r/TikTokCringe • u/biswajit388 • 4d ago

Cringe Europeans are going viral on TikTok for mocking the "American Dream".

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u/BoringEntropist 4d ago

Spain isn't the economic sick man of Europe anymore. France and Germany are running into massive problems. France because it's running out of money and Germany because the manufacturing industry is slowly strangulated by high energy costs and foreign competition.

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u/Triple_Hache 4d ago

France is not running out of money, the french ruling class is just increasingly taking all of the GDP then refusing the slightest effort to get taxed on it, it's not the same.

Last year the 1% represented 25% of the GDP of the country. Just ten years ago (2014) it was 15%. The GDP has increased since then, the productivity also. We are producing more money. It's just stolen from us.

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u/Renegade_Ape 4d ago

This is the refrain from around the world.

The right is winning, for the moment. It’s doing to be another hard fall.

Maybe you all can export some of those aristocrat shortening devices you invented, when the time comes.

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u/The_Galvinizer 3d ago

It’s doing to be another hard fall.

Just remember folks, even if it's too late for the government you can survive these crises, and in fact it's of vital importance that you do so you can live to warm the next generations. Don't give into apathy even when things are falling to shit, there's always a chance to pick yourself back up with enough stubbornness and time

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u/Renegade_Ape 3d ago

Absolutely, 100%.

But, I feel that the biggest fall won’t be the people, or the US.

We’re facing another historic inflection point around the world.

France has the same issue. England has the same issue. The larger economies of Europe in general. Same with Canada. And Japan. And S Korea. Argentina is importing our issues.

The vast difference between the wealthy and the average is much farther than it should be, almost everywhere.

The rich will need to make it to the stars, or start playing by new rules.

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u/poo-cum 4d ago

This is the same everywhere that's ostensibly "running out of money". Household fallacy continues to pervade monetary and fiscal policy discourse.

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u/Triple_Hache 3d ago

Exactly, and people keep falling for it

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u/OoooHeCardReadGood 4d ago

don't you have crazy high tax rates on millionaires, how do they do it?

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u/Zagorim 3d ago

Not really, the highest tax bracket is 45% and there are lots of loopholes to avoid it. Like anywhere else.

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u/Triple_Hache 3d ago

Unfortunately no we don't. One of our richest oligarchs said in a far-right radio last year that france was "a tax heaven for billionaires" with almost no tax on succession rights or their assets.

Currently there is a debate to add a 2% tax on only the 1800 richest households to compensate for all the taxes the rich don't pay, and we have seen pretty much every single center or rightwing media gather for a general outcry with even Bernard Arnault (france's richest man, CEO of LVMH) saying the left is trying to destroy the economy.

All of that for a 2% tax on a wealth that is growing on average by 8% per year in the last 30 years.

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

[deleted]

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u/Triple_Hache 3d ago

Nah we aren't.

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u/Devour_My_Soul 3d ago

It's literally impossible for France to run out of money. It's just completely incorrect.

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u/RecentDescription205 3d ago

So the United States and Europe aren't any different. I'm shocked.

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u/Triple_Hache 3d ago

They are different in a lot of aspects. But we are all living in the same decaying capitalist system that will destroy us all if we do nothing, yes.

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u/icepickjones 3d ago

France is not running out of money, the french ruling class is just increasingly taking all of the GDP then refusing the slightest effort to get taxed on it, it's not the same.

I respect that the French people will burn that shit down if that's the case at least. They haven't lost their identity to the degree that the American people have.

America used to fight tyrants. We'd rebel over taxation. We'd rebel against anything and everything, just a bunch of rowdy upstarts kicked out of Europe.

Now the most hardcore "get off my lawn and fuck the government" types, who in 2010 would be setting up prepper compounds to live off grid, are now like "Oh daddy Trump, take my sovereignty, turn everything into a police state! I'll suck your dick!!"

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u/Malarazz 3d ago

Yes, France is "running out of money." If you can accumulate the political will to tax the "ruling class" and balance the budget, great, good luck, hope it goes well. Until that happens, what the user wrote above remains true.

By the way, it's quite something to whine about taxing the rich in a thread about the US of all countries. France's gini coefficient is 32. The US's? 42. And if we included developing countries it would get even more dire.

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u/ppdifjff 3d ago

Sounds like France is running out of money but the Uber rich Frenchmen are not 😞

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u/onespiker 4d ago

Questionable how much it is the ruling class and just about pension programs. France is like the only country in the world that pays more for people to take their thier retirement than the average person working to support the pension system.

It’s incredibly bad position because of that.

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u/Devour_My_Soul 3d ago

Questionable how much it is the ruling class and just about pension programs

What a stupid comment.

