to have higher entry costs, and with them lower turnover rates: 50% of new pharmaceutical products in America come from firms less than ten years old, against only 10% in Europe; 12% of the biggest US firms by market cap at the end of the 1990s were less than 20 years old, against 4% of the biggest European firms.
Here is more. Here is a more general piece on the latest growth news out of Europe.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on November 15, 2006 at 01:23 PM in Data Source | Permalink
Comments
"50% of new pharmaceutical products in America come from firms less than ten years old, against only 10% in Europe."
Strong IP in America makes patent-protected corporations more motivated to protect patent and less motivated to innovate?
"12% of the biggest US firms by market cap at the end of the 1990s were less than 20 years old, against 4% of the biggest European firms."
Dot.com bubble?
Posted by: Dan Karreman at Nov 15, 2006 1:53:11 PM
Tyler,
This is one of the most misleading posts I
have seen you put up in a long time. When
I went to the links I found
a) no breakdown by country on this entry
barrier issue
b) that Europe is growing more rapidly than
the US at the current time, even if it is
growing less than some were forecasting.
Regarding the entry barrier issue, which
is clearly a serious matter, this is again
one of those items that deserves a breakdown
within Europe rather than yet another of
these generalizations about "Europe" that
you have been handing out in some of these
recent postings (are you doing this
deliberately to be provocative and spark
possibly informative discussion?). So,
one of the reasons a lot of the Nordics
do so well on some of these "competitiveness"
rankings is precisely that most of them
have very low barriers to entry, and some
of them are very strong in R&D, with
Finland in particular a real standout in
both areas.
This also fits with the lowered growth
story. Who are the laggards dragging
Europe down? Well, it is a set of large
countries, Germany, France, Italy, and
Spain. Given their relatively large
populations one can of course just go
"well, they are Europe, so there." But,
we know better here, or we should, and
I know that you do, oh sometime lover
of social democracy.
Finally, it would be worth knowing
what is the source (or sources) of those
barriers. In some countries it will be
stupid regulations, Germany sticking out
as a big candidate on that one. In some
others it might be high taxes, which of
course is what the Grover Norquist fan
club that reads this blog would like to
point to. We all know that is the big
bugaboo of the soc dem countries, even
if they have low reg barriers.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Nov 15, 2006 2:04:08 PM
Barkley,
I disagree with the majority of posters here, but "Grover Norquist fan club" is a bit cruel.
Posted by: theCoach at Nov 15, 2006 2:37:50 PM
Barkley, the point isn't to provoke for the sake of provocation. The U.S. economy is by, a wide variety of metrics, more dynamic than most of Europe. It is true this article does not give all the detail, but the core comparison is, I believe, a correct one.
Posted by: Tyler Cowen at Nov 15, 2006 2:41:22 PM
At a guess growth is measured in PPP GDP and we are to extrapolate a continuing discrepancy in that figure but not to do the same for trends in the value of the dollar and assume no significant distortion in the PPP figures. We are also to ignore that most of that growth is extremely concentrated and assume instead that it translates at something like face value to welfare and therefore signals great things for the US and bad things for Europe.
To explain this prognosis we are then to infer from the size of various Nasdaq stocks in 1999 that there are high barriers to entry in Europe and then to attribute these to micro factors and not, say, the existence of barriers to moving from one of Europe's 25 markets to another and the direction of change thereof.
Why does discussion of the relative virtue of of the American economy always focus on micro factors and ignore the elephant in the room which is the difference in scale? Are these issues also the cogent ones in discussions of the success of the Chinese economy?
If this picture is true and the US economy is so strong, why have US dollars, bonds and equities been such miserable investments over the last year or three or five?
Posted by: Jack at Nov 15, 2006 2:42:35 PM
"this is again one of those items that deserves a breakdown within Europe rather than yet another of these generalizations about "Europe" that you have been handing out in some of these recent postings (are you doing this deliberately to be provocative and spark possibly informative discussion?)"
Look, form an European Union, get treated like a Union. If it deserves a breakdown within Europe, then US backers are free to, say, write off the heavily unionized MidWest like Ohio and Michigan or cherry-pick their favorite state. The generalizing about the EU is no worse than the generalizing about the entire USA.
Sure, some European states do better than others. Some US states do better than others too. Individual US states can have a HUGE effect on economic policy and regulation.
