You're conflating productivity and wealth, and wealth and happiness. These are, you'll forgive me for saying - very American fallacies. The productivity of a country says little to nothing about it's levels of relative and absolute poverty, social inequality, and capacity for social reproduction. Compare say Berlin - an historically 'depressed' city with a smaller economy than most German cities, with any first tier US cities. Free public kitas (similar to kindergarten), decent holiday leave, a significant amount of paid maternity / paternity leave, a large number of parks, excellent public transport, subsidised health care and (until very recently) affordable housing, make raising a family on a moderate wage possible. The overall potential for happiness and observable comfort and stress levels of the population are measurably different from a comparably sized American city where raising a family or living a normal adult life are compromised for a large percentage of the population by the absence of all or most of these things.
> Any society that opts out of seeking labor productivity will eventually see their wealth, living standards, and ultimately happiness decline. There is no way out of that trap.
I'd argue the reverse - any society that privileges productivity over social reproduction and liveable cities will never be able to tame violent crime, achieve real social mobility or provide a safe and enriching environment for a majority of its citizenry.
Itβs real easy to say this right now, because the EU has only lagged its peers in productivity for only the last decade β- thus the compounding effects of lagging productivity are not yet evident. However several more decades of lagging productivity will eventually result in European living standards being several decades behind their peers.
If the EU thinks that low labor productivity is the path to happiness, going down that path is their prerogative, but long term that path will only lead to ruin. Lagging productivity has never in human history lead to civilizational success. Europe will be outcompeted and eventually dominated by its more productive peers.
Genuinely, look at the US in the same time period. The quality of life for most people across a a range of measures is enormously worse. Hours worked, health outcomes, housing security etc. Productivity - like GDP, is enormously more relevant to capitalist investment classes than normal people. A teacher, working in a US city any time between say 1900 and 1980 could save and buy a house, get married, have children - likely on a single salary. Towards the latter half of that period, they could also afford a car, pay for their children's university education, take annual holidays etc. Is that true today? Is it true in most cities of a nurse, a factory worker, a service economy worker? You're confusing the metric with the outcome. The metric is designed to measure only what is relevant to the most wealth, privileged people in society.
> Any society that opts out of seeking labor productivity will eventually see their wealth, living standards, and ultimately happiness decline. There is no way out of that trap.
I'd argue the reverse - any society that privileges productivity over social reproduction and liveable cities will never be able to tame violent crime, achieve real social mobility or provide a safe and enriching environment for a majority of its citizenry.