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> What happened in the last few years is basically forced deflation through salary stagnation (even reduction). As I understand it (which is too say barely), G
by forkandwait 16y ago
> What happened in the last few years is basically forced deflation through salary stagnation (even reduction).
As I understand it (which is too say barely), German salaries at the high end are nowhere near the UK or the USA.... Some of us think that might be a good thing, but if that is your metric, yeah, Germany probably sucks.
- cdavid 16y agoI am talking about average/median salaries (everyday worker) - high end salaries don't matter much at a country's scale, I think. If neither gdp growth (below other European countries in the same category as Germany) nor median income growth is a good metric, what do you suggest instead to measure German success ? Your comment made me realize I may have not been very clear - the issue is that Germany's success is measured in terms of exportation as is, which is known to be a common fallacy in economics. If it were because German's products became better at a cheaper price, then it would have been a good thing, but I am arguing it has been mostly through artificial deflation (income stagnation instead of money deflation as this is impossible in the eurozone). This is not very polemic, btw, and is pretty much agreed upon by quite a few people, independently of their political inclination (see e.g. http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/03/martin-wolf-china-germany-commiting-world-to-deflation.html http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/03/martin-wolf-china-ger... for one reference)