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Germany Is Losing Its Mojo. Finding It Again Won’t Be Easy
- archo 3y agohttps://archive.is/xOl9t https://archive.is/xOl9t
- benterix 3y agoI'm always wondering who is writing these articles about Germany and why. They criticize Europe in general, but the main focus seems to be on Germany.
- Maakuth 3y agoGermany is the biggest economy inside the EU and they've been fairly competitive globally so far. Also they've made some pretty unique political decisions, such as the nuclear phase-out.
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- ExoticPearTree 3y ago> Also they've made some pretty unique political decisions, such as the nuclear phase-out. They shot themselves in the foot in knee-jerk reaction to what happened in Fukushima. Nuclear is clean energy. All the scare mongering is done by hippies who think that somehow wind turbines and solar panels are made out of thin air and don't pollute.
- EspressoGPT 3y agoBecause the green party in the government abides by their ideology instead of pragmatism and retaining wealth.
- mr_mitm 3y agoIt was the conservative party, CDU, who made the decision after Fukushima to shut down nuclear power.
- ffhhttt 3y agoIt was the Social Democrats and the Greens back in 1998 who decided to stop all nuclear development and close all the existing plants over the next 10-20 years. Nuclear was already long doomed by the time Fukushima happened
- Phil_Latio 3y agoAnd the greens would have done it even sooner or could have stopped it now...
- mr_mitm 3y agoYes, would have, but let's not pretend it's now entirely the green's fault that we now don't have nuclear power, which the comment I replied to did. They could have prolonged the life of only three power plants for a limited amount of time. Going back to nuclear now is a decision that should have been made decades ago, when CDU was ruling.
- EspressoGPT 3y agoAnd it is now being enforced by the green party at the worst time since Fukushima – a period of very expensive and scarce energy – for idealogical reasons.
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- BurningPenguin 3y ago
- unglaublich 3y agoNuclear is like airplanes: they look the scariest, but are statistically the safest.
- Gasp0de 3y agoAnd when they blow up, half of Germany can not be inhabited anymore. Germany is small and extremely densely populated. You can not compare it to the US where nuclear plants are in the middle of nowhere.
- ExoticPearTree 3y agoExcept they don’t. Othwerise France would have been a wasteland by now usimg this reasoning. We, as in the world, have enough experience with nuclear reactors to build safe ones.
- Gasp0de 3y agoThen why wasn't Fukushima safe? Was the experience only gathered afterwards? What knowledge was missing in 2011?
- BurningPenguin 3y ago> who think that somehow wind turbines and solar panels are made out of thin air and don't pollute. Nobody thinks that.
- samtho 3y agoOne of the problems is that solar and wind are being billed as a drop in replacement for gigawatt-scale electricity production, when in reality it’s likely going to find it place at the micro level to help alleviate the load and cost in smaller settings. The problem with energy is rarely the source (we can derive energy out of most anything that moves, heats, or shines), but the storage. Coal, natural gas, and nuclear are gigawatt-scale producers of energy because we can ramp up production at any time by simply shoveling more of our stockpile of fuel into the proverbial furnace. We can predict when solar or wind will give us power, but this is cold comfort if we need it now and it’s not windy or dark. This is why I’m bullish with hydrogen because it offers a way to store energy chemically that does not wear out like a battery and operates at 40-60% efficiency vs sub-25% for combination-driven power generation.
- Gasp0de 3y agoFuel cells and electrolyzation devices also wear out.
- karmakurtisaani 3y agoWell, there are things like universal health care and strong worker's rights in Europe, so you can't really let people think too positively about it. At least, that's what the cynic in me thinks.
- rnd0 3y agoYou're not wrong.
- localplume 3y ago[dead]
- carschno 3y agoThe scary thing is: worker's rights in Europe, notably including Germany, have been crushed in the last two to three decades. The remainders are just still relatively strong, compared to the rest of the world; including the largest economies, USA and China.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago>The scary thing is: worker's rights in Europe, notably including Germany, have been crushed in the last two to three decades. Schröder's infamous Agenda 2010[1] that sought to crush unions power, workers rights and welfare programs, in order to force more Germans off welfare and taking poverty wages to pump up the economy. It pumped up the economy indeed but it didn't have the promised effect of increasing wages of living standards, quite the opposite, the rich got richer and the poor were poorer. When they ran out of poor Germans to exploit, they turned to Eastern EU workers form Poland and Romania. As those markets are drying up of cheap exploitable labor as well, they invited workers from Africa and the Middle east to make dangerous journeys to come to Germany, hence Merkel's Germany's famous open borders "Willkommenskultur", despite backlash from other Schengen and EU members who's borders and asylum centers got overwhelmed. The unpopular opinion that nobody is allowed to discuss is the country is unsustainably addicted to cheap immigrant labor for its exports to be competitive and to prop its over-inflated housing market. It's burning the economic candle at both ends to pump up the GDP. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_2010 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_2010
- throwaway4good 3y agoSpooks.
- throwaway4good 3y agoSo under the cold war Germany was the main battle ground. Both Russia and the US setup massive spying and influence operations there. In particular journalism and foreign correspodence were perfect for this. After the Berlin wall fell, Russia dismantled its spook apparatus. The Americans kept theirs intact. Now that the real business of journalism is smaller than ever. The spooks have an even higher weight than they used to. So what is WSJ pushing? In short the Washington line: Don't invest in Germany. They are too reliant on China and Russia. Ultimately they will have to do what we have done - implement protectionist subsidies like the IRA, expand military spending, and run massive fiscal deficits.
- dv_dt 3y agoIn general if you see criticism in US media of economic conditions of other nations, you’ll have to do extra research to see if it’s more wish fulfillment than facts.
