> This is simply not true. There is freedom of movement for workers which means it's easy to recruit top talent across the continent. Remote work is also much simplified. There's no friction moving goods and company assets across borders.

There is absolute friction for people to even move across the borders. I moved to Sweden a few years ago and it took 8 months before I was fully part of the system. Now I am looking to move to Norway, and it's going to be the same ordeal.

There are countries where you can just show up with your bags and start living there but it doesn't apply to all of them.

So good luck recruiting talent, when the talent has to jump through hoops to get an ID card or open a bank account or even rent an apartment.

> The regulatory environment is significantly unified under the EU so there are few regulatory risks for companies growing outside their country within the region. Every EU company also has access to the entire continent's consumer base – 450 million residents, which is 50% more than the US.

It's not about regulatory risk but about overheads. The rules for selling cross border are vague and opaque and you need a PHD just to make sure that you comply with all the regulations or a good lawyer.

Yes, in theory you can reach 450M customers, in practice much less so.

> I just don't think we think about the US in the EU as much as you think.

Maybe you don't but I can assure you that our leaders think of the US for the simple reason that the EU is not in position of strength at the moment.

Case and point, the EU leadership is scrambling to avoid Trump starting a trade war with the EU while also trying to placate China who is also starting to show it's strength.

If we were in a position of strength, things would be different but the EU simply does not have the muscle to put up a fight.

The EU has stopped investing it's its armies and can barely help Ukraine. It has some tech companies but an order of magnitude less than the US. It is currently losing the space race against the US and China and it obliterated it's industrial base.

All of this is going to come back to haunt us at some point and not in a good way.

> Spotify, Revolut, Klarna, Bolt Mobility, Wise, N26,

You have to realize that most of the businesses you mentioned are completely dependent on American infrastructure. Where do you think that Klarna et al are deploying their applications? On Hetzner? No on AWS or GCP or Azure.

How do you get access to those applications? Through the app store or Google play which both belong to American companies.

Who is driving the innovation in AI , self driving cars, robotics? No the EU.

> You are right in the sense that the European way of life is very different from the US way of life and we don't care that much for the economy. Yet Europe is still home to some of the largest stock markets in the world including LSE, Euronext, FSE, SIX Swiss, etc. We just don't value it as highly as other aspects in life – there is a strong sentiment of rejection of the rat race, growth of shareholder value at all costs, and other such American things in Europe.

You don't care about the economy until your government services start shutting down because the economy is in the dumpster due to 20 years of under-investments and over taxation.

If productivity does not go up, if people don't care as you said then the outcome is stagnation and a decline of quality of life.

The services you rely on are paid for by the taxes raised on the companies of Europe. Who is going to fund the European lifestyle when companies decide to leave the EU taking their profits and taxes elsewhere because the EU is smothering them with rules and regulations?