He talks about "European" prospects and his trip to Denmark but then cites London as a representative example?
This almost broke my brain it felt so incoherent.
Never mind that (despite my personal wishes) we're not even part of the EU (which I assume is what he means by "Europe"). Surely he knows what an anomaly London is? It's not representative of anything except itself.
Referencing the extreme wage dispersion and severe housing pressure of London in a rant about Europe in general is a completely pointless endeavour.
He did say one thing I agree with. If you like good food, rich culture and great surroundings, "Europe" is indeed a lovely place to be for the most part.
Maybe I'll just keep that as my takeaway. It's too early in the year for doom and gloom anyway
That’s OK.
We all have some approximation of reality in our brains which is necessarily shaped by our life experiences.
Instead we get an application of external logic and values which can’t be used to properly reason about the entity they’re applied to.
There’s no need for frustration. We take the stoic approach here. It’s OK. You are a product of your environment. Everything you’ve ever experienced told you this is the way to act.
I don’t know about the author in particular, but Americans are generally aware of the “nuanced” European history of near constant war between rival nations, states, factions, and religions.
Dallas and San Francisco are both English speaking cities with a shared recent history of being part of the same nation. Most cities in Europe are as close as New York and Mexico City - Dallas and San Francisco is probably more analogous to Milan and Naples (different cultures, different histories, but now speak the same language and are part of the same nation).
Nah, Americans aren’t particularly interested in which Europeans are offended by being identified as “Europeans” this week. If we say “Europe” without qualification we’re probably just talking about the continent. (And no, we don’t even use the word “continent” as a distinction within Europe, except when referring to hotel breakfasts.)
Americans don’t really have much of a concept of what European identity is, and we don’t really care (other than being grateful for a few decades of relative peace after 1,000 or so years of near constant war).
It's very similar to "Europeans" broadly generalizing the US as one homogenous country, assuming everyone and everything in Chicago is the same as New York or Dallas.
Source: me, a brit, who has lived and worked in UK and US.
the UK is seriously broken, I always reflect on the energy generation statistics of the UK per capita
while in the US you see automated car washes, in the uk most car washes are Albanians n other immigrants etc
Bear in mind that obviously the mean salary in London is going to be far higher than the median (the finance industry will skew it), while I'm not sure that's as extreme as Mississippi. Additionally median salaries reflect a lot of service jobs and similar labour. Dubai has a lower median wage than either London or Mississippi, but people don't think of it as economically broken.
Comparing California (an extremely large state that I presume has cheaper housing outside major urban areas) to a city seems a bit of a poor comparison.
I don't disagree that the UK has high energy costs.
This is terrible for normal people, and slightly bad for the investors, but only a crisis or organized government action can reset the damage done by decades of investment in already existing buildings.
The former is much more likely to happen.
From my experience the ratio of savings was similar, but the ppp of course favored US for absolute numbers.
Housing in Vienna is still affordable, only due to their very successful public housing programs. Public housing can be both beautiful and highly affordable if you want it to be, it's not like we don't know how to make good quality homes with lovely public amenities. It's mostly developers that want to skim on everything while selling it at the highest cost possible.
Poor system if this is the outcome: unaffordability.
Source: UBS Global Wealth Report 2025
Of course US does has a much higher mean wealth…
The Vampire Squid has its tentacles in all our orifices, and we won't be free till we cut it off, or it dies of an obesity-related illness.
Supermarkets and shopping centres, national assets (e.g., water) the story is the same. Then there's Amazon et al.
Profit generated in this country is by and large not spent here, and is certainly not taxed adequately.
This causes inequality by short-circuiting redistributive measures, either local economic multipliers or government spending.
What gains are felt are concentrated in service sectors which facilitate global capital, concentrated in London. See OP's thoughts on legalistic societies.
It compares to inequality in England before the US was a thing, in the same way. Small elite benefiting from global plunder, vast inequality internally.
The British Empire didn't actually end. There was a hostile takeover by Washington at the end of WW2.
>A rule of thumb is that it takes five years from an American, German, or Japanese automaker to dream up a new car design and launch that model on the roads; in China, it’s closer to 18 months.
Not only is China 3 - 5 times faster in terms of product launches, they would have launch it with a production scale that is at least double the output of other auto marker. If you were to put capacity into the equation as well, China is an order of magnitude faster than any competing countries, at half the cost if not even lower.
Every single year since 2022 China has added more solar power capacity than the entire US solar capacity. And they are still accelerating, with the current roadmap and trend they could install double the entire US solar power capacity in a single year by 2030.
CATL's Sodium Ion Battery is already in production and will be used by EVs and large scale energy storage by end of this year. The cost advantage of these new EV would mean there is partially zero chance EU can compete. And if EU are moaning about it now, they cant even imagine what is coming.
Thanks to AI pushing up memory and NAND price. YMTC and CXMT now have enough breathing room to catch up. If they play this right, I wont be surprised by 2035 30 - 40% of DRAM and NAND will be made by the two Chinese firms. Although judging from their past execution record I highly doubt this will happen, but expect may be 10-15% maximum.
Beyond tech, there are also other part of manufacturing that China has matched or exceeded rest of the world without being noticed by many. Lab Grown Diamond, Cosmetic Production, Agricultural Machinery, Reinforced glass etc. Their 10 years plan on agricultural improvement also come to fruition especially in terms of fruit and veg. I wont be surprised if they no long need US soy bean within 10 years time.
All in all a lot of things in China has passed escape velocity and there is no turning back. China understand US better than US understand themselves, and US doesn't even have any idea about China. I think the quote from the article sums this up pretty well.
"Beijing has been preparing for Cold War without eagerness for waging it, while the US wants to wage a Cold War without preparing for it.".
“ the median age of the latest Y Combinator cohort is only 24, down from 30 just three years ago “
does yc publish stats to validate?
https://tomtunguz.com/founder-age-median-trend/
YC trends younger given what they’re looking for
- There's a hard edge to the distribution that isn't far from 24 (I'd expect relatively few sub-18-year-old YC founders, but more 31+-year-olds)
- Older founders (with more experience, larger networks and less life flexibility) aren't a good fit for incubators.
great line
Here is a fun representation I have in my mind:
Galactic Emperor
Insofar as there is any plan, the current officeholder's priorities are to project the appearance of personal power on television. If you're wondering what's going on strategically, don't go thinking that there's some grand plan, or even an intention to benefit the United States in the long term. There are some people in the cabinet who are thinking long term, but that's not universal, and that's not what they're selected for. Every action that is taken is to satisfy the president's narcissism and ego in the present moment. You have to understand the "US plan" in this light for anything coming out of the executive office to make sense.
They don't even have a concept of a plan.
Anything beyond that is just like a kid playing an arcade game without putting any quarters in.