And of course while second and third quarter US growth was a shade under the EU average, first quarter US results were absolutely ridiculously blistering, and certainly higher than the EU average. (5.4% annualized, 1.3% non, compared to EU 0.8%-- it's a bit annoying that US government sources always annualize whereas EU sources don't)
Yes, there are reasons to suspect that a slowdown may come, but it's a bit rich to focus exclusively on the last two quarters and ignore, oh, the years in a row where the EU growth rate was lower.
Posted by: John Thacker at Nov 15, 2006 2:49:27 PM
If this picture is true and the US economy is so strong, why have US dollars, bonds and equities been such miserable investments over the last year or three or five?
Equities? Year or three? The US S&P 500 Index is up 16.18% in the last year and 12.30% per year in the last three years. Perfectly fine by any historical measure. Of course, when exchange rates are taken into account, it's been a poor investment for Europeans and investing in Europe has been a good return for Americans. (Asia, OTOH, has been no better and in some ways worse an investment for Americans.) So I suppose that's your perspective.
Now five years, absolutely the S&P 500 Index has been a poor investment any way you look at it. That's because five years still hits right before the bubble ended.
Posted by: John Thacker at Nov 15, 2006 2:56:59 PM
John, the implication of your point about states is that both the EU and the US have them and therefore things are quits but the comparison here is of small differences between not very different things so small differences between EU states and US states might well be relevant -- EU states are growing by a couple of ex-communist ones a year at the moment, they mostly speak different languages and you need passports to travel between some of them. Then if you want to attribute the difference to micro factors its no contest which has more variation.
Posted by: Jack at Nov 15, 2006 3:11:59 PM
Jack, when you take out the ex communist states (look for "EU 15 at Eurostat or the OECD), Europe does worse, not better. Europe has free movement between states, free trade in goods, a mostly common currency . . . it's no less an economic entity than, say, America ca 1880.
Posted by: Jane Galt at Nov 15, 2006 3:17:06 PM
John I think you are still living in 2004 and Asia would in fact have been a better investment over 1,3 or 5 years as would everywhere else. US stocks did beat Japan in Q3 by not much. Interestingly Pharma and Biotech have been very weak over that period too.
Posted by: Jack at Nov 15, 2006 3:20:16 PM
Jane, it's a difference and there are transfers between them. The question is are the differences in the structure of the states going to develop in Europe's favour or the US's? Compare 20 years ago to now. Are you really suggesting that it is as easy to expand a business from Slovakia to Norway as it is from Arkansas to Oregon?
How does the development of the ex-communist states compare with Mexico's?
My real point is that the assumption that the action is in micro differences is a big one.
Posted by: Jack at Nov 15, 2006 3:28:08 PM
Tyler,
Yeah, I forgot. It is Stockholm
you like, not all of the soc dems.
But it would still be nice to know
what those entry barriers are, even
if we are to think about "Europe"
as a whole, although, of course,
among the Nordics, neither Norway
nor Iceland is in the EU.
theCoach,
Yeah, I am being unfair. On cough
medicine today (have not been able to
shake this darned thing for over three
weeks!), so more off the wall than usual.
John Thacker,
The stock market bubble peaked in early
2000, almost seven years ago, not less
than five years ago, as you stated.
Jane Galt,
On exactly what and over what time
period does "Europe does worse" hold?
This is pretty vague, even to someone
like me all zonked out on cough med.
To all who whine about "cherry picking"
European countries versus doing so for
US states, there is much more variation
in performance on most economic and other
variables across EU members than there is
across US states. They may have unified
on many policies, but remain disunited
far more than is the US. Only 12 of them
are even in the same currency. As I have
noted, of course, four big ones have been
relatively stagnant in recent years, so
one can prattle on about "Europe" this
and that based on them, if one really
wishes to do so in an unclarifying, tut
tutty way.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Nov 15, 2006 3:31:14 PM
The point is that Europe is now aggregating its economic statistics, and given the degree of economic integration of the continent, it is no longer appropriate simply to make comparisons between American and, say, the German economies; America has its own monetary policy and trade rules, while Germany does not. The monetary union will, IMHO, require that the integration gets deeper and deeper (and will probably eventually have the effect of pushing non-euro countries out out of the centre). The EU 15 has a single labour market, most of them have a single currency, their trade policies are negotiated together, their regulations are converging . . . their tax and labor market policies are different, but that is also trueof New York and Alabama. You're underestimating the depth of the divide between US states (expanding into another state is actually quite a big job with all sorts of legal, tax, and labour implications) and overestimating the differences between EU states. The question about Slovakia isn't relevant (although even so I might not answer it the way you'd like) because no one is talking about the demographic problems of Slovakia (which are large, but thankfully, due to convergence their g is expected to grow much faster than r, which will allay the problems). The question is whether it is more appropriate to compare the US to Sweden or to Europe. Given the depth of the integration, and the problems inherent in comparing a small, centralised and homogenous country to a large, federalised, and heterogenous country, I'd say the latter. And there is no composition of countries which yields a higher growth rate for developed Europe than for America, unless you can find a way to justify throwing out everything except Ireland and Scandinavia. The majority of the population of Europe lives in countries which are headed for a clash between their welfare states and their demographics. Transfers from Ireland are not going to save them.
