[NeverFade]

The only problem with this model is that it doesn't seem to be working long term. Economically, Europe has been stagnating for a long time, and recently its been in a decline. So it's a nice model as long as you can maintain it, which doesn't seem to be very long.

https://archive.ph/5eZjb

[MattPalmer1086]

The linked article shows that Europeans are only becoming poorer since 2018, so the last 5 years.

The reasons offered are demographics, valuing free time, the pandemic and the Ukraine war.

This hardly suggests that the problem is the pooling of wealth or that it is not sustainable long term.

[NeverFade]

Their economy was stagnating for at least a decade before 2018. They've gone from near-zero growth to negative. It doesn't matter what the reasons are, really. The pandemic hit everywhere, and their choice to "value free time" is the problem here. Turns out you can't sustain a high quality of life without enough people working hard to produce the products and services that create this high quality of life.

[withinboredom]

It depends on what you value, right? There are hard limits on the number of people any plot of land can handle and feed. Stagnation is probably a good thing. Always “doing more” isn’t always a good thing. It’s not a zero-sum game where there is some kind of competition.

[NeverFade]

Stagnation isn't "a good thing" when you're comparing to societies that are progressing. And it may be a zero sum game, when stagnating nations are drained of talent and brains, so this model is even less sustainable, as anyone who can do better leaves, and the rest are left to support those who don't do particularly well.

[playday]

Let’s assume what you’re saying was true: doing less is better. Well just mechanically, a “evil” society that does more will attract more labor and capital than one that doesn’t. Any area of competition except “goodness” will be won by the evil country, such as space races, weapons development, and new technologies. That means the society which chooses to do less will be culturally, technologically, and militarily at the whims of the evil society. So the power dynamic will definitionally belong to the doing more society at the expense of the doing less one, and in the final state the goal of goodness by doing less has failed. This is a contradiction disproving the assumption .

[ClumsyPilot]

> Economically, Europe has been stagnating

thats since 2008, when ECB and most of european governments have decided to go full Aysterity and cut all kinds of investments. Prior to this idiocy EU economy was actually larger than US economy.

These ecents are notbrelevant to the taxation model, which predates them by decades

[NeverFade]

The EU economy fell way below the US (after being roughly equal) because they were never able to compete in the new digital economy. All the big tech companies are American. You also have to ask yourself why the ECB and European governments had to cut spending. Perhaps because the levels before weren't sustainable? Perhaps because you can't just keep living beyond your means, as eventually you'll run out of other people's money?

[em500]

"Full austerity" is wildly hyperbolic. Here's EU government spending as share of GDP: https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/government-spend...

Try to click on MAX and spot when governments went "full austerity".

[miguelxt]

What austerity? In Spain’s case, both debt to GDP and tax revenue to GDP ratios has been increasing since a decade ago. That’s the contrary of austerity.

[mjhagen]

> it doesn't seem to be working long term

Define "Long term", it's been working pretty well for over a century.