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RE: Hive: How Quickly Things Can Change

in LeoFinance3 years ago

The US is higher when the averages are compared. There is a greater relative number of high net worth, high income people in the US. But the income floor is also higher in northern Europe than in the US. Homelessness exists but is very rare in northernmost Europe.

The EU countries are very diverse, much more so than different states in the US.

Here's a list of EU member states in Europe (not just EU) by GDP PPP per capita in 2020 (IMF Dec 2020 est.):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_state_of_the_European_Union

If we ignore Luxembourg and Ireland whose figures can be considered somewhat misleading (particularly Luxembourg as it is a mini-state), then the range is from 57,781 USD (Denmark) to 23,741 USD (Bulgaria).

Finland had an unemployement rate of 7.7% in the third quarter of 2020, which was 1.6 percentage points higher than in the previous year.

http://www.stat.fi/til/tyti/2020/09/tyti_2020_09_2020-10-20_tie_001_en.html#:~:text=The%20average%20number%20of%20unemployed,the%20respective%20period%20of%202019.

When unemployed, you get an average of about 60% worth of your previous salary in unemployment benefits for the first 400 days. As a response to the Covid-19 situation, this was extended to small business owners. There is no serious crisis where a cascade of mortgage foreclosures or evictions are be expected. There is a moratorium on bankruptcy procedures initiated by debtors that is about to end, though. That affects small businesses primarily.

The situation and conditions in the rest of Northern Europe is similar.

The problems in the south are more acute. The same disease is affecting the whole continent as the entire developed world. Zombie corporations are being propped up with QE money. There is general mismatch between skills in demand on the labor market and those offered on the dole. The latter is going nowhere thanks to technological change that is showing no let-up.

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The US has rent and mortgage moritoriums in place also. We will see how long they last.

A lot of the stimulus coming out of Congress is helping many people to replace a large percentage of their income. This is true of the lower economic class that was affected.

However, the long term perspective does not look that rosy. You are right, technology is not going to let up at all. We know it will keep pushing ahead and, now, corporations have incentive to replace employees.

It will be interesting to see how some of the issues are resolved.

I do have a neighbor who is from Italy...he said that where he is from, more than 20% of the local economy is directly related to tourism. He says the economy is tattered due to the lockdowns.

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