5 ms·

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 o

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 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    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/energiepreisbremsen-2145728 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 3y ago
      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.
      - Archelaos 3y ago
        Since the beginning of the year, the wholesale gas price in Europe has already returned to the level seen before the Russian-Ukrainian war. See: https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/DE/Gasversorgung/aktuelle_gasversorgung/_svg/Gaspreise/Gaspreise.html https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/DE/Gasversorgung/aktuelle_g... (in German)
  - gmerc 3y ago
    And the reason would be that profits were frontloaded and needed reforms were delayed. Germany had a pretty audacious but absolutely achievable renewables plan 15 years ago but Schroeder & Merkel canned it for cheap Russian Gas and now that the price for that has become apparent there wailing and screaming. It’s just normalizing - if the original plan had been pursued, profits would not have been that great but the cost of adapting would have been staggered too. Now the bill is due.
    - nradov 3y ago
      You're missing the point. Renewable power generation is nice but it doesn't help with chemical manufacturing.
      - gmerc 3y ago
        Not missing the point at all. it’s two different issues and the same root cause. Availability of sufficient power reserves not bound to Russia would alleviate many industrial cost issues right now. Costs are up primarily because cheap power is gone. The chemical industry requiring gas is a separate problem with a similar root cause - supply monoculture. Germany built its first LNG terminal last year, before that it was Russian gas because it was cheap and it was betting on Northstream. Lack of supply diversity, failure to plan, ideological blinders and good old corruption. The article is missing the point by failing root cause analysis.
        nradov 3y ago
        LNG imports won't make chemical manufacturing viable again in Germany. Too expensive. Those industries will relocate closer to the sources where they can connect directly to pipelines.
      - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        Indeed. People miss the point that metal smelting and chemical plants are built around gas and can't switch to electric over night. Basically entire sectors of Germany's economy have made themselves dependent on that sweeet cheap Russian gas.
polytely 3y ago
Honestly, I've never seen a good article from Politico eu.
- haizhung 3y ago
  Politico is owned by Axel Springer, which is the German equivalent of Fox News, if that explains it.
  - alephnerd 3y ago
    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 3y ago
      the name of the publication has the word "politics" in the title?
      - alephnerd 3y ago
        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
    - alphager 3y ago
      So Döpfner (who is on record ordering his "journalists" to push the FDP in the last election) just bought Politico and doesn't make sure they follow the directions he sets for all the other publications owned by Springer? Seems unlikely.
    - 3y ago
HackOfAllTrades 3y ago
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.
- still_grokking 3y ago
  The article was obviously about the big picture. You get that only when you look at a bunch of "unrelated", "small" facts. If there are a lot of facts pointing in one direction, maybe there is something to it. The other point is: That was not cheery picking. There are no other facts that would point in the opposite direction… More or less everything in Germany is in decline. That's just true. Source: I'm living here since about 40 years. Though the article interpreted something quite wrong in the very beginning: The decline started quite exactly around 20 years ago. It was caused by the move to ultra-capitalism (the mentioned big social reforms 20 years ago), which made Germany a low wage country, which made the people poor and started an exodus of the well educated parts of society. The reforms made some of the numbers capitalists are interested in look good for some time, but at the expense of maximally "squeezing out" society. Now this short sighted tactic backfires. By now almost 1/6 of the people here are poor (and 1/4 is at risk of becoming poor): https://www.malteser.de/armut-in-deutschland.html https://www.malteser.de/armut-in-deutschland.html Almost nobody can afford children. ("Bio-Germans" are foreseeable dying out therefore, and it doesn't look like this is avoidable any more when you try to play the numbers game. The article showed the relevant statistic. At least we get some migrants; with children. But the "Bio-Germans" hate migrants. Also this may pay off not before one generation; we need to educate the children; but the education system is broken…) Actually it's getting hard to even afford a living place. Liberal housing markets made space in areas of high population density