[HN Gopher] The deindustrialization of Germany
___________________________________________________________________
The deindustrialization of Germany
Author : flashfaffe2
Score : 70 points
Date : 2023-07-14 17:02 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.politico.eu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.politico.eu)
| aktenlage wrote:
| Keep in mind that politico is a subsidiary of Axel Springer,
| which is largely controlled by a man that has recently been
| exposed to have actively ordered chief editors write in support
| of the party of economic liberalism (FDP) before the last
| election in Germany. I.e. it is entirely possible that this
| article is also politically motivated.
| alephnerd wrote:
| I keep seeing people saying this about Politico and it's total
| FUD. I have friends who work there and it's pretty firewalled
| from Axel Springer. This conspiracy theory for the Politico
| portion seems to have started in r/Europe and r/WorldNews a
| couple months ago and kept getting repeated since.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| If you are reading any news site about it - it's political to
| someone.
| whinvik wrote:
| > Nearly 20 years ago, Germany overcame its reputation as the
| "sick man of Europe" with a package of ambitious labor market
| reforms
|
| Does anyone know what those were?
| Dunedan wrote:
| That's a reference to the so-called "Agenda 2010":
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_2010
| nieksand wrote:
| https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2015/wp15162.pdf
|
| "In 2003-05, Germany undertook extensive labor market reforms
| which were followed by a large and persistent decline in
| unemployment. Key elements of the reforms were a drastic cut in
| benefits for the long-term unemployed and tighter job search
| and acceptance obligations."
| ahartmetz wrote:
| Also working poor.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| The Hartz reforms are fairly famous, yes. It's mostly social
| dumping. Forced contraction of actual wages through reform of
| the benefits plans.
|
| It's important to note that they are overall poor reforms and
| should have been nullified by the German money value shifting
| due to the knock off effect on the saving rate. This didn't
| happen because they were put in place at the same time as the
| Euro and the overall imbalance in the union allowed Germany to
| keep an undervalued currency. In effect, Germany robbed all the
| poorer members of the union to prop up its own economy
| something it has kept doing since.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| > In effect, Germany robbed all the poorer members of the
| union to prop up its own economy something it has kept doing
| since.
|
| Those who like to bully the poorer members of the Union on
| the grounds that they're being bankrolled by the the
| wealthier states would be wise to take note of this, and take
| a more intelligent and informed view of EU "subsidies". The
| idea that the wealthier member states are showering these
| countries with funds out of the disinterested goodness of
| their hearts is not only ignorant of how these cash flows
| actually work in the grander scheme of the movement of money,
| but also preposterously naive.
|
| The power balance is shifting in Europe against this crypto-
| germanocentrism, however.
| imtringued wrote:
| This sentiment is so common in Germany. Everyone blames the
| European "south" for Germany's problems as if Germany was
| some sort of hero doing all the work.
|
| The Greek economic crisis is a classic example. German
| banks mess up when they lend too much money to Greece,
| Germany does a bailout for "Greece", the money actually
| goes back to German banks. Then people have this perception
| as if they somehow paid for all the social services bought
| with the borrowed money. No, Greece is still in debt. You
| might complain about forgone interest but that is on the
| lender, who is not doing his job properly.
| pohuing wrote:
| Let's not absolve Greece of fault. They massively lied on
| their data to join the euro with a financial situation
| that was obviously not going to work in the long run. No
| way would Greece have gotten as much money in the 00s had
| they published their real data.
|
| That said, the German opinion on Greece was(is?) pretty
| fucked yeah. Especially if you look at how often we
| ignore the situation for the average Greek in these
| discussions. A shitload of medically necessary operations
| were cancelled in the downsizing of the Greek state, even
| the democratic nature of the state itself was seized by
| the troika.
| adasdasdas wrote:
| Why are you only talking about the lender's fault when it
| comes to bad loans.
| rfrey wrote:
| Because assessing and assuming risk is literally their
| entire reason to exist.
| adasdasdas wrote:
| Why doesn't the borrower assume responsibility for taking
| risky loans?
| depr wrote:
| Loan me 100k and find out
| shakow wrote:
| Because that's literally the job of the lenders.
| choeger wrote:
| It's important to note the other side of the medal:
| Today's inflation is to a large degree caused by the
| expansionist money policy that was necessary to prevent a
| Greece financial collapse (which would have undermined
| the Euro as a whole). Greece financial problems were, at
| least to a significant degree, caused by debt-financed
| social expenses that are unheard of in Germany. So the
| conclusion that German workers are financing Greek's
| early retirements is not completely bullocks.
