Capo del FMI: lo stile di vita europeo è a rischio se la produttività non è aumentata
https://www.euronews.com/business/2025/06/19/imf-chief-european-lifestyle-is-at-risk-if-productivity-isnt-boosted
di TLakes
Capo del FMI: lo stile di vita europeo è a rischio se la produttività non è aumentata
https://www.euronews.com/business/2025/06/19/imf-chief-european-lifestyle-is-at-risk-if-productivity-isnt-boosted
di TLakes
27 commenti
“In Europe we enjoy being a lifestyle superpower. Unless we become more productive we may lose this advantage.”
Productivity boost means you work longer hours for smaller pay.
I’m pretty certain digitalisation has had a profound effect on the decreasing productivity growth in major western economies and especially Europe. It is hailed as “the way to go” to increase what one can do per worked hour, but in reality email, slack, teams, ai…are still mainly distractions and the new ERP/data systems allow for much more administration, which of course needs to be input/collected.
The whole story that digital tools will increase productivity has a direct conflict with human psychology and behaviour. That I am posting this on reddit during my work hours is a prime example.
Yeah, right.
It’s not the shareholders, owners and CEOs funneling all the profits away from businesses or the rampant government corruption.
It’s productivity that’s the problem. Definitely.
European lifestyle? What lifestyle are they talking about exactly? In Portugal the salaries are a joke. Very few jobs, people living with their parents until they’re in their 30s. One of the worse housing markets in Europe, public services that are an absolute joke. “In Europe we enjoy being a lifestyle superpower” – hilarious. For millions of Europeans (not only in Portugal), headlines like these make absolutely no sense.
Productivity per person has to increase more due fewer people entering the workforce. A strategy for western countries should have been to increase fertility 20 years ago
Damn someone should tell the CEOs to start working more.
The system in Europe doesn’t work anymore, and people do not want to adapt to the new realities. Manufacturing is the most obvious example, we need more automation. How can we expect to compete with China, which have super modern automated factories. They produce far more than we with less workers per factory. Not counting that their labor force and energy is also cheaper. China has dark factories in some sectors, which operate 24/7 in the dark without humans. So of course their productivity per worker is far superior.
We can’t just continue the way we have always done things. People need to accept that they will have to loose their job, retrain for other jobs.
Just looking at the comments here shows people live in the past and do not understand how the world operates and how antiquated our systems are compared to other places in the world. If they can’t adapt our future isn’t bright, that is what the IMF is saying, but people here think they know better than these experts.
Things will change if we want it or not, if we adapt we can secure a more or less bright future, otherwise we will stagnate and the rest of the world will continue to outinnovate us, and in 20 years we will look like africa in relation to China and the US.
They are right. White collar jobs in Europe are a joke. If people actually did their jobs in a decent way and didn’t spend much of their time in pointless meetings then we could do with half the people. White collar work culture here is sick. Especially in government. So many outdated rules and tech too (fax?) that slow down productivity. We went from a culture where the goal was to create value to a culture where the goal is to get a cushy office job until you retire. Only people who can fix this is the government but they won’t cus it will be way too unpopular. It will self correct eventually and it will be ugly
Neverending growth is the root of this.
Maybe she should start with talking about reasonable growth targets and profits with the corporations first?
Workers or productivity ain’t the problem lady.
European lifestyle?
We’re talking about what exactly?
The few well paid white collar jobs in a few countries in Europe that actually have decent wages?
Come to Eastern Europe where the median salary is less then 1000€/month and tell the millions of people living and working here about this European lifestyle.
You mean lifestyle of the rich. Work peasents! Please?!
I’m convinced that people in this sub are being intentionally obtuse when it comes to anything relating to econ.
It’s pretty common knowledge at this point that several, if not most European nations are having issues bringing in enough money to fund everything that the population expects/wants. The inability for businesses to easily scale beyond the borders of their home country due to things like incomplete single market and very different regulatory situations across countries is costing the continent tons of jobs, sovereignity, tax revenue and has resulted in a significant brain drain.
Increasing productivity doesn’t necessitate hiking work hours while reducing pay, in fact you could somewhat make the point that doing those things would be antithetical to the goal.
The way to increase productivity in Europe would be to standardize laws to the greatest extent possible, create a single market that makes it easier to get investment from all over the continent and to scale businesses and utilize available technology to speed up and automate the things that we can in order to free up people to do things that we can’t automate and to develop new things.
Fuck IMF
stfu my friend
Nothing some bureaucracy cant change am i right ?
Yes. the poor need to be more productive so the rich can have their lifestyle.
Damn, everybody talks about the headline but barely anyone talks about the content of the article at all. There were no mentions of increasing work hours to increase productivity at all, and instead, the IMF suggests that the EU should try “lowering regulatory fragmentation, supporting labour mobility, facilitating cross-border banking mergers, integrating the energy market, and making progress on the capital markets union (CMU)”.
Partly true, but every country has glaring issues on the horizon.. so i guess we all go to shit.. non the least, global warming is getting crazy.. the oceans are dropping in ph making them acidic.. mannnn we got 99 problem..but not buying a switch 2 ,is not one of them..
Welcome to neoliberalism where you work 16+hours, barely affording a cucumber, tomato sandwhich.
How convenient that the same guy that’s so worried about the welfare of europes lifestyle is also the same one who’s gonna profit from all the loans Europe will take out to increase the productivity! What a nice guy
70 Years Retirement Age!!! They want us to be slaves!!!
Imagine saying such stuff, while we’re in the boom of AI growth and automation and everyone being scared of losing their job to AI.
We shouldn’t have let US tech take over EU the way it did, missed out on the opportunity of a century, could have developed our own EU version and created a massive industry helping EU citizens have well paying jobs – preventing the death of middle class.
The problem in Europe is that the single market exists more in theory then in reality.
Europe remains dozens of disconnected economies. I’m a mechanical engineer from Ireland, if I want to find a job in Ireland I can get dozens of interviews. If I want to do the same on the continent all I get is crickets.
Fuck me, I’ve been saying this for 25 years. It’s been obvious it’s over for us and we need to accept managed decline. Why are people only realising this now?
He’s not wrong, but not because of anything specific to Europe – it is just basic economics that productivity is the primary controlling factor for living standards.
[EPI.org](https://www.epi.org/publication/webfeatures_snapshots_archive_03222000/)
> The level of productivity is the single most important determinant of a country’s standard of living, with faster productivity growth leading to an increasingly better standard of living.
[IMF](https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2024/09/04/sustained-economic-growth-hinges-on-productivity-gains-as-populations-age)
> Productivity is a foundation of prosperity. The only way a country can raise its standard of living sustainably is to produce more with existing or fewer resources. You cannot do that without improving productivity. It’s that simple.
[World Bank](https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/psd/productivity-prosperity-long-run-it-almost-everything)
> *“Productivity isn’t everything, but, in the long run, it is almost everything. A country’s ability to improve its standard of living over time depends almost entirely on its ability to raise its output per worker.”*
— Paul Krugman, Professor of Economics and International Affairs Emeritus at Princeton University and a columnist for The New York Times
> Paul Krugman’s conclusion about the importance of productivity is widely shared among economists.