so expensive "normal" people can't afford it any more. At the same time building new housing is too expensive and nobody invest in that. Which made companies in the building business die out, and even if the state would massively invest in housing right now we don't have the capacity to build that stuff. And even if we would have the firms, they would not find employees… https://www.mieterbund.de/fileadmin/public/Studien/Studie_-_Bauen_und_Wohnen_in_der_Krise.pdf https://www.mieterbund.de/fileadmin/public/Studien/Studie_-_... (Fun fact: AFAIK if Germany would build enough housing it would completely miss it's green goals, as building housing creates a lot of CO₂.) The complete dependence on the car industry becomes a real problem at the same time. It's not only the big car manufacturers. But the largest part of "the Mittelstand" are external suppliers for the car industry… Should this implode (and it looks like that, as China is flooding the car markets, that's a fact) this will have catastrophic results for Germany. We simply don't have anything besides the car stuff. All we've got is already gone. And what's left is leaving because of he astronomical energy prices. Big players are moving elsewhere, the smaller ones just die. Result: More people becoming poor, which just accelerates the downward spiral. In regard to modern tech, like IT, Germany is a developing country. We're completely depended on the US and Asia in this area! People are making jokes about "Russian computers"[1] but the sad truth is we couldn't even build such a thing on our own. In the last decades the education became completely messed up also. They tried to make everybody go to university; which destroyed the previously high class educational system. By now even the firms offering apprenticeship in handicraft trades complain that you can't find people skilled for that as the people coming from school can't properly read, write, or do basic calculus. (Source: I've talked to people offering apprenticeships, not only once, and I've had some contact to the youth.) At the same time politics try to just close their eyes to most problems: If you listen to the local propaganda "everything is good" or, currently, "It's Putin's fault!". (That's not completely true, of course, there is some critical thinking even in mainstream here and there, but they hide it usually under a really large pile of straight propaganda; and it became quite seldom. This wasn't always like that. Even the state media was much more critical 20 years ago. By now it's obviously just coordinated propaganda. We actually pay over 10 billion Euro for our state propaganda…) The article was actually refreshing unpolitical. You usually don't see such "pure" recitation of facts in the local (and especially state) media. (I was waiting the whole time while reading when we "get to the meat" and I get informed what we should buy to safe our souls, or who to blame for all the problems, but to my surprise this part never surfaced. The article looked almost like proper journalism from decades ago). Just naming those facts is actually considered "right wing activism" here in Germany. You will get canceled quite instantly for saying the things the article said if you state such stuff for example as comment in some of the mainstream media outlets. Yes, they cancel for reciting facts. Especially if the recited facts have potential to "irritate people", and you present some proper numbers to make your point. (Disclaimer: I'm not supporting any political party any more. I was once "leaning to the left". But the lefties are by now the same scammers as every other political movement. All these people in politics just care about redirecting state money into their own pockets. No difference the "color" or "side" of the political movement. Kleptocracy in it's final stage. Peak capitalism. This won't end good… And if there wouldn't be the language barrier I would actually start to consider to move to China. It's getting noticeably worse here and while looking at the current state of affairs it foreseeably won't get better during my lifetime anymore.) [1] https://www.heise.de/news/MIG-Akinak-Russlands-selbstentworfener-PC-konkurriert-mit-Raspi-3-9186592.html https://www.heise.de/news/MIG-Akinak-Russlands-selbstentworf... (See also the comments!)
tvon_g 3y ago
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 3y ago
  It shows that inheritance tax in Germany is too low and that unfortunately there is no longer a wealth tax.
  - wernercd 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - badpun 3y ago
      The childred didn't earn it either.
      - wernercd 3y ago
        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 3y ago
        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 3y ago
        [flagged]
2-718-281-828 3y ago
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!
ttepasse 3y ago
Since 2015 I can’t remember Matthew Karnitschnig writing a neutral or even positive article on Germany. The sky is always immediately falling. Back then it was of course the refugee crisis and other assorted culture war nonsense, but now he seems to be retooling.