|
| It's very important to understand that Greek's government
| also played the "Germany is at fault" or "Germany has to
| pay" card very effectively, when Germany's government
| played the "Lazy Greeks" card to justify their own fiscal
| policy.
| patmorgan23 wrote:
| And Greece never really got a bail out, all they were
| ever offered were just bigger and bigger loans. (with
| austerity measures attached that pushed down demand, when
| lowered revenues, that made it harder to pay the loans)
| oezi wrote:
| Why should the reforms be nullified by a change in saving
| rates?
|
| Hartz IV reforms pushed unemployed people back to work by
| reducing long term unemployment benefits to 400 EUR + rent.
| This certainly reduced purchasing power first (by reducing
| available money) but also quickly freed up social spending as
| employment rates soared.
| imtringued wrote:
| The strategy Germany is following is to cut unit labor costs
| below Greece aka Germany is competing on price with Eastern
| European countries. This may get you the "Exportweltmeister"
| trophy but is is just that, a trophy. It doesn't actually
| benefit you that much.
| fwungy wrote:
| It's all so tiresome.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| And obviously the reason is the lack of labour reform and not the
| billions in handouts currently given by the US and China which
| the EU refuses to match because of its brain dead insistence on
| undistorted markets and fiscal rigour. Ah Politico, such well
| researched and reasonable journalism, it warms my heart...
| sauercrowd wrote:
| what are you referring to with "billions of handouts"?
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| The Inflation Reduction Act in the USA and the equivalent
| measures which have been taken in China but don't have a
| catchy name. Both countries are currently giving subsidies to
| companies at an unprecedented rate.
| api wrote:
| There used to be a lot of opposition to these kinds of
| subsidies in the US until China started absolutely kicking
| America's ass because they subsidize their industries.
|
| Private enterprise really can't compete with governments,
| and even less so against governments with their own
| sovereign currencies and the ability to subsidize forever.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Is this the same Germany that last I know allowed bribes and
| kickbacks on international sales to be tax deductible? We lost
| so many contracts because the things the Germans did were
| illegal for a USA company.
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/1995-08-06/germany-w...
|
| I have the typical American of German descent hate for Germany
| because they threw my family away but now are open for everyone
| else to come live there (making it a huge 'fuck you and your
| family specifically love Germany'), but also how truly horrible
| they behave when it comes to business.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| Why aren't other EU countries facing the same problems? Also,
| from the article:
|
| > BASF opened a plant near Dresden that makes cathode materials
| for electric-car batteries just two weeks ago and has pledged
| to keep investing in its home market. To secure such
| commitments, however, local and federal governments have been
| forced to offer generous incentives. BASF will receive EUR175
| million in government support for its new battery operation,
| for example.
|
| > Similarly, in June, the U.S. chipmaker Intel secured an eye-
| watering EUR10 billion subsidy for a massive new factory in the
| eastern city of Magdeburg. That translates into EUR3.3 million
| for each of the 3,000 jobs the company has pledged to create.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| > because its brain dead insistence on undistorted markets and
| fiscal rigour
|
| The issue lies in the fact that the EU is comprised of numerous
| countries within a single market. When one nation begins to
| subsidize a company or an entire sector, the other nations are
| left powerless, merely watching their own companies struggle to
| compete against those bolstered by government subsidies. It
| becomes a game of pouring government money down the drain and
| destroying any semblance of free market mechanisms.
| jcfrei wrote:
| The US is attracting so many companies currently _because_
| they are giving out the largest government subsidies. It 's
| nice that you're advocating for more free markets but
| governments are moving in another direction. And either a
| country can match those subsidies or they will see their
| industry relocate to another one.
| Atropos wrote:
| You should check out how EU state aid laws work. This is
| exactly the issue they are addressing and it is not true that
| we have seen a significant "subsidy race" between different
| EU countries in the recent past.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Nothing about European markets is undistorted. The most
| distorted of all is the view that Europe is declining out of
| some moral stance. The classic example is how California and
| the US had to go clean up Volkswagen because local regulatory
| authorities weren't up to snuff.
| javajosh wrote:
| In addition to this general malaise, the EU Cyber Resilience Act
| (CRA) is going to have a big, negative impact on all of the EU,
| especially Germany, and especially the software industry. The CRA
| itself is insane, requiring, for example, that conforming
| software phone-home. Which is, of course, the opposite of what we
| should be pushing for. Note that something similar is probably
| coming to the US in the next few years.
