The first policy of the last 20 years by this gerontocratic, bureaucratic, and corrupt institution, that makes sense.
> The objective is to enable innovative companies to operate under a single, harmonised set of EU-wide rules, covering relevant aspects of corporate, insolvency, labour and tax law.
Especially the last two topics are the nitty gritty details, subject to day-to-day populism by local politicians. It’s why „relevant aspects“ dampens my hopes.
Sometimes I wonder if we should just reduce the EU to a non-geographical sovereign state with which EU countries have a shared agreement. I‘d the incorporate within this state, have it taxed and regulated there. Sort of like a mixture of the City of London and the Holy See.
Unfortunately the foundational thinking behind this runs deep in German culture, stemming from the social upheaval of the early 1800s when a foreign colonizer introduced the (already natively sought) end of the estate system as a way to pit Germans against each other (and gain loyalists). The resulting loss of privileges agitated the heirs towards successful entrepreneurs: Labeling them as Traitors, Jews, and people that didn’t deserve it. As modern Anti-Semitism was born out of this so was the tendency to see success of others with contempt and failure with glee. Though things have improved, you can still notice it.
Apart from that: How is that de-facto locking in of individuals compatible with the EU‘s foundational freedom of movement?
Yes, they were free to leave. No one stopped them from leaving the free trade area and having the exact same status as any other random country in the world. Or did you mean that Uk wanted to leave EU but keep all the good benefits? Like canceling Netflix and bitching about not being able to watch the latest series.
sure. It did just take 3 simple elections over many years, with open antagonizing, fearmongering and interference by the EU until they accepted defeat.
Still, amazing how Meta (and Luxottica?) massaged the media to have the wearers of its dystopian goggles not labeled how they ought to be labeled: Glassholes.
Just for fun I maxed out the specs in the configurator. I remember doing that 10 years ago and paying 4K just to be delivered an infamous embarrassment of a laptop (yes the one with the hilarious display issues), which got me this close (pinching my fingers) to leave apple entirely. Today, maxing out yields me 8K and I gotta say, I‘m done. I‘m not paying Apple‘s insane surcharge. The temporary delta is not worth it. Already I‘m seeing corporations buying the lower/lowest tier laptops possible for their devs. Most of their compute is happening outside of the machine anyways.
The US is doing what Russia did 2022 – Act before the window of opportunity closes. Not just vis-a-vis China. Russia being entangled in Ukraine leaves extra opportunities on the menu. Temporarily.
~400k documented/authorized workers leave the US labor market through death (55+) or retirement (Boomers, ~4M/year still retiring) every month. Immigration is down, and net migration was likely close to zero or negative in 2025. Unemployment is relatively low, but there is robust evidence of widespread underemployment and it taking 6-12 months for the unemployed to find jobs. My analysis is that companies are reaching for historical ZIRP era returns in a macro with higher rates (which will likely remain higher with the neutral rate closer to 2.5-3%) through "cost efficiency" whenever possible, by offshoring, nearshoring, and avoiding hiring as long as their systems and processes continue to function "good enough."
Deportations have pushed wages up in some examples (Texas healthcare industry) due to employers having to hire authorized workers to replace undocumented workers who would work for lower wages, but I have not seen broad data on this topic, citations welcome.
The economic metrics are masking a brutal worker economy, being held up by labor shortages (but shortages not yet sufficient to improve labor power), AI capital investment, and healthcare jobs (which will remain durable and in demand due to a rapidly aging US population) is my thesis.
Deportations are down from my understanding. Most people think deportations are up due to the “shock and awe” ice operations. The current administration, as with prior administrations, has no intentions of actually reducing the amount of cheap labor whether they are undocumented or not.
The main impact is from fewer workers entering the country clandestinely from Mexico due to the current administration’s enforcement of the border and the general impression of immigrants being treated poorly by administration. Illegal border crossings are now at a 50 year low.
> but there is robust evidence of widespread underemployment and it taking 6-12 months for the unemployed to find jobs
A really ignored aspect of this is that gig work is pretty prevalent once someone loses a stable job. This masks the unemployment with underemployment. There were headlines a while back about booming small business registrations as a sign of a booming economy. Turns out it was just a bunch of people registering businesses so that they can DoorDash
Culper Research had a thesis that a material amount of DoorDash gig workers were undocumented, I'm unsure how it panned out. I agree gig work platforms are a contributing factor to masking economy health indicators as well as underemployment.
because the jobs they do enable a lot of BS jobs, go
unfilled and actually need to be filled to create other
job growth while someone in the labor market for a long
time is likely in a comfortable job that will be
realized to be unnecessary and already replaced by
disruption from newer lower pay equivalents.
(Also GDP is in USD which means it is down 30% in many senses.)
> I don't really think retiring boomers play the same role in the economy.
~3M+ deaths during the pandemic pulled forward a labor supply shock that would've happened more slowly over time, due to structural demographics ("Demographics are destiny", fertility rates never recovered after the 2008 GFC in the US [economic shocks destroy fertility rates], population has been held up with net immigration for the last half decade). Boomers have investments and real estate equity in some cases, Medicare and Social Security in others (with some overlap), and have constant demand for healthcare and other elderly goods and services. They make up almost 20% of the population.
Certainly, there is a bifurcation between undocumented worker jobs (agriculture, high physical labor healthcare, food industry) and documented worker jobs Boomers are retiring from. The latter is relevant for my points on labor market dynamics, the former is distinct because it is unlikely documented workers are going to flow into these low wage, low quality of life jobs without higher wages and worker protections (as one would expect). You see this with employers and farmers complaining there are no workers for them.
The data shows older workers are absolutely playing a material part in the economy, both as consumers and workers.
> There are now 20 million more 55+ employed than there were in 2000. The 55+ population increased by 42 million (from 57 million in 2000 to 99 million today [2022]), a 74% increase. Total employment in the age cohort increased by 113%.
This data supports my viewpoint just as well. Older workers are taking
the lower effort higher reward jobs that Americans are healthy enough and happy enough to do. If we go by salaries a bunch of CEOs retiring would be
a massive blow to salaries and propping up the US economy. CEO
are paid by what the best CEO is worth as no one wants to believe they
hire dud CEOs.
There's no explanation to me as to why this years attrition from the labor
force is much more meaningful than any other years, but there is a
notable loss instead of gain of millions of workers willing and
able to do any job instead of any convenient job.
Do sardines cause sharks or do sharks cause sardines? In what
sense is the preference for the theory that sardines growth causes
shark population growth a lump of labor fallacy?
> The objective is to enable innovative companies to operate under a single, harmonised set of EU-wide rules, covering relevant aspects of corporate, insolvency, labour and tax law.
Especially the last two topics are the nitty gritty details, subject to day-to-day populism by local politicians. It’s why „relevant aspects“ dampens my hopes.
Sometimes I wonder if we should just reduce the EU to a non-geographical sovereign state with which EU countries have a shared agreement. I‘d the incorporate within this state, have it taxed and regulated there. Sort of like a mixture of the City of London and the Holy See.
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