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Germany is no longer exceptional, and joining the European mainstream
- sleepytimetea 3y agoVery flowery and verbose article... till I ran into the paywall
- hilbert42 3y agoThey're a damn pain. It'd be nice if HN flagged them with a red asterisk or such.
- boomboomsubban 3y agoSites with paywalls that can't be bypassed are already banned.
- chewz 3y agoThis is called Hacker News for a reason, boy... > A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who uses their technical knowledge to achieve a goal or overcome an obstacle, within a computerized system by non-standard means. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker
- pjmlp 3y agoYeah, we don't want ads, but also don't want to pay.
- allarm 3y agoWe don’t want to pay to unblock a single random article on a random website. Also I personally don’t want to pay to read paywalled articles, that’s correct too. I just immediately close the tab.
- morelisp 3y agoThere's some potentially good points in here, but > the once slightly rundown Berlin Ku’damm feels more and more like the manicured Avenue Montaigne in Paris lol what, when was Ku'damm "slightly rundown", have you been literally anywhere else in the city?
- Thoeu388 3y agoGermany was uber green for like 50 years, yet it failed to deliver technological breakthrough. All green bets like diesel, biomass, natural gas, wind and solar, failed to deliver. And current leader in solar and batteries is China. Germany is now burning huge amount of coal, and importing it across globe from South America. And yet it struggles to heat it's houses. Current German economy is not sustainable without cheap energy.
- thedrbrian 3y agoTurns out the real force behind German engineering was cheap gas after all
- orangepurple 3y agoNow that it is beyond doubt, do not forget how German media and journalists have been misrepresenting and lying about their green energy successes for decades.
- chewz 3y agoBoth German export to China and German automotive industry faced disruptions. China's economy slowed down and China anyway can do without German technology at this point. And German automotive industry cannot compete with EV's yet. BYD is replacing Volkswagen. End of cheap gas is just a cherry on top (de-industralizing German Chemical sector which moves outside Europe). But Germany is capable country in crisis. They will overcame... > During the last 26 years the exports of Germany to China have increased at an annualized rate of 11.8%, from $6.58B in 1995 to $121B in 2021. https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-country/chn/partner/deu https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-country/chn/partner/d...
- boomboomsubban 3y agohttps://archive.is/Vz9VP https://archive.is/Vz9VP
- eduction 3y agoI hate this kind of misleading two step: “ per capita GDP in the former GDR is higher than in many regions in northern France. Unemployment, at 2.9 percent, is well below the U.S. or EU average, even though Germany took in a million Syrians in 2015 and another million Ukrainians in 2022. Berlin remains the biggest financial contributor to the EU” But? “ The country’s economy is fragile, and the rise of the AfD makes its politics as unpredictable as those of Austria or Italy. ” That’s it. That’s basically the whole article. Germany still has an exceptional economy but it has a right wing party that is surging (like everyone else) and it’s economy is somehow “fragile” which apparently is justified by “German GDP has roughly stagnated since 2019. And German manufacturing is the main problem: Industrial output lags pre-pandemic levels by some 5 percent.” I don’t know, seems fine. In any case, seems a very weak case for the sky to be falling in Germany. It’s just some mundane challenges in a still robust economy dressed up with a provocative headline. (By the way, “roughly stagnated” can be translated as “not stagnated”. I knew that even before finding https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/gdp https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/gdp because it’s a weasel term)
- erulabs 3y agoI just read an article on how social media has had devastating consequences on par with the dropping of atomic weapons at the end of WW2. The main devastation the author pointed to? Right wing politics becoming vaguely more popular.
- ceejayoz 3y agoA lot of the “wow, that was bad” realization with nukes came decades later. The same may be true for social media. We’ve yet to know what a generation raised on the stuff looks like 20-30 years later.
- chewz 3y agoLeftie journalists cannot admit that all over Europe people vote for "far-right" parties because they are fed up with forced social engineering, activist green agenda, out of control imigration policy and growing taxes..They need external explanations... Italy, Sweden, Finland, Holland, tomorrow Spain and Germany, Poland soon... And it is all fruits of labour of current European Comission...
- Michelangelo11 3y agoGetting the feeling that the narrative "Germany is failing" is being pushed really hard this summer.
- raxxorraxor 3y agoPerhaps it is the new Japan is failing (since at least 70 years). I would still take Japan before 90% of western countries though.
- benterix 3y agoYeah, Germany is bad, Europe is falling etc. My pet peeve theory is that some Americans discovered life in Europe has several advantages and are thinking of moving. This is not ideal for the American economy so a narrative is created making people think there is something bad happening in Europe (bad and good things have been happening all the time, so basically you can write anything you want depending on which part and timeframe you pick and still claim you just describe facts).
- WhereIsTheTruth 3y agoMy theory as well, the most obvious one is the FUD around the real estate market in Spain 2024 will for sure be fun to watch (US presidential election)
- jryle70 3y agoI have the completely opposite impression. Europe can do no wrong, American is bad. That sentiment is much more popular than the other way around, even in a post about how much bigger American economy has become compared to Europe [1]. You yourself is getting defensive about an article in a publication that is far from promoting American exceptionalism (check it's homepage), written by a Swiss with an European education, living in Europe, with a career covering Europe's affairs [2] [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36763419 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36763419 [2] - https://www.fpri.org/contributor/joseph-de-weck/ https://www.fpri.org/contributor/joseph-de-weck/
- h4x0rr 3y ago
- jacooper 3y ago> The party also wants the country to stop using the Euro and dissolve the European Parliament. Let's be honest, this will never ever happen. Germany has a huge influence in the EU and on the euro, why would they stop using it?!
- adventured 3y agoThis is just the start of Germany's economic erosion. China will hollow out their higher-end industrial economy, their manufacturing export juggernaut. It already happened to the US, now it's Germany's turn. They'll have to learn new ways to compete, as the US has had to. Not to mention Germany almost entirely missing the tech age has done extraordinary damage to its potential, wealth, future, etc. There was no good reason that had to happen, they have the talent and education to have a massive tech industry. Fixing this huge hole in their economy would be a big help.
- loehnsberg 3y agoGermany has a lot of things going for it, but it‘s weaknesses become really apparent at the moment: - finance happens elsewhere, no world-leading banks anymore, meaning it‘s difficult to get capital, unless you‘re big corp - no natural ressources to speak of, so the only indirectly tradable good is ingenuity, unfortunately too little happening in tech or services - energy prices have balooned, which costs its industrial base dearly - China has become a testy trading partner, as they now have transfered most of the know-how to DIY - starting a company is almost surely easier elsewhere (except for maybe France, Italy, or Spain) - mostly mediocre universities. the best academics are typically leaving and don‘t look back.
- bozhark 3y ago1) Deutsch Bank ruined their rep. 2) talented/skilled workers? 3) They committed energy suicide by removing the nuclear option 4) What? 5) True 6) Seems to be happening all over though, degradation of education
- rad_gruchalski 3y ago> 2) talented/skilled workers? In three places: Munich, Hamburg, Berlin. Everywhere else it's pretty difficult to find solid people. > 4) What? Haven't you noticed how much of the auto industry know-how moved to China? German auto industry bets on China to grow.
- lionkor 3y agoThis is a gross misclassification, and both talent and motivation are not geographically constrained in any way. I dont see how you can justify an assertion like that.
- rad_gruchalski 3y agoYou know what, on a second thought I agree it is a misclassification. I was commenting from the place where I sit. It depends on the industry. Different talents in different places settling close to the centers relevant to the industry in question. However, across all industries companies struggle to find enough talent.
- sebow 3y agoWrote a little 300 word essay on this, and I was prepared to add the comment until i realized it does not really matter. The situaton(or at least my opinion/response) can be explained in a simple phrase: Good, 10-20 years of failed policies get you this. Especially everything post 2015. Not 'happy' per se at this analysis/realization, but the fact is that Germany and Europe (or at least the western big european powers, wink) reaped what they sow: detrimental policies NOT willed by the european citizens.
- hansoolo 3y agoAm I allowed to make an assumption? Chinas biggest advantage over anyone are their industrial spies. China has been unseen in the early 2000s, but they sucked up everything they could! I think the rebuilding Neuschwanstein in China should have been a huge warning sign then. After that they just used their brightest people (and they have a lot!) to spy on every piece of technology they can. How could they have become so big so fast? German IT infrastructure made it easy to go everywhere and just grab what they wanted... And now we are whining about their technologic advantage.
- amai 3y ago“…Chancellor Angela Merkel once said, “I think of airtight windows. No other country can build as airtight and as beautiful windows.”“ That is still true. Quality of houses and apartments in Germany is incredibly high compared to the rest of the world.
- amai 3y agoThe price of electricity has been falling in Germany since the beginning of the year, the share of renewable energies in the electricity supply has risen > 65%. The level of gas storage is 20% higher than in recent years, even though there is no more gas flowing from Russia. Nevertheless, the price of gas and heating oil is falling in Germany. It seems to me that the catastrophic news regarding energy blackout etc. in Germany of the last year were slightly exaggerated. But some people like the author of that article haven’t noticed that, yet. https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/energiemonitor-deutschland-gaspreis-spritpreis-energieversorgung https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/energiemonitor-deutschland-ga...