Posted by: Jane Galt at Nov 15, 2006 3:45:49 PM
Well as long as we are all in agreement then I believe that it is safe to conclude that lower taxes and less regulation lead to more desirable market outcomes. It seems like the European defenders are merely trying to argue that Europe in some places is actually much more of an open market in some places thereby reducing barriers to entry.
Posted by: John Pertz at Nov 15, 2006 3:48:13 PM
You still have a problem in that market capitalization is generally
a very poor measure to use when comparing companies.
Because the market tends to give young, rapidly growing firms a much
higher valuation it creates significant distortions when you try to
use that measure to compare the economic importance of firms --
it will almost always make young firms appear to be more important.
During the bubble we had little dot.com firms with a dozen employees
and no sales with larger market capitlization than older well established
firms with thousands of employees and million in sales. Many of those
dot.com high flyers no longer exist and now have zero market capitalization.
I'm willling to bet that if you used sales or employees, or some other
metric that the comparisons would be very different.
Posted by: spencer at Nov 15, 2006 3:57:16 PM
Regulation brings about economies of scale that otherwise would not be there. Both the anecdotal evidence I've heard from visitors to France and Germany and the economic statistics bear this out. IIRC, 49 of the top 50 countries in France now were also in the top 50 decades ago.
As for the argument about whether to compare separate European countries or Europe as a whole to the US, a comparison I saw of each US state to each European country only made it look even worse for Europe. Instead of nitpicking arguments such as this, perhaps the European defenders should bring out some statistics of their own that we have all been missing.
Also, how exactly does scale help explain the US's GDP in light of the prosperity of tiny countries such as Luxembourg or Switzerland?
Posted by: Matthew at Nov 15, 2006 4:11:38 PM
Jane,
So Europe can go Nordic or go West (as you already pointed out, the Ireland option is not an option, since not every country can rely on massive subsidizies from EU). Is there any doubt which direction they will go?
Posted by: Dan Karreman at Nov 15, 2006 4:28:59 PM
Luxembourg is an outlier in per capita GDP because many people work there, contributing to GDP, but don't live there, contributing to capita.
Posted by: Cyrus at Nov 15, 2006 4:38:29 PM
Jane, is the discussion about microfoundations or about demographics? I wish you would answer the question about expanding from Slovakia to Sweden versus from Arkansas to Oregon, I'm sure I would cope. Do you really think the European move would be easier?
I'm all for considering the EU as a whole but if you want to look at microfoundations you have to accept that there is vastly greater variety in Europe than in the US and, my main point, that these are far from the only significant differences between the EU and the US.
My point is that if I wanted to build a company with a 10% EU market share, the things that would slow me down are cross border trade barriers, language issues, differing tax regimes and other non-uniformities in the market, not social security levels or state provided health services.
Why is there no discussion of PPP calculations? Are they really so accurate that a 0.2% GDP growth difference is significant?
Posted by: Jack at Nov 15, 2006 5:05:22 PM
Jane,
Uh, I did not bring up Slovakia.
You are badly wrong on several counts.
For all the talk of convergence because of
the euro, I remind you that not all of them
are in the euro. Also, they are not a
unified labor market. Several countries
have stayed out of the Schengen Agreement,
thereby limiting labor mobility. Even
within the agreement, language barriers
sharply reduce practical labor mobility.
There have never been any such barriers
between the states within the US.
There simply is no comparing the
unity of the labor market in the US
with that in the EU, and they will
remain sharply different for the
foreseeable future.
So, the EU is providing aggregate stats.
