The $86 trillion world economy – in one chart from World Economic Forum

A notable change in the world over the last ten years is that working, as a mostly-monolingual American in Europe without being an expert in a local language, is suddenly possible.

When I moved to Paris in 2009, the possibilities as I understood them were (a) start my own online business and become a quasi-citizen of nowhere (b) don't work (c) do both and move home within six months.

Today I have three American friends/acquaintances who work at multi-national tech companies in Amsterdam and Munich.

I was in Copenhagen last week and met some Americans in a coffee shop who worked at Google. No Danish, other than hello and thank you. No worries about work permits or immigration. All handled. It's an amazing new privilege that I, greedily, would love to experience at least once in my life if/when circumstances support it.

This chart confirms something that can be sensed when traveling in the EU and having travelled in the EU for 20 years now: that the EU together is nearly the size of the US economically, and that future-state seems more likely to be a federation of states and less these standalone nations that made up Europe 20 years ago.