Low Salaries in Europe are because of progressive tax regimes leading to extremely low wealth inequality and far higher social cohesion.
It's like when agitators use the comparable GDPs of Bavaria and Mississippi as a KPI indicating Europe's lack of economic prowess. In fact, it's just a scathing indictment of wealth inequality in Mississippi where life expectancy is 10 years less and infant mortality 400% higher than in Bavara, despite their similar GDPs.
Concentration of economic power generally leads to concentration of political power (ie non-democracy). There are tons of pathways, eg campaign finance, lobbying, media ownership, threat of capital flight, regulatory capture, to name a few.
I'm not agreeing with the parent comment, but I've long held the opinion that one of the the reasons the US is so much more economically successful than Europe is because businesses have so much more influence over government.
This is viewed negatively in general (perhaps rightly), but I think it does provide some balance between the incentives of wealth creation and workers. For example, here in the UK we'll happily regulate entire sectors of the economy out of business every year, but in the US attempts to do this would be met with huge multi-million dollar lobbying campaigns.
Low Salaries in Europe are because of progressive tax regimes leading to extremely low wealth inequality and far higher social cohesion.
It's like when agitators use the comparable GDPs of Bavaria and Mississippi as a KPI indicating Europe's lack of economic prowess. In fact, it's just a scathing indictment of wealth inequality in Mississippi where life expectancy is 10 years less and infant mortality 400% higher than in Bavara, despite their similar GDPs.
Concentration of economic power generally leads to concentration of political power (ie non-democracy). There are tons of pathways, eg campaign finance, lobbying, media ownership, threat of capital flight, regulatory capture, to name a few.
I'm not agreeing with the parent comment, but I've long held the opinion that one of the the reasons the US is so much more economically successful than Europe is because businesses have so much more influence over government.
This is viewed negatively in general (perhaps rightly), but I think it does provide some balance between the incentives of wealth creation and workers. For example, here in the UK we'll happily regulate entire sectors of the economy out of business every year, but in the US attempts to do this would be met with huge multi-million dollar lobbying campaigns.