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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"
My oppinion as a western european:
1 Demographic: The U.S. population has been growing at roughly 1% annually, compared to only about 0.2% in Europe. On top of that, Europe is also aging more rapidly, and migrants to Europe are generally less high quality than those entering the U.S. As a result, the U.S. benefits from a larger and younger and more high quality consumer base.
2 Regulation: Europe also places more regulations and barriers on businesses, which dampens activity and slows innovation. Generally capital flows to where it can generate the highest returns. While Europe does offer opportunities, the U.S. market generally provides a more favorable environment because investments can often go much further.
3 Goverment spending: Another important difference is the role of the state. In Europe, government spending accounts for about 51.5% of GDP, compared to around 36.2% in the U.S. Since state spending is generally less effective at generating long-term growth than private entrepreneurship, this also tilts the balance in favor of the U.S. (See higher income tax and more taxation in general)
There are definitely more factors, but these are just the ones that come quickly to mind right now.
My take is that its the fragmented regulatory, consumer and financial markets that are the biggest problems here. It's not that there is a ton of regulation its that there are 20+ versions of the onerous regulations.
It's too difficult to scale a business in europe because despite efforts and the goal of the EU it is in no way a single market. When you want to scale your business rather than just export consumer products this becomes a massive issue, which is why every notable new company in europe usually starts in their own country (and perhaps very similar neighbours) and then rather than expanding into Europe they launch in America and eventually list themselves there, and only then start expanding into the rest of Europe.
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