Michelangelo11 3y ago

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 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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/energiepreisbremsen-2145728 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 3y ago
    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.
    - Archelaos 3y ago
      Since the beginning of the year, the wholesale gas price in Europe has already returned to the level seen before the Russian-Ukrainian war. See: https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/DE/Gasversorgung/aktuelle_gasversorgung/_svg/Gaspreise/Gaspreise.html https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/DE/Gasversorgung/aktuelle_g... (in German)
- gmerc 3y ago
  And the reason would be that profits were frontloaded and needed reforms were delayed. Germany had a pretty audacious but absolutely achievable renewables plan 15 years ago but Schroeder & Merkel canned it for cheap Russian Gas and now that the price for that has become apparent there wailing and screaming. It’s just normalizing - if the original plan had been pursued, profits would not have been that great but the cost of adapting would have been staggered too. Now the bill is due.
  - nradov 3y ago
    You're missing the point. Renewable power generation is nice but it doesn't help with chemical manufacturing.
    - gmerc 3y ago
      Not missing the point at all. it’s two different issues and the same root cause. Availability of sufficient power reserves not bound to Russia would alleviate many industrial cost issues right now. Costs are up primarily because cheap power is gone. The chemical industry requiring gas is a separate problem with a similar root cause - supply monoculture. Germany built its first LNG terminal last year, before that it was Russian gas because it was cheap and it was betting on Northstream. Lack of supply diversity, failure to plan, ideological blinders and good old corruption. The article is missing the point by failing root cause analysis.
      - nradov 3y ago
        LNG imports won't make chemical manufacturing viable again in Germany. Too expensive. Those industries will relocate closer to the sources where they can connect directly to pipelines.
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      Indeed. People miss the point that metal smelting and chemical plants are built around gas and can't switch to electric over night. Basically entire sectors of Germany's economy have made themselves dependent on that sweeet cheap Russian gas.

polytely 3y ago

Honestly, I've never seen a good article from Politico eu.

haizhung 3y ago
Politico is owned by Axel Springer, which is the German equivalent of Fox News, if that explains it.
- alephnerd 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    the name of the publication has the word "politics" in the title?
    - alephnerd 3y ago
      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
  - alphager 3y ago
    So Döpfner (who is on record ordering his "journalists" to push the FDP in the last election) just bought Politico and doesn't make sure they follow the directions he sets for all the other publications owned by Springer? Seems unlikely.
  - 3y ago

HackOfAllTrades 3y ago

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.

still_grokking 3y ago
The article was obviously about the big picture. You get that only when you look at a bunch of "unrelated", "small" facts. If there are a lot of facts pointing in one direction, maybe there is something to it. The other point is: That was not cheery picking. There are no other facts that would point in the opposite direction… More or less everything in Germany is in decline. That's just true. Source: I'm living here since about 40 years. Though the article interpreted something quite wrong in the very beginning: The decline started quite exactly around 20 years ago. It was caused by the move to ultra-capitalism (the mentioned big social reforms 20 years ago), which made Germany a low wage country, which made the people poor and started an exodus of the well educated parts of society. The reforms made some of the numbers capitalists are interested in look good for some time, but at the expense of maximally "squeezing out" society. Now this short sighted tactic backfires. By now almost 1/6 of the people here are poor (and 1/4 is at risk of becoming poor): https://www.malteser.de/armut-in-deutschland.html https://www.malteser.de/armut-in-deutschland.html Almost nobody can afford children. ("Bio-Germans" are foreseeable dying out therefore, and it doesn't look like this is avoidable any more when you try to play the numbers game. The article showed the relevant statistic. At least we get some migrants; with children. But the "Bio-Germans" hate migrants. Also this may pay off not before one generation; we need to educate the children; but the education system is broken…) Actually it's getting hard to even afford a living place. Liberal housing markets made space in areas of high population density so expensive "normal" people can't afford it any more. At the same time building new housing is too expensive and nobody invest in that. Which made companies in the building business die out, and even if the state would massively invest in housing right now we don't have the capacity to build that stuff. And even if we would have the firms, they would not find employees… https://www.mieterbund.de/fileadmin/public/Studien/Studie_-_Bauen_und_Wohnen_in_der_Krise.pdf https://www.mieterbund.de/fileadmin/public/Studien/Studie_-_... (Fun fact: AFAIK if Germany would build enough housing it would completely miss it's green goals, as building housing creates a lot of CO₂.) The complete dependence on the car industry becomes a real problem at the same time. It's not only the big car manufacturers. But the largest part of "the Mittelstand" are external suppliers for the car industry… Should this implode (and it looks like that, as China is flooding the car markets, that's a fact) this will have catastrophic results for Germany. We simply don't have anything besides the car stuff. All we've got is already gone. And what's left is leaving because of he astronomical energy prices. Big players are moving elsewhere, the smaller ones just die. Result: More people becoming poor, which just accelerates the downward spiral. In regard to modern tech, like IT, Germany is a developing country. We're completely depended on the US and Asia in this area! People are making jokes about "Russian computers"[1] but the sad truth is we couldn't even build such a thing on our own. In the last decades the education became completely messed up also. They tried to make everybody go to university; which destroyed the previously high class educational system. By now even the firms offering apprenticeship in handicraft trades complain that you can't find people skilled for that as the people coming from school can't properly read, write, or do basic calculus. (Source: I've talked to people offering apprenticeships, not only once, and I've had some contact to the youth.) At the same time politics try to just close their eyes to most problems: If you listen to the local propaganda "everything is good" or, currently, "It's Putin's fault!". (That's not completely true, of course, there is some critical thinking even in mainstream here and there, but they hide it usually under a really large pile of straight propaganda; and it became quite seldom. This wasn't always like that. Even the state media was much more critical 20 years ago. By now it's obviously just coordinated propaganda. We actually pay over 10 billion Euro for our state propaganda…) The article was actually refreshing unpolitical. You usually don't see such "pure" recitation of facts in the local (and especially state) media. (I was waiting the whole time while reading when we "get to the meat" and I get informed what we should buy to safe our souls, or who to blame for all the problems, but to my surprise this part never surfaced. The article looked almost like proper journalism from decades ago). Just naming those facts is actually considered "right wing activism" here in Germany. You will get canceled quite instantly for saying the things the article said if you state such stuff for example as comment in some of the mainstream media outlets. Yes, they cancel for reciting facts. Especially if the recited facts have potential to "irritate people", and you present some proper numbers to make your point. (Disclaimer: I'm not supporting any political party any more. I was once "leaning to the left". But the lefties are by now the same scammers as every other political movement. All these people in politics just care about redirecting state money into their own pockets. No difference the "color" or "side" of the political movement. Kleptocracy in it's final stage. Peak capitalism. This won't end good… And if there wouldn't be the language barrier I would actually start to consider to move to China. It's getting noticeably worse here and while looking at the current state of affairs it foreseeably won't get better during my lifetime anymore.) [1] https://www.heise.de/news/MIG-Akinak-Russlands-selbstentworfener-PC-konkurriert-mit-Raspi-3-9186592.html https://www.heise.de/news/MIG-Akinak-Russlands-selbstentworf... (See also the comments!)

tvon_g 3y ago

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 3y ago
It shows that inheritance tax in Germany is too low and that unfortunately there is no longer a wealth tax.
- wernercd 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - badpun 3y ago
    The childred didn't earn it either.
    - wernercd 3y ago
      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 3y ago
        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 3y ago
        [flagged]

2-718-281-828 3y ago

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!

ttepasse 3y ago

Since 2015 I can’t remember Matthew Karnitschnig writing a neutral or even positive article on Germany. The sky is always immediately falling. Back then it was of course the refugee crisis and other assorted culture war nonsense, but now he seems to be retooling.