- ffhhttt 3y agoNot sure US media is somehow significantly worse at this (assuming we’re talking about at least somewhat semi legitimate news outlets)
- dv_dt 3y agoWSJ is US media, but ad a certain us business slat and more recently is now owned by a world wide media magnate Murdoch whose bias in owned outlets is also renowned. So while wsj is “legitimate”, one need to look past the labels of legit/non-legit as there is context for everything.
- ffhhttt 3y ago> WSJ is US media Yeah but I don’t see how could I disagree with this article too much. > whose bias in owned outlets is also renowned I’m not sure. High degree of bias seems to be the standard (with a few exceptions) regardless of ownership.
- worklaptopacct 3y agoThe recurring accusation is that paper and fax is king. And as a Polish immigrant, I find this true. I can do most of the bureaucracy online for the Polish state and it's not the case in Germany. In turn, the lengthy path has its end; in my home country, you can be chased by the authorities in circles, because there's never a way to be 100% compliant with the law.
- ant6n 3y agoI started a company in Germany recently, which is like a 29 step 3 month process that costs around 1000€. I’m trying to get some seed funding support from the government, because seed investing from angels in Germany is weird (odd angel rounds with multiple angels, who require the company to have revenue already but also true innovation but also want a high percentage of the company). Anyway, there’s lots of funding programs, which on paper is a great offset for the lack of risk and venture spirit. But the programs are all Byzantine in their requirements, long applications, small print in their rules which exclude you etc. For one application of a R/D program for small companies, which is done in a smart acrobat pdf (wow), on the cover page, it asks for the company stamp. What is a company stamp? I’m not quite sure, it doesn’t seem to be a legally required thing. It’s just a ink stamp with the company name and some basic info, that you can stamp paper documents with to make them appear more official. So I spent another 25€ to get a company stamp and ink pillow for my startup. Another startup expense, and strangely representative of the entrepreneurial experience in Germany overall.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago>and strangely representative of the entrepreneurial experience in Germany overall Not if you're in the German "company stamp business". :)
- martin_a 3y ago> I started a company in Germany recently, which is like a 29 step 3 month process that costs around 1000€. To put this in perspective: You can also start a company in Germany for 30 Euro and 15 minutes of time. That's a so called "Kleingewerbe" where you can make up to 22.000 Euro/year turnaround with _much_ easier regulations on pretty much everything. If you want to test something or have some side hustle going on, that's the way to go. Don't be scared by all the reports like the above.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago>but the main focus seems to be on Germany Because it's EU's beigest economy and saw the biggest economic drop in the block due to its poor political decisions on over-reliance on cheap Russian gas and cheap labor to maintain competitive exports. It's not some conspiracy, but genuine concern that if EU's richest country is struggling, the rest of the EU members will bear some of the fallout too. Whether we like it or not Germany has always been the benchmark in Europe. If the Danish or Austrian economy would drop by 0.5% probably nobody would care, but if the EU's richest members like Germany and France were to do that then it's more concerning for everyone. That's why Germany pops up a lot because it's a very important member of the block.
- Keyframe 3y agoPretty much. Germany and France are engines of EU
- c4mpute 3y agoNot to forget ever-rising sky-high energy prices due to a premature end of coal and nuclear, and a distinct lack of energy storage for renewables.
- fnord123 3y agoThe end of coal is not pre-mature.
- Waterluvian 3y agoClimate change is, in a sense, a massive store of value that you can take from without the consent of those who pay. Which makes it very hard for economics-minded thinking to overlook as a lazy way to thrive.
- c4mpute 3y agoThe end of coal is premature if your only other GW-scale energy source, nuclear, is being phased out at the same time, and you don't even have a replacement planned.
- ulrischa 3y agoGermany bashing is always working in the media
- nottheengineer 3y agoBecause germany is on a very slippery slope. Our politicians are occupied with idiotic things like tearing down nuclear power plants before the coal ones and the economy is going downhill. If nothing changes and the job market stays as bad as it is, I'll seriously consider moving to a different country.
- Gasp0de 3y agoThe economy is not going downhill, its stagnating. And this is due to the dependency on cheap russian gas that the conservative party somehow thought was a great idea. The decision to phase out of nuclear was good, as import of nuclear fuel has similar problems as the import of fossil gas. Additionally, there is the nuclear waste problem and the risk of a major reactor catastrophe which would make Germany uninhabitable. It is debatable whether this should have been done after coal phase out, but this decision has been made by CDU in 2013 and is currently not reversible anymore. There is no fuel, no functioning reactors and no companies willing to operate any reactor and no insurance willing to insure them.
- jonp888 3y agoI don't know how much this is present in US culture, but in the UK the prospect "beating" Germany in any form makes politicians and media outlets of a more nationalistic bent very excited indeed. That they are also very fond of references to Britain's "finest hour" in World War II probably gives away the reason why. It probably also helps that Germany has the kind of onshore manufacturing economy coveted by those same people(even if this is now turning into a problem) whereas the UK is actually more service orientated. There is no football match that an English football fan will more willingly talk about than Germany's 5-1 home defeat against England during the 2002 World Cup qualifiers!
- rob74 3y agoThe article lost me right from the outset: > Two decades ago, Germany revived its moribund economy and became a manufacturing powerhouse of an era of globalization. If they're referring to Gerhard Schröder's "Hartz reforms" in which the social state was slashed while (oh, the irony) the Social Democrats were governing, I'm sure the WSJ applauded those, and maybe they increased Germany's international competitiveness a bit, but to say that Germany's economy was "moribund" (i.e. on its deathbed) is a bit of an exaggeration. My take on the current situation: companies don't like it if anyone other than the conservatives is in power, so they are careful with investments. Plus the global situation is still unstable, interest rates have risen, and German companies are notoriously cautious - one more reason to hