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You seem to be under the impression that things are inherently better in the US. They really aren't. California easily rivals the worst corners of German bureaucracy. The only positive thing you can say about it is that you can do things in English there. And California easily matches its tax pressure. It's an expensive place.

I'm singling out that state because that's where most of the software innovation comes from and it's GDP is a bit of an outlier. Outside of California, the US is a bit of a mixed bag of states that is actually not that dissimilar to much of western Europe for things like growth, prosperity, and indeed GDP/capita. Some states like Texas have natural resources (and a relaxed attitude towards planetary destruction) that explains much of its economics.

Most of the wealth in the US is concentrated in a relatively small number of states where it is concentrated with small groups of people (the rest isn't that wealthy). If you take Germany and compare it to each of the states in the US, it probably comes out on top of many of them for metrics as GDP per capita, happiness, innovation, etc. Sure, it's maybe not a power house like California when it comes to software. But it's not like most of the US is doing that well on that front.

And if you start looking at healthcare, the alarmingly large prison population, and general levels of misery among the population, it's really not that amazing of a place any more. You might have more dollars. But they are worth a lot more in Europe than they are in the US. The same money buys you a lot more goods, services, housing, and quality of life over here. There are a lot of things that are kind of broken in the US. And that has a lot to do with its policies.

And there's more to technology than just software. Tesla definitely buys German machines when they want the best. And a lot of those wind mills popping up on in coastal waters, made in Europe too. The US automotive sector kind of imploded in recent years. If it weren't for the import tariffs, there would be a lot more European and Chinese cars on the roads there. Machines to make chips come from ASML, which is based in the Netherlands. There's nano tech, nuclear fusion (several companies active in the EU breaking records), etc.

And the thing with software is that it's easily copied and imitated. A lot of what MS, Meta, and others do isn't exactly rocket science. Whatever moat the US has there, it isn't geographic.



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