|
| I learned about this today from Eclipse Foundation executive
| director Mike Milinkovich's excellent video/tutorial/warning on
| the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmsM5_5QO5A
| Vuizur wrote:
| When you look at open source AI, for example, EU laws are a
| huge problem: Not only the act you mentioned, but also GDPR,
| where it is not clear so far how the "right to be informed" or
| the "right to deletion" can/must conceivably be implemented.
| (From my interpretation I also don't see how OpenAI can conform
| to the "right to be informed" without publishing its training
| data).
|
| And of course the AI act, which might make it possible for the
| publishers of open models to be sued if a third party misuses
| it: https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/06/the-eus-ai-act-could-
| have-...
| huijzer wrote:
| I have tried to go against some of the arguments because some are
| wrong, some are okayish, and some are just plain wrong, but I
| gave up. The article moves all over the place pulling random
| facts from all kinds of places in support of the idea that
| Germany is declining. Maybe that's true, maybe not. This article
| appears not rigorous enough to come to a right conclusion.
| Michelangelo11 wrote:
| Right, I have the same impression -- it's really all over the
| place.
|
| Anyway, the absolute key issue seems to be energy costs. If
| they hadn't skyrocketed, this wouldn't be happening.
| nradov wrote:
| Not just _energy_ but specifically access to natural gas.
| Even when not burned for power and heat it acts as an
| essential feedstock for much of the German chemicals
| industry. With flows from Russia being reduced or eliminated
| there is no choice but to relocate production.
| Archelaos wrote:
| The German government is subsidising gas consumption by
| industry very heavily at the moment to prevent this.
|
| A press release on the relevant legislation can be found
| here (in German): https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-
| de/aktuelles/energieprei...
|
| The most important section in this matter reads in English
| translation as follows:
|
| "From January 2023, industrial customers will receive 70%
| of their natural gas consumption in 2021 from their
| suppliers at a guaranteed 7 cents per kilowatt hour. For
| heat consumption, the price will be capped at 7.5 cents per
| kilowatt hour, also for 70% of consumption in 2021. For the
| remaining consumption, industry will pay the regular market
| price."
| nradov wrote:
| Right but that level of subsidization is unsustainable.
| What is the end game? Cheap Russian natural gas is
| unlikely to return soon enough to save the German
| chemicals industry.
| 2-718-281-828 wrote:
| how many planets are there, mr dice?
|
| [rolls dice - dice gives a 6]
|
| unbelievable ... not 3, not 15, but 6 - that's remarkably close
| to 8!
|
| you're some smart dice, aren't you!
| HackOfAllTrades wrote:
| Same here. It reads like a huge list of cherry-pickings.
|
| You'd think that quoting facts would strengthen ones argument,
| all these tiny and sometimes very specific facts _with no
| context_ had the opposite effect.
| polytely wrote:
| Honestly, I've never seen a good article from Politico eu.
| haizhung wrote:
| Politico is owned by Axel Springer, which is the German
| equivalent of Fox News, if that explains it.
| alephnerd wrote:
| I keep seeing people saying this about Politico and it's
| total FUD. I have friends who work there and it's pretty
| firewalled from Axel Springer. This conspiracy theory about
| the Politico portion seems to have started in r/Europe and
| r/WorldNews a couple months ago and kept getting repeated
| since.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| the name of the publication has the word "politics" in
| the title?
| alephnerd wrote:
| Politico is DC slang for someone who works politics
| adjacent (hence why their competitor "The Hill" is named
| that)
|
| Politico started as a blog and newsletter on the Hill
| back in the late 2000s/early 2010s where we'd leak
| gossip, but they had amazing product-market fit and ended
| up opening an EU office a couple years ago (lots of Hill
| adjacent people also worked in Parliament and Bundestag
| via early career Atlanticist programs).
|
| A couple of my own quotes have ended up in Politico
| tvon_g wrote:
| It's directionally correct though, no? What's the case to be
| made that Germany is ascending? The fact that most German
| billionaires inherited their wealth is pretty telling I think.
| Archelaos wrote:
| It shows that inheritance tax in Germany is too low and that
| unfortunately there is no longer a wealth tax.
| wernercd wrote:
| "Inheritance tax" always time to take money from others
| that you didn't earn, eh?
| 7952 wrote:
| Less so than other taxes. The person inheriting didn't
| earn it.
| badpun wrote:
| The childred didn't earn it either.
| jterrys wrote:
| Imagine working hard to guarantee a good future for your
| children and having the state step in and taking it away.