That does not mean that therefore we
should ignore the national stats and the
EU ones are more important. Policy
differences, as well as performance
differences across European nations
remain larger, far larger, than across
US states. The gap between Portugal
and Finland is far greater in many ways
than between Mississippi and Connecticut.
There is a broader issue here that is
raised by Tyler's original post (apologize
for being so grouchy about it). The
Aghion paper simply gave no information
about what is important, namely, what
are these barriers and effects and how
do they vary across countries. This is
the main problem with talking at the
European level, which in this case really
is meaningless.
So, I follow this issue somewhat and apologize
in advance that I am not just going to whip
up some sources or links, but here is my
perception of the situation.
The problem is mostly in the big two lagging
Rhineland economies: France and Germany, although
the precise details of the dumb regs that limit
entry are quite different in each. In many other
countries there are no such problems, and some
are claimed to be better than the US, e.g. Finland.
For certain countries the problem is not entry,
but problems related to going from being a small
firm to a medium-sized firm, given that there
are some economies of scale in R&D, with some of
these problems having to do with regs and some
of them having to do with taxes. Two countries
that are in this category are Italy, famous for
its very innovative small firms, and Sweden.
I do not know anything about the situation in
Spain regarding this issue.
Ireland's performance, btw, has partly had to
do with the fact that its labor force speaks
English, so tax breaks for FDI have brought in
huge amounts from the US. This has been more
important recently than the regional aid from
the EU, now getting shut off anyway.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Nov 15, 2006 6:05:52 PM
Jane Galt,
I must apologize for being so obnoxious
(blame it on my cough medicine), but
statements like "Europe does worse" cry
out for precision. Apparently you mean
the EU-15, not 25, not Euroland 12, not
CEE-6, not future EU-27, not NATO Europe,
not "Western Europe," and certainly not
"all of Europe" (which gets really messy,
given that 48% of the land area of Europe
is in Russia, but it also extends way
across Asia). Furthermore, there is
"worse at what"? Apparently to Jack you
meant GDP growth, but then that just pushes
the question to "when"? Not true for the
last two quarters and not true for 1945-73,
although true for some cherry-picked time
periods besides those.
Of course the issues first raised by
Tyler had to do with patents and by what
firms, new or old, with the presumption that
patents by new firms show "better" somehow,
not clearly defined. I realize that you might
want to state that A is A and that means
laissez-faire is the best, by golly. But,
as noted in Tyler's post on university research
productivity, the US federal government plays
a huge role in all this, NSF, DARPA, etc.
And, returning to the question of whether
or not one should look at Europe as some
aggregate on this, R&D and antitrust policy
is heavily at the federal level in the US,
although there is some variation in regs about
starting up corporations and taxes across
states in the US (ah, so many companies HQed
in Delaware, obviously they do "better"!).
But certainly R%D policies are much more at
the national level in the EU, and there remain
much greater variations in rules about forming
companies and so forth, despite some convergence.
So, one really does need to look at individual
countries or blocks of similar countries, even
if one wants to compare with the US on this
entry/patents issue.
Anyway, I'll go take some more cough medicine
and shut up...
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Nov 15, 2006 8:21:04 PM
I don't think it matters how Europe has done historically, except as it is a guide for the future. And while Europe did better than the US over the last two quarters, this isn't much to write home about; they posted slightly better growth during the upslope of a recovery than the US did during an interest-rate-led slowdown. In any two given quarters, Europe may exceed or underperform the US, but over longer periods, so far, the trend is plain.
Since 1990, "old" European (broadly, EU15, or if you prefer, knock Spain, Greece and Portugal out) has been falling behind US growth rates. Even in the Nordic countries this has been true, though Norway had some great years due to oil wealth (unfortunately for them, a resource that is running down). Several countries may, at any given time, outperform the US, but all of them trail the US when you lengthen the time period, which evens out the varition. Europe "converged" to over 90% of GDP, but has now fallen behind to roughly 3/4. Underperforming growth rates mean that this disparity will only grow.
Europe's looming fiscal problems are worse than the US even without slower growth, because their benefits are so much more generous, and people retire so much earlier. But combining them with slow growth is a killer.
Posted by: Jane Galt at Nov 15, 2006 9:24:15 PM
Obviously, Ireland and Luxembourg are exceptions; but Luxembourg is a special case, and Ireland got where it is precisely by adopting US-style reforms.
