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etripe | 4 years ago
Yes, but the US also measures unemployment differently. People are culled from those statistics much faster in the US than in Belgium.
> lower per capita income
True, but that's not caused by indexation of wages (COLA) alone - I'm not even sure it's a statistically that significant. It's down to a combination of factors, such as market size, startup culture, taxation, social welfare...
> These across-the-board mandated policies do impose a cost, they make the economy as a whole less flexible and decrease employment, at the margin.
The Belgian economy is less flexible by default, because it's constrained by three languages, seven governments, a total area slightly larger than Maryland and a population roughly equal to Ohio's.
Whether it's a cost is debatable, if Belgians on average live almost three years longer, on average have cheaper and better education, etc. If you compare the quality of life [0], Belgium is ahead of the US in many metrics except precisely cost of living,, housing size and wage. All I'm saying is: economical statistics don't paint the whole picture.
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