| eliaspro wrote:
| Inheritance tax is not about taking it all away. It's
| about heavily texting everything beyond a reasonable
| amount. Even if you could at max inherit "just" a million
| Euro, that be much more than enough to start a
| comfortable life, while at the same time eliminating a
| huge factor of the ever widening poverty/wealth gap.
| brazzy wrote:
| Imagine working harder that you can possibly imagine to
| guarantee a good future for your children, and yet not
| being able to because the deck is stacked against you, or
| you're just unlucky - and having the state step in to at
| least give them a fair chance.
|
| Then imagine someone saying that's bad because it's
| important for other people's kids to be able to live in
| luxury without ever having to work a day in their lives.
| wernercd wrote:
| Imagine saying that you working hard, providing for your
| kids and doing good in life is less because someone else
| has it better/easier/"doesn't deserve it".
|
| Imagine saying that the only way things can be fair is if
| you steal from others you think have too much to make
| things 'equal'.
| patmorgan23 wrote:
| Brah most inheritance taxes a) don't start until you're
| in the several hundred thousand to millions range and b)
| are less than 100%.
|
| So you can still leave a pretty large nest egg for your
| children. And if you really wanted to make sure they
| would be ok without you, you would have to pay for a good
| education and taught them the value of hard work. (And
| used your social network/connections to get them a good
| first job/seed money to start their own business)
| wernercd wrote:
| But the parents did and, as such, get to decide where to
| put that money.
|
| Again: Always time to take money you didn't earn. Greed
| is an ugly emotion and socialism/marxism/theft is a fail
| no matter how you try to dress it up.
| brazzy wrote:
| Seriously? It's not billionaires who "earn" money by
| doing nothing who are greedy, but those who think such
| greed should not be allowed to perpetuate across
| generations? That is the position you're trying to
| defend?
| wernercd wrote:
| greed is wanting that which you didn't earn - aka
| inheritance tax.
|
| I'm defending the fact that people always want what
| others have. Most people don't give a shit about poor
| people they just hate rich people. Because they "didn't
| earn it".
|
| My position is real simple: Taxation is theft and greedy
| people always want to take from successful people.
|
| Hard pill to swallow but the rich already pay their fair
| share in most circumstances - IE: the vast majority of
| taxes is paid by the "rich" in the US for example... but
| it's never enough. There's never enough of other peoples
| money to spend to help "the poor".
| MyAccountYo wrote:
| Super weird take. Most money is in capital. So most money
| needs to be spent/taxed in capital. Rich get richer and
| poor get poorer. That can't work. It's not sustainable.
| If wages would rise at the same rate as capital we might
| not need to have this conversation."successful" is also a
| pretty dim interpretation. Are people who care for
| elderly or teach kids not worth anything just because
| they are not CEOs? They should be seen as "successful"
| but instead we respect the people who exploit the most
| and are the most ruthless and psychopathic. It's really
| sad to see that money is the only metric for "success"
| some people employ.
| lumost wrote:
| It's surprising to me that Europeans aren't more opposed
| to generational wealth. Didn't many countries fight
| _multiple_ wars and revolutions to overthrow /re-instate
| the entrenched agrarian aristocracy? why would Europeans
| be comfortable allowing the Entrenchment of a modern
| aristocracy a hundred years later?
| rogerthis wrote:
| It's always one aristocracy fighting another. It will
| always be. Some are better, some are worse for those
| below.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| It's pretty wild how capital has pushed all of the taxes
| off of their own transactions and onto the transactions
| involving labor. Yes indeed, it always seems to be time
| to take money from others that you did not earn!
| completegap wrote:
| [flagged]
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Rich people get paid for being rich. Poor people get paid
| for working. These things are not the same.
|
| "But rich people _don 't_ get paid for being rich, they
| get paid to take risks! To invest!"
|
| There are two definitions of investment running around.
| One definition has a moral component: you sacrifice
| consumption today in order to build factories or take
| risks, thereby enabling greater consumption tomorrow,
| improving the world and taking a cut of the improvement.
| That's fine. Great, even! There's a second definition
| that is amoral, though: anything that you put capital
| into that provides a return is an investment. This second
| definition is just fine with "create a problem, sell the
| cure" and indeed encourages a lot of it. If you look at
| economic sectors, the ones that are doing really well
| (health care, housing, education) seem to have this as a
| high level strategy. Underproduce doctors, price goes up.
| Fuck up the zoning, price goes up. Pump more debt, price
| goes up. Merge up the competitors, price goes up. This is
| deeply unfortunate. Capitalism gets most of its
| legitimacy from the idea of competition as a check on
| power, but it seems that most of the money is made by
| figuring out how not to compete. They teach the
| Prisoner's Dilemma on the very first day of business
| school with this very lesson in mind. Don't play the
| game, play the meta-game! Don't build a product, build a
| moat! This is highly problematic.
