Comments by "Paul Aiello" (@paul1979uk2000) on "Why Europe's Economy Could Catch Up With America" video.

  1. It depends on how you want to look at in catching up, if we are talking on pure economic terms, then probably not because Europeans are not willing to lower our standards as much as Americans are willing, lowering standards does have economic benefits, but it also lowers the standard of living for the people overall. Basically, over the last two decades, I've heard the US and UK brag about how well it's economy is doing or how low unemployment numbers are, but if you look closely at the numbers that really count, both the US and UK have been slipping behind European countries in areas that really matter to the people like quality of life. Personally, I think the US is trying to compete with China by lowering its standards, it can't compete directly on the population number and the population is a big factor when it comes to power of a country, but lowering standards isn't the way to compete and Europeans shouldn't follow the US on that one, because at the end of the day, Europeans still have a strong economy, but also have a higher quality of living, which is what really counts to most people. To put it another way, let the US fall for the trap in lowering standards to try and compete with China over the long run, but I don't think it's a good idea for others to follow, because at the end of the day, what good is having a strong economy when the standards are dropping in the country that wealth is in so few hands that the country ends up becoming a first, second and third world country rolled into one. As for the big company thing, they are not really the innovators, the smaller to mid-size companies are the ones that really shake things up, but they also need protection from the big corporations that more or less try to bully them out of business, basically, governments should be doing more to balance things out that help small to medium size businesses, being that there are more of them which means more competition, more innovation and lower prices for all, whereas big corporations are almost the opposite of that, especially if they have too much market share that they are more or less a monopoly, that isn't good for anyone, but I understand why the US favours big corporations, China is a big part of that reason and big corporations are easier to control by governments, but they are not very good for consumers or competition. The EU doesn't have to follow the US or China on that, but it clearly needs to change laws that are more favourable to smaller companies, whiles also protecting them and maybe even having rules in place that gives them a leg up over big corporations to balance the playing field more. Either way, the last thing the EU should do is follow the US lead, and anyone that's lived in both the EU or US over the last decade or so will understand what I mean, which to put it bluntly, the quality of life is better in the EU over the US, and that is what matters to the average person, you only have to look at many indexes like quality of life to see that.
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