The WSJ has an article today reporting on how Europe appears to be outpacing the U.S. in economic growth at present. Most of the article is devoted to the positive aspects of the European economy, but at the very end the article reports the standard line about the need for deregulating the European economy. It tells readers that the U.S. economy has an underlying growth rate of approximately 3 percent, while the underlying growth rate in Europe is just 2 percent.
Well some readers may have noticed that this gap also corresponds to the difference in population and potential labor force growth (@ 1 percent in the U.S. and 0 in Europe). This means that the underlying rate of per capita GDP growth in the two regions in approximately the same. Economists usually look to per capita GDP as most basic measure of economic well-being, not simply GDP.
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