Posted by: Jane Galt at Nov 15, 2006 9:25:20 PM
Not to disagree about Ireland's adoption of US style reforms, but one must also count that Ireland made use of its comparative advantage in labor (relatively cheap compared to both Europe and the US and English speaking) and EU subsidies to push its growth forward.
Posted by: Georgiana at Nov 15, 2006 11:47:37 PM
It is worth pointing out to Social Europe types who wish that ireland's success can be laid at the feet of EU transfers that Portugal had basically the same transfers during the same period but didn't boom. The bulk of Ireland's success was its low and falling corporate tax rate. It is hard to grow GDP (a.k.a. wealth) when the government insists on pilfering the wealth creators.
True, Ireland had some other advantages, notably that its workforce consists of a huge number of former expatriates who learned the languages, customs and foibles of their former host countries. This gives employers in Ireland an edge in developing products for each country and selling them. Social Europe ought to steal this idea and hire lots of noncitizens to do likewise for their countries. Somehow I expect they won't though since they labor under the illusion that the number of jobs are fixed and thus foreigners are dirty job stealers.
Posted by: happyjuggler0 at Nov 16, 2006 12:52:09 AM
happyjuggler0, not all objectors to the thrust of this post are well characterised as "Social Europe" types. For example if I was a pure capitalist I would be more interested in investment performance and still be skeptical of these claims. Are the markets right and Jane wrong?
The original statistic claimed that it took longer to become very large in Europe between the late 70s and late 90s than it did in the US. That's probably true. Tyler and Jane then seem to have leapt to the conclusion that this is bad and attributable to micro factors. I make the claim that over that period those are minor considerations in comparison with expanding from the UK to France, Germany, Communist countries and so on.
I maintain that the assumption that the US economy is much stronger than even old Europe is a weak one and so imprecisely made -- some medium term, aggregate, post PPP adjustment statistic is supposed to be the telling one -- as to be almost meaningless. Even given that only one possible explanation, welfare states (admittedly with demographics waiting in the wings) seems to occur to Tyler and Jane and I think that claim is lame even if Europe might improve on that score.
Posted by: Jack at Nov 16, 2006 4:35:16 AM
Countries like Germany,France,etc. spend a large amount of time on tea and dinner.
Why are these countries still have such high output,in particular,Germany, when they move so slow? Will them be taken over by Asian countries, like China and India, who are very hard working?
Probably not.
One good side about the Germans is that the products can last long periods, that is, the depreciation rate is low!
For instance, in Germany, a typical factory building built 200 years ago can still work in perfect condition today!
Posted by: SL at Nov 16, 2006 7:51:02 AM
But France and Germany have near double-digit unemployment; their companies don't need to expand to grow. Moreover, it doesn't seem to be that hard, because the big story in the EU these days is businesses picking up from France/Germany and moving east as fast as they can.
Posted by: Jane Galt at Nov 16, 2006 7:52:45 AM
Jane Galt,
I agree that since 1990 generally, EU-15 have had
slower aggregate GDP growth than the US. With their
higher benefits and slower population growth, they
also face more serious fiscal problems than does
the US in the pensions area (the US does not have
a social security crisis). OTOH, they have much
lower costs in the medical area, so the US has
more of a problem there.
The gap is much less if one looks at per capita
GDPS. This could turn into a replay of the
Quiggen vs Cowen argument on productivity, so I
shall not go on about it, but one can also argue
about whether immigrants come to the US because of
growth or their arrival causes (or at least stimulates)
growth, as endogenous growth models argue. Some of
both, I figure, and of course the US-Mexican border
is the sharpest per capita income discontinuity in
the world and easily penetrated.
Ireland has US style policies in some areas, and
certainly has very low corporate taxes, but it is
also more European in other areas, e.g. having
Nordic style corporatist wage bargaining.
Focusing on the pharmaceutical industry that is
mentioned in the original post brings up some
peculiar issues. Thus, much of this in the US
is concentrated on the I-270 corridor coming
out of Washington and NIH in particular, the
main source of federal funding of biotech research.
The main center of C cubed high tech is in Northern
VA, coming out of the federal funding spouts of
the Pentagon, the NRO HQ, and the "George Bush
Center for Intelligence." There is no comparable
locus in Europe.
