Salary Averages in the E.U. and U.S.

It can be misleading, even illusory, to cite an average statistic on the entire E.U. and U.S. when their respective member-states differ significantly in their own averages. To be sure, overall averages, such as pertain to an empire-scale union of states covering many subunits are useful in comparison with the overall average of another comparable union. Additionally, in cases in which the state averages do not differ much, the overall average for all of the states aggregated is not misleading. Abstractly, an average of numbers that ranges from 50 to 50,000 is less reflective of the facts on the ground than is an average of numbers that ranges from 50 to 60 because neither of these outliers is much different than, say, an average of 55. In contrast, especially if most of the data from 50 to 50,000 clusters around these poles, then to say that an average of 23,000 represents something actual is dubious and even misleading. It is also misleading to compare the average pertaining to one empire-scale union of states with the average of a state in another such union. Such a category mistake regarding scale and polity-types and levels is commonly made in comparing and contrasting the E.U. and U.S. In an effort to rectify the recurrent cognitive-ideological lapses bearing on trans-Atlantic comparisons and contrasts, a proper comparison of salary averages can serve as an illustration of how to compare “apples with apples, and oranges with oranges” in institutional political analysis that is comparative in application.

As for the E.U., Eurostat reported that in 2023, “the average annual full-time adjusted salary per employee ranged from €13,503 [$14,853] in Bulgaria to €81,064 [$89,170] in Luxembourg, with the EU average standing at €37,863 [$41,649].”[1] I submit that the difference of the state averages from high to low justifies using the state averages rather than citing the E.U. average except for comparing the E.U. to other empire-scale polities, such as the U.S., India, and China. As for the U.S., the average annual salary per employee ranged from $45,180 (€41,073) in Mississippi to $76,600 (€69,636) in Massachusetts, with the US average standing at was $59,384 (€53,986). Again, the difference of the state averages from high to low justifies using the state averages, except in comparing the U.S. as a whole to the E.U. as a whole. The U.S.’s $59,384 (€53,986) average is higher than the E.U.’s €37,863 ($41,649). To be sure, comparing union-to-union has its drawbacks, for the overall conclusion that salaries were on average higher in the U.S. than in the E.U. in 2023 masks the fact that Luxembourg’s average of €81,064 [$89,170] is higher than the average of $76,600 (€69,636) in Massachusetts.

I submit that the intellectual beauty in this sterling symmetry is essentially that of logic absent any distortive ideology that would push someone into comparing the average of a state in one union with another union overall. As an example of an illogical category mistake, making a list of averages on salaries per worker by listing Luxembourg as number 1 and the U.S. as #6 after Austria would omit the averages of U.S. states such as New York, California, and New Jersey whose 2023 averages are higher than those of Denmark, Ireland, Belgium, and Austria. If member-states are to be included, the states from both the E.U. and U.S. must be included to avoid a misleading and distortive category mistake. Similarly, if the U.S. average is included, so too must be that of the E.U., whether or not the state averages are included.

Having demonstrated how the common category mistakes regarding trans-Atlantic political and economic comparisons can be rectified logically, I am under no illusion that such pristine logic will gain any traction, given the sheer intractability of the Euroskeptic, or state’s rights, ideology in Europe even into the 2020s in spite of state-nationalism having spawned two long wars that went global in the preceding century. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn masterfully explains why scientific revolutions as paradigm changes are typically resisted so much by scientists who are entrenched in the paradigm enjoying the inertia of the status quo. Both personal interests and emotional as well as intellectual investment in an existing paradigm play a role in elongating the existing paradigm’s life-span artificially. So too, clutching onto political and economic comparisons between a state in one empire-scale union of states and another such union had become more ideological than based in fact by 2024, with denial of logic being just one of the implicit casualties. Old Kant must be rolling in his grave.

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1. Servet Yanatma, “Average Salary Rankings in Europe: Which Countries Pay the Highest,” Euronews.com, December 24, 2024. I added the dollar equivalents using the December 30, 2023 euro/dollar exchange rate of 1.1. The highest rate in 2023 was 1.12 and the lowest was 1.05.

E.U. Trade Negotiations with a Former State: The Paradigm of Britain

The paradigm used by a former state can undermine any negotiations between it and a federal government. Even the reference to a federal government, if contrary to such a paradigm, can subtly undercut relations. The typical focus on the matters to be negotiated, such as new trade relations, easily miss the negative impact of a biased paradigm that is more based in Euroskeptic states’ rights (i.e., anti-federalism) that on the actual relation being between a former state and the European Union.

