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European growth these past few years has been remarkably bad? (source is world bank data if anyone has a better data source I'll accept that
From 2009 to 2024 we went from European countries being frequently ahead of the USA gdp wise (ex Netherlands, norway, ireland denmark) to functionally even (Finland, belgium, sweden) to only moderately behind (Germany, france UK), to by 2024 only Ireland being ahead, Norway being basically even, Denmark and the Netherlands moderately behind and everyone else significantly behind.
I never realized how big the eurozone crisis of 2014 was to Europe, it basically wiped a bit less than a decade of growth from the countries. Sure us Growth from 2019 until 2024 has been much greater than that of say germany (31% vs 17%) but in the 2009 - 2018 time frame the 4 countries that were ahead of the US grew 1.5% (netherlands) NOR 3.84% Ireland 54.87% (I know everyone goes Ireland cheats, but Irish GDP per capita isn't really any greater than New york, and it's only slightly higher than the state of california) DEN:4% while US growth was 33.29%
Yes Us growth is still dramatically higher than europe even excluding 2014, but 2014 provides a major thorn in the side. US grew at a 5.64% annualized growth rate from 2019 to 2024 while Germany only had a 3.22% annualized growth rate.
(also why are these growth numbers so high??? is the world bank doing nominal gdp and not RGDP?)
Still with these trajectories California will have a GDP higher than the country of germany by 2030.https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/04/23/california-is-now-the-4th-largest-economy-in-the-world/ (6% growth compounded vs 3% growth)
There's probably something I fundamentally misunderstand (though NVIDIA has a higher market cap than the entire german stock market) so maybe it's more "wtf uS growth is that big compared to northwestern europe why didn't I notice this before"
I don't know the first thing about economics, but it certainly feels like my purchasing power has been going down over the past 10 years.
I know this is going to sound strange but are you by any chance moderately rich?
A lot of the growth in the past few years in the USA has been driven by rising wages for the poorest people, so stuff like fast food has gotten way more expensive.
This means that while certain things got cheaper (TVS phones ect) and certain things got more expensive, the things that are more expensive tend to be the "upper middle class" purchases (ex restaurant food)
I wish.
I'm...lower middle class? Honestly I'm not sure how the classifications go, exactly. I'd call myself "working class" in light of my actual circumstances, if that didn't have historical baggage. I'd like to identify as middle class, but I clearly don't fit in economically on account of my complete lack of property.
ok, so that means you probably were hit the hardest by price changes!
The biggest changes price wise in the positive direction are medical care, housing and restaurant food.
So basically if you live in an apartment and eat out a lot you were hit the hardest by the recent changes in relative prices.
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