Focus on pharmaceuticals also focuses the comparison
on the US with Germany, with Germany clearly exhibiting
many of the worst characteristics in the entry barriers
and regs areas. Of course the other big player in
pharms in Europe is one not in "Europe" by your
definition, Switzerland.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Nov 16, 2006 10:30:33 AM
Are the barriers suggested in the article above at the entry level, the regulatory level or at the step up from national to international? Even the nominal single market did not come into force until 1992 and the euro didn't arrive until 1999. I suggest that the move from national to international is the most obvious barrier and extrapolating from the past where that was significant is misleading because those particular barriers are falling, at least within Europe.
US regulators, the SEC for example, make pretty big barriers to entry but the reward of access to the largest single market in the world is huge so overcoming them is worthwhile.
Posted by: Jack at Nov 16, 2006 12:23:24 PM
Regarding aggregate growth, the US has
done better than EU-15 in most of the
recent decades. It does have a broadly
more flexible microeconomy with strong
entrepreneurship and ability to move
R&D into practice.
However, before pronouncing inevitable
doom on the EU-15 I note two advantages
they have over the US that could become
very important in the near term future:
1) energy efficiency. They have slowed
their own growth down by having very high
taxes on gasoline and oil products more
generally. Upshot is that they are already
pretty well adjusted to a really serious
and permanent increase in oil prices that
might happen at some point. I am not
forecasting when that will happen, but my
bet would be that it will be when al Ghawar
in Saudi finally tanks. That pool produces
about 5% of world oil production, and its
peak will be the world peak.
2) massive and rising foreign indebtedness
of the US. There will have to be an adjustment
at some point in some way to stop this massive
accumulation, now in excess of $3 trillion, and
few scenarios look pleasant for the US, with
some looking plain awful. EU-15 do not have
this problem at all. Their slower growth has
meant that they have not been importing stuff
from abroad and borrowing to do so. They might
get dragged down if we collapse (along with
pretty much everybody else), but they will not
have to make a huge internal adjustment. In
short, both environmentally (and I have not
even brought up adjusting to global warming)
and internationally macroeconomically, the
EU-15 have been on a much more sustainable
growth path than has been the US.
So, wake up a decade or two from now, and
the shoe may well be on the other foot.
They do not look so doomed at all.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Nov 16, 2006 12:30:40 PM
BBC News reports that a Spanish government backed study says that Immigrants 'drive Spanish growth'.
They didn't provide a link to the study though. :(
This provides hope for those who want Social Europe to not collapse for GDP/demographic reasons, and it is one of Tyler Cohen's possible solutions, namely productive immigration.
Without actually reading the report I can't actually make a guess as to what degree this will help alleviate Spain's future problems.
Posted by: happyjuggler0 at Nov 16, 2006 1:57:09 PM
happyjuggler0,
Apart from the problem of financing retirment benefits, do you see value in growing population? This is a real question. I am confused as to what its upsides are, except of course, that a bigger working pool makes it easier to support non-workers.
Posted by: theCoach at Nov 16, 2006 4:07:33 PM
Barkley Rosser: how is an adjustment of the US current account deficit going to slow down US per capita productivity growth? I find that connection tenuous.
Posted by: jult52 at Nov 17, 2006 9:21:15 AM
jult52,
If the deep recession slows capital investment.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Nov 17, 2006 11:01:28 AM
Personally i think that Europe does not need to have higher entry to the pharmacitical industry because they are more healthy than Americans. America is now known as the fatest country and with people being fat that arises more illnesses too. So If Eropeans do not need the newly found medications for newly found sickness that are moslty found in America, then why would "they" need new pharmaceutical products. When and if they ever do they will make that accomodation for it.
Posted by: Franchize501 at Nov 17, 2006 11:04:43 AM
Barkley - Ok but a lot of "ifs" there.
Posted by: jult52 at Nov 17, 2006 11:13:04 AM
Seriously Jane. (Excuse my English). You, and many others, need to read up on Norway and its economic system and quit making extremely simplistic claims about it only being the oil that make our economy one of the most efficient in the world, and us having the highest standard of living. For many reasons, most of them not one-dimensional economic ones, the average Norwegian worker is more efficient then the average American worker and we save up our oil money for future generations. We don’t even spend it, we invest it abroad. The value of the Government Pension Fund (Oil fund) is at 325 000 000 000 dollars. We are 4,5 million people. Please. And claiming that the US States is the same as the EU countries is just absurd.
Sorry. This coming from a young Norwegian student, learning a lot from this site and your insights.
Posted by: Andreas at Nov 28, 2006 2:30:56 PM