In 1964, even before the E.U. came into effect in 1993, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) handed down a landmark decision in Costa v. ENEL declaring E.U. law superior over state law, and the ECJ supreme in interpreting E.U. law, including its basic law (which acts as a constitution). The E.U. saw the federal-level sovereignty expand into two “pillars” besides the renamed EEC. Even so, while in office as prime minister of the British state, David Cameron referred to the E.U. federal system as instead one of the networks to which Britain happens to belong. A network, such as NATO, does not hold any sovereignty. A network is not a federal system, and yet the E.U. is a federal system of dual sovereignty (i.e., held both by the state governments and the federal government, or “institutions”). Nor is a “bloc” a federal system, and yet even after secession British government officials (and their media) steadfastly used the loose term in spite of the fact that the E.U. covers more than trade and even economic policy and has legislative, executive, and judicial branches, as is typical for a government. Even remaining states have perpetuated the misleading term. Deutsche Welle, based in the state of Germany, notes in one article that without a trade deal, “the UK could face a so-called cliff-edge scenario which would effectively cut trade with the bloc.”[1] Cambridge Dictionary defines bloc as “a group of countries or people that have similar political interests.” Incredibly, even though the E.U. even at its inception included two non-economic “pillars,” the dictionary lists as one example, “The European Union is a powerful trading/trade bloc.” So too, were the former Eastern/Communist bloc countries even though they had not formed a federal government and they were not even republics (i.e., states) in the former U.S.S.R.

So the Truman Doctrine of the U.S., which pledged that the U.S. would help any country in the Americas resist the encroachments of communism rendered all the countries in the Americas a bloc due to the common political interest. So too, Western European countries constituted a bloc in having a shared political interest opposing the communist bloc in Eastern Europe (as well as the U.S.S.R.).  To apply the term bloc to a federal system undermines it because the term reduces it (of any sovereignty) into a mere common political interest.

Even just in thinking of the E.U. as a bloc, the British trade negotiators in 2020 were understating the status of the political union and ignoring its portion of sovereignty over its remaining states and in relations with governments around the world, including that of the UK. Even while it was an E.U. state, the UK government bristled at the reality that the federal institutions held some sovereignty in the federal system (the states holding the rest, as is the case in the U.S.)—yes, as in the case of the United States. Perhaps this comparison is precisely why the British government has intractably held onto the fiction that the E.U. is a mere bloc rather than a federal system with, yes, a federal government.

In the Deutsche Welle article, Michael Clauss, an official with the German government, warns that it is not possible for Britain to have “full sovereignty and at the same time full access to the EU’s internal market” in a trade deal with the European Union.[2] I submit that as a state, the UK wanted just that, and thus butted heads with the political/governmental reality that E.U. states were semi-sovereign as they had ceded some governmental sovereignty to the federal governmental institutions (i.e., government). Even in refusing to refer to a federal government, using institutions instead, officials of state governments generally have tried to deny that the E.U.’s executive, legislative, and judicial branches together constitute a government, as if basic law had not been established and judicially interpreted by the E.U.’s highest court. No federal government, no federal governmental sovereignty. Of course, even a collection of institutions at the E.U. level could have sovereignty; even the voting system of qualified majority voting means that a state government could find itself having to implement an E.U. directive.  

The refusal to admit that the E.U. has some governmental sovereignty even in carrying on trade negotiations has left it open for Euroskeptics to refer to the E.U. as an international organization akin to NATO or the UN, neither of which have a government or sovereignty. The British government officials can say that the former state can enjoy full sovereignty yet still have full trading benefits. 

Yet in spite of the qualitative differences between the UK and international organizations, the world, including former and current E.U. states, accepted the convenient analogy of “Brexit” to a divorce. The Deutsche Welle article, for example, observes, “Brexit supporters in the UK have grown frustrated with delays that have been plaguing the divorce proceedings since the Brexit referendum in June 2016.”[3] A divorce implies to commensurate parties, but it breaches logic to say that a state in a federal system is equivalent to the whole instead of the other parts thereof. Don’t tell Kant, but ideology can warp even logic and facts of reason. 

Does secession render a state equivalent to a union of states? 

We are supposed to believe that an international organization without its own sovereignty and a nation-state got a divorce, and, furthermore, that the nation-state can nonetheless expect to continue to get trading benefits that members get. A sovereign government can expect to get such results in negotiating with a mere international organization, and yet the divorce analogy implies that the two parties are equivalent (even though a state is not equivalent to a union of such states, or even former states). That the media in Europe and elsewhere (e.g., The New York Times) have allowed themselves to be manipulated by such twisted, self-serving ideological “logic,” which belies the strength of the E.U., suggests that the stamp of officialdom can be without a viable foundation.

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1. “Germany Urges UK to Be ‘More Realistic’ on Brexit,” DW.com, June 4, 2020 (accessed same day).

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.