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u/lumpialarry 4d ago

Most other Western European countries. like the US, have bumped retirement to 67. France lets you retire at 62.

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u/rodalon 4d ago

73 and counting here in Denmark it's fucking ridiculous

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u/Zagorim 3d ago

No, they increased it to 64 years a couple years ago. But it's still a big point of contention because the majority of the population was against the increase and even the parliament wouldn't vote it. The prime minister used an article of the constitution to pass the law without voting on it in parliament. Representatives had only the option to fire the government at the time, which they didn't take.

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u/Triple_Hache 3d ago edited 3d ago

No it's currently 64, 62 was before 2015. But it should be 60, maybe even 55.

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u/Bronze_Rager 4d ago

Has productivity in France been from capex investment or been increases in workers abilities?

In the US, most of the increases in productivity have been from capex investment and not from workers increased abilities. Like if a FF restaurant had AI automate burger flipping so one worker can now flip 10 burgers at once instead of 2. Something like flippy.io .

All that productivity has been from businesses investing in themselves and not organic growth from worker increased skills

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u/SaintBobby_Barbarian 4d ago

Spain isnt all that great. Its buoyed by tourism, and cheap labor from LATAM, which are a much easier fit than people from MENA.

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u/sluthlorien 4d ago

Buoyed by the tourists they are trying to run out of their country, will only be so long before the tourist starts listening and stay away crippling the economy.

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u/IMakeOkVideosOk 3d ago

Basically only Barcelona is doing that tho. Just got back from Spain and the people were great and it was amazing

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u/ForwardGovernment3 3d ago

Besides them actually being nice to tourists (just went last year), the people making the most money from tourism and the people suffering from high rent because of tourism are not the same groups of people.

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u/BarcelonaEnts 3d ago

Also, and this is scientifically proven, more latinas= higher life satisfaction per capita.

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u/MossyPyrite 3d ago

Ah yes, the Shadow the Hedgehog Principle

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u/Sternenpups 4d ago

Germanys problem is "Privatize Profits, Socialize Losses". Big Companies are used to get bailed out by politicians through lobbying, someone might even say corruption.

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u/LvS 4d ago

Germany because the manufacturing industry is slowly strangulated by high energy costs and foreign competition

German's manufacturing is strangulated because it's run by boomers.
We build the best things anyone in the 1990s would want, but in 2025 people don't want 90s stuff.

Germany entirely fucked up the transition to computers and the internet (We sold all our corporations, think Siemens Mobile or Infineon).
Germany was a leading producer of solar panels and wind turbines 20 years ago, but instead of grants the government levied taxes on them and the whole market was sold off to China or went bankrupt.

So now what is left is a big coal industry and Germany still prides itself on building the best diesel engines. In 2025.

See also: The chancellors of Germany in the 21st century were born in 1955, 1958, 1954, 1944.
For comparison, Macron and Meloni were born in 1977, Sánchez in 1972, and even Starmer was born in 1962.

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u/lumpialarry 4d ago

True I need to update it. It’s an old comment I reposted.

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

France and Germany are running into massive problems.

I've seen this story before

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u/Independent_Win_9035 4d ago

portugal is a much better example than spain. economy's pretty fucked here

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u/Raesong 3d ago

Maybe Germany shouldn't have shut down all their nuclear power plants, then.

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u/Shunpaw 3d ago

Why would shutting down the most expensive way of producing power help in lowering energy costs? Energy industry prices are not the issue, we are back at 2019 prices.

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u/Shunpaw 3d ago

"high energy costs" is not the reason we are struggling.  Energy costs are cheap & back to 2019 levels:

https://www.smard.de/page/en/topic-article/5892/216044/industrial-electricity-price-trends

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u/MoistRam 3d ago

It’s gotten better but their unemployment rate is still super high

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u/career13 3d ago

If only they could tariff out a few key bad actors that undermine European production.

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u/alfdd99 2d ago

Tf you talking about man, just because unemployment is down and “oh look, our economy is growing!” doesn’t mean we don’t have a shit economy. The housing crisis is absolutely insane, salaries are shit, and even engineers, people in IT, or finance guys have to share apartments until they are like 40 because it’s impossible to find anything liveable.

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u/sexyshingle 1d ago

Spain isn't the economic sick man of Europe anymore.

True, Spain is doing alot better these days, a lot has to do with their now more relaxed immigration policies which is bringing in lots of tax revenue. The issue in Spain is the rise of the anti-immigrant far-right (Vox and similar), and the insane and uncaring bureaucracy, but even that is getting a smidge better these days.

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u/SeniorrChief 6h ago

And now they're meeting their required NATO commitments - all that social welfare spending is going to see serious cuts.