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Comment by whiplash451 | Hacker News Reader

Let’s fix the root cause instead of leaning in to a subpar EU investment funnel.

EU has billions to invest in AI. I don’t buy that EU has “much less money than the US”.

Though both areas are very rich, there’s a lot less total wealth in the EU than in the US. Due to taxes, this is especially true for rich Europeans vs rich Americans.

In the below report, it looks like Europe with it’s much larger population clocks in at a total wealth of 110T, while the USA + Canada has 150T. That’s 600k per adult in N.A. vs 200k per adult in Europe.

More specifically, it looks like 1%ers in the US are worth USD 7m, but in Europe the 1%ers are worth USD 1.5m.

I’m not denigrating Europe or the European way, just pointing out differences in the capital environment.

[page 142, 144 of https://www.ubs.com/global/en/family-office-uhnw/reports/glo...]

The EU doesn't invest, the EU provides subsidies with many strings attached. One of the strings usually is "can't be used to pay shareholders" (as in wages, not just dividends). Also, the subsidies are usually provided after the fact (e.g. a project is completed) and you need a loan to actually do the project. That's a risk, and banks don't like providing loans to small companies without predictable cashflow; they would do it only if a shareholder with enough assets personally underwrites it - another huge risk, now a startup can destroy your whole life.

If you meant the investors of EU - please show me where you got the data, because the official EU data suggest otherwise. People simply aren't that rich around here, which is a downstream effect of the much slower, smaller economy.

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