|
| When the economy expands by multiples but most people see
| their pie slice not only failing to keep pace in relative
| turns but failing to grow in absolute terms, that's a
| problem, a failed promise.
|
| What's the answer? The right will hop up and down
| shrieking "Stalin!" "Mao!" any time you talk about taxing
| assets, but no, 100 million people will not starve to
| death if capital gains income gets taxed as regular
| income, or if we meet in the middle with work hours so
| that people are allowed to raise their own kids again, or
| any of a dozen other progressive policies. They tried to
| coup the last Roosevelt and they'll try to coup the next
| one, but the prospertiy gospel's own failed promises will
| be its undoing. We've fixed this before and we'll fix it
| again.
| completegap wrote:
| [flagged]
| pseudo0 wrote:
| Or just hike the capital gains tax. Those billions of
| dollars have to be put somewhere, and the ultra-rich aren't
| going to hide it under the mattress. Inheritance tax is
| fairly easy to avoid with sophisticated tax planning.
| [deleted]
| tdrz wrote:
| I found the article quite good but has missed a couple of points
| that need to be mentioned:
|
| 1. The attitude of the average German consumer
|
| It seems to me that one of the national sports in Germany is to
| find cheaper deals for pretty much anything (and then brag about
| it). Even if it's fractions of a euro! After trimming down on
| everything that they could, the manufacturers and service
| providers had to finally reduce quality. This happened to such an
| extent that the famous "Made in Germany" is now meaningless, if
| not worse.
|
| 2. The attitude of the average German manager
|
| "I am your boss, you are the employee, now shut up and do as I
| say" attitude does not work well in knowledge-based industries
| like Software. And I believe this is one of the reasons why
| Germany is behind in digitalization, let alone in digital
| innovation.
| patall wrote:
| > I am your boss, you are the employee, now shut up and do as I
| say
|
| This would also not work in engineering and never did. In fact,
| it's likely one of reasons why german engineering was so good:
| because people would (and still do) tell their boss bluntly
| what is wrong.
| croisillon wrote:
| haha number 1! 20 years later i'm still traumatized about my
| boss who would spend the whole lunchtime speaking about gas
| prices
| aeyes wrote:
| 1. Made in Germany for consumer products might be worth less
| today but the export of industrial supplies like machines,
| chemicals and materials are much more important to the economy
| as a whole. Outside of Germany it is still quite respected - to
| the point where foreign companies give themselves and their
| products German sounding names while slapping German flags on
| their boxes to sell more.
|
| 2. Why software Made in Germany doesn't work well has a number
| of reasons but I'd say that it is primarily because it is much
| harder to raise capital for things that only might work 1 out
| of 50 times. People who start businesses are much more risk-
| averse and most try to be profitable or self-financed from year
| 1. This makes them uncompetitive in innovative sectors.
| alephnerd wrote:
| 1. You are correct that German industrial exports are highly
| respected. The issue is manufacturers in other countries (eg.
| Poland, Czechia, Hungary, Turkiye, China, Romania, Spain,
| Mexico) have caught up. And oftentimes those manufacturers
| are themselves German companies. This has in turn commodified
| a major portion of the German industrial base.
|
| 2. France has a similarly ossified financial culture, but has
| a much more robust tech industry compared to Germany (eg.
| Ubisoft, Datadog, Capgemeni, Dassault Systemes, Dataiku,
| Alcatel-Lucent, Thales, Orange, etc)
|
| Germany has a strong base, but some reform is absolutely
| needed to upskill their economy.
| julienfr112 wrote:
| Germany has SAP, ...
| alephnerd wrote:
| But that's just 1 champion (well, actually 2 because
| Siemens has a robust R&D presence) whereas there are
| multiple in France. In general, R&D in the software and
| electronics space seems stronger in France due to the
| robust MIC, Aviation, and Telco sector spending a lot of
| money on R&D
| dontupvoteme wrote:
| >This happened to such an extent that the famous "Made in
| Germany" is now meaningless, if not worse.
|
| This was originally an anglo pejorative meant to denigrate the
| quality of German goods. Mild irony.
|
| >2. The attitude of the average German manager
|
| >"I am your boss, you are the employee, now shut up and do as I
| say" attitude does not work well in knowledge-based industries
| like Software. And I believe this is one of the reasons why
| Germany is behind in digitalization, let alone in digital
| innovation.
|
| My experience has been the complete opposite.
| codethief wrote:
| Could you provide some references that back up your claims?
| HackOfAllTrades wrote:
| I'm terribly suspicious when an article quotes a CEO saying
| "profits aren't where they should be".
|
| God only knows what he thinks his corporate profits "should be",
| but I'd bet it's a lot higher that you or I would guess.
| dontupvoteme wrote:
| It took them over 100 years but finally the treaty of versailles
| will be implemented, for all the wrong reasons.
| [deleted]
| ehvatum wrote:
| I feel embarrassed for Germany. So much pride, built on
| dishonesty and exploitation of customers and other EU nations.
| Getting to the point of implementing meaningful reform will be
| tremendously ugly, in a country that derives such gratification
| from exporting carbon-intensive industry to China. Sad.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| The article mentions 'high energy prices' and 'energy costs' and
| alludes to 'Kremlin cutting off natural gas supplies' but
| otherwise provides zero discussion of the overall energy picture
| in Europe. A couple of major issues they could have addressed:
|
| 1. In retrospect, was the German decision to eliminate nuclear
| power wise? Could they have squeezed another decade of power out
| of their existing plants, even if they didn't see that as a
| viable long-term energy source (having to import uranium fuel is
| not all that better from having to import natural gas,
| economically speaking)? Granted, nuclear only provides
| electricty, while BASF needs methane.
|
| 2. Russian gas exports to Germany have been replaced by US LNG
| gas exports, but the cost differential is pretty huge. Looking
| around, I see this site has discussed it before (Nov 2022):
|
| https://www.politico.eu/article/cheap-us-gas-cost-fortune-eu...
|
| That's an interesting article, pointing to tight markets being
| taken advantage of by European energy traders (though Exxon and
| Chevron shares are up 50% since the price boom, Permian Basin
| development, booming LNG exports, etc.). It also might explain
| why some European interests see a finacial benefit in prolonging
| the Ukraine war (i.e. keeping Russian gas sanctions in place).
|
| 3. Somewhat amusingly, if BASF moves a lot of production China,
| then their natural gas feedstocks will be coming from... Russia's
| massive Sakahalin 1 & 2 projects (built with extensive help from
| Exxon and Shell respectively, and ironically)?
|
| https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/russias-sakhalin-inv...
|
| Maybe blowing up the Nordstream pipeline wasn't such a smart
| move, after all.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _Maybe blowing up the Nordstream pipeline wasn 't such a smart
| move, after all._
|
| Do we know with any degree of certainty who was actually
| responsible for sabotaging the pipeline?
| oezi wrote:
| It seems all evidence points to a Ukrainian op performed by a
| small team and minimal amounts of explosives.
|
| Ukraine is also the only country which had clear motive and
| no real repercussions if found out (because already at war
| with Russia).
| tdrz wrote:
| > 1. In retrospect, was the German decision to eliminate
| nuclear power wise?
|
| " _The country's Green transformation, the so-called
| Energiewende, has only made matters worse. Just as it was
| losing access to Russian gas, the country switched off all
| nuclear power._ "
|
| > Maybe blowing up the Nordstream pipeline wasn't such a smart
| move, after all.
|
| Or maybe relying so much on a partner which others have warned
| you about was actually the not so smart move.
| novaRom wrote:
| quote: Germany ranks only eighth in the Global Innovation Index
|
| Is it so bad? For 83 millions people economy.
| nicbou wrote:
| According to law only mailed or faxed responses are allowed
| woobar wrote:
| Considering that Switzerland is No. 1, Sweden, Netherlands or
| Singapore are all above Germany, I'd guess population is not a
| big factor in computing this index.
| morelisp wrote:
| > Switzerland is No. 1
|
| Time to rename the region CHAD I guess.
| kachurovskiy wrote:
| We're definitely huge fans of paperwork here and it hurts a lot.
|
| Want to sell something? Company registration takes months, just
| getting a business tax ID was 6 weeks for me. To sell
| electronics, register with Stiftung EAR, then find an
| intermediary to get you a WEEE-Nummer and report monthly (!)
| sales figures of all your device types. Just that registration
| costs 1k and 8 weeks. And don't forget your battery and packaging
| license!
|
| By comparison, similar WEEE fees in UK are 30 pounds and in
| Estonia are 12 euros, no wait.
|
| But the real fun starts if you hire someone :) The paperwork
| there is a magnitude more.
|
| I don't think we're doomed though. The schools are packed with
| kids, education is free and good, health services are not a
| concern (looking at you, US), society is healthy. I think we'll
| manage :) Hopefully no more self-inflicted energy crises in the
| works.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| > We're definitely huge fans of paperwork here and it hurts a
| lot.
|
| > society is healthy
|
| no pain, no gain :)
|
| there's probably a terry prachett quote attributing bureaucracy
| to the stability of a large-scale civilization
| fxtentacle wrote:
| "But the real fun starts if you hire someone :) The paperwork
| there is a magnitude more."
|
| I've been very happy with Sage, an online SaaS to manage
| employees and their payments, taxes, and related paperwork.
| choeger wrote:
| Germany is extremely well positioned to rise again economically
| in the next five years or so. It's attracting migrants from all
| over Europe, it's located quite nicely in the middle of the
| continent and it's currently building a massive capacity of
| renewable energy.
|
| The only real problem right now is efficiency of spending. Nearly
| all public sectors (defense, housing, transportation, education,
| healthcare) bemoan significant lack of financing and workers.
| Yet, Germany spends enormous amounts of money and employs record
| levels of workers there. It's like all the money and workers just
| vanish. This leads to the situation that it's currently difficult
| to hire in Germany.
|
| This process leads to the attraction of skilled workers
| especially from eastern Europe. I don't know where this ends, but
| I doubt the spending and employment will get significantly more
| efficient. Instead, Germany might very well attract additional
| millions of well-educated Poles, Ukrainians, Romanians, etc.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if by 2030 we see a Germany with a
| population of 90M people absolutely dominating the European
| market.
| nicbou wrote:
| I help German immigrants for a living. It's currently one of
| the hardest countries to settle in due to the archaic and
| labyrinthine bureaucracy. Berlin's immigration office is
| completely unable to handle its workload, delaying immigration
| to the point people just give up and leave.
|
| I've been here long enough to apply for citizenship, but Berlin
| has a backlog of 26,000 applications and literally refuses new
| ones until they centralise the processing. The new central
| office is expected to handle 20,000 applications per year.
|
| This is the city where you need an in-person appointment weeks
| in the future to register your address, a key process that many
| other things depend on.
|
| All of this can only be done in German, of course.
|
| If Germany wants to attract talent, it has to meet it in the
| 21st century.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Maybe Berlin has just reached maximum occupancy? I mean, we'd
| all like to live in our favorite dream city, but how long is
| that sustainable long term, if we all move to one city?
|
| Germany seems like it wants to have its cake and eat it too.
| It wants more migration to put downward pressure on wages and
| upward pressure on housing prices, but that's it, it does
| nothing to actually make life pleasant and attractive for the
| people moving there to live and work, in terms of taxes,
| bureaucracy and housing, so you just feel like cattle,
| exploited for your ability to pay taxes to the state and to
| pay someone else's mortgage.
| brazzy wrote:
| Berlin is infamously badly governed. It should not be
| considered representative of Germany as a whole.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| i would not be so hopeful. A big problem is that germany does
| not operate in the global lingua franca - English. This really
| shows when countries like Australia and Canada - combined, both
| have a population less than germany's - are able to attract the
| best and brightest from around the world.
|
| Another problem is one that plagues all old world countries -
| societies are based around ethnicity.
|
| These combine to mean that Germany and the EU in general are
| not attracting the best from abroad. The region is often the
| second or third choice of the educated migrant. Don't believe
| me - look at the EU's own internal migration numbers and the
| stats for immigrants from outside the EU. Internal EU migration
| is pretty low relative to countries like US (states vs
| countries, sure) and the immigrations from outside are largely
| poorly educated.
|
| This shows in Germany's immigration policy - they have been
| reducing barriers to entry for over a decade now and are yet
| struggling to hire foreign talent. This begs the question -
| why?
| radiator wrote:
| Since when is it a problem for a country to operate in its
| own language? Especially one which is spoken by 100 million
| people? Have you considered that people who migrate to a new
| country for work might even try to learn the language? Who
| says English must remain lingua franca in Europe?
|
| But beside all that, everyone with a basic education in
| Germany does speak good English if needed.
| holoduke wrote:
| Eastern European people are very much german orientated. Most
| speak better German than English. So no you are not right.
| Germany is immensively popular by tech migrants from Russia.
| Poland, Hungary, Czech etc.
| badpun wrote:
| > Most speak better German than English.
|
| That's not true, at least not in Poland.
|
| Also, current German take-home salaries for coders are
| lower than Polish (gross amounts are similar, but in Poland
| a lot of coders are self-employed, with very lox taxes),
| with vastly higher costs of living. If anything, Germans
| programmers should emigrate to Poland - they're not getting
| a great deal in their country.
| ManuelKiessling wrote:
| I'm intrigued -- can you provide some numbers, e.g. some
| typical hourly rates and/or monthly wages for some
| typical programming jobs? Or maybe you have some sources
| (I'll be able to help myself with Google Translate if
| they are Polish).
| type0 wrote:
| I agree, actually think Poland is one of the best
| countries in Europe for future digital sector, it's more
| open to dealing in English language and more open to
| change when it comes to business. As levels of living
| rise, I'm fairly confident it will be attracting more and
| better talents than other old EU countries. Other East
| Europeans are treated much better in Poland than Germany
| (West Germans don't even treat East Germans that well).
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> astern European people are very much german orientated.
| _
|
| Not true in Romania at all. We're latin and way more
| US/angloshpere oriented than German.
|
| Where did you get your information? You're probably
| thinking only of the parts of the former Austrian empire
| which used to speak German, but the youth there is also
| more Anglo focused than German, and it's only a samll part
| of eastern Europe
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| It is true in Romania, too. Since the ethnic Hungarian
| population isn't Latin, interest in the German language
| has always been higher among them, and Germany has been a
| magnet for Hungarian emigration from Romania. But even
| leaving language aside, I know a number of ethnic
| Romanians from Cluj and Timisoara who moved to Germany,
| especially Berlin a decade ago when it was viewed as the
| hipster capital of Europe and still regarded as a cheap
| place to live.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> These combine to mean that Germany and the EU in general
| are not attracting the best from abroad. _
|
| How many skilled Eastern Europeans have you met who still
| want to move to Germany? This was the dream ~10 years ago but
| most white collar EE engineers I know take one look at the
| wages and housing situation there and make a 180 back home.
| [deleted]
| sparrc wrote:
| Opposite lots of commenters here deriding the article as "all
| over the place", I thought it was very well-written and
| comprehensive. Seems like there are concerns across a wide swath
| of companies and industries in Germany.
|
| Reading between the lines, the proposed solution seems something
| like lower corporate taxes (currently making decamping to Dublin
| more attractive) and lower energy prices.
|
| The risk brought up is that if things continue it will likely
| lead to increasing blaming of immigrants and a rise in the far-
| right AfD party, which has already started.
| lyu07282 wrote:
| Also gutting labor rights, but I suppose that's always
| suggested by liberals no matter what
| tasubotadas wrote:
| What about employer rights? Right to fire poorly performing
| schmucks?
| tasubotadas wrote:
| Yes. The worst is yet to come.
|
| - Germany is heavily reliant on industry (like Autos)
|
| - Cheap energy has ended due to war in Ukraine
|
| - The available replacements are going to be even more
| expensive (and they are still closing more nuclear plants)
|
| - The production costs will increase reducing their
| competitiveness even further
|
| - The competitives was bad even before this (VW vs Tesla
| anyone?)
|
| - Once the huge layoffs and closures will begin, the entire
| economy will enter recession.
|
| Industry-focuses businesses are now low-margin and high-
| competition (competition mostly coming from Asia). The same is
| happening here what happened during the shift of Agriculture
| economy into Industrial economy.
|
| And the shift to services (tech/software specifically) was
| pretty much non-existent. Also, it's unlikely to become any
| better due to alienation of investors (who wants to invest in a
| country where everybody is taxed and red-taped into oblivion?).
|
| So... who nows. Germany is probably going to pull a "Greece" on
| us :).
| patall wrote:
| > - Cheap energy has ended due to war in Ukraine
|
| While there is some truth to that, energy prices are lower
| than at the start of the war.
|
| > - The available replacements are going to be even more
| expensive (and they are still closing more nuclear plants)
|
| There are no nuclear plants left. And Germany just got 12.6
| billion from auctioning of building rights for 4 new wind
| parks (with capped price limits of 6.3ct/kW/h.
|
| > - The competitives was bad even before this (VW vs Tesla
| anyone?)
|
| How is that? VW has a quite broad electric car range by now.
| Tesla is hip (which VW also tries to be) but that's about it
|
| > - Once the huge layoffs and closures will begin, the entire
| economy will enter recession
|
| The german labour market is quite strong (except maybe
| construction, but there's not many germans working there
| anyways). Problem is rather that too many people are retiring
| (and that the average age is so high)
|
| > So... who nows. Germany is probably going to pull a
| "Greece" on us :).
|
| The budget of the german state is almost balanced. How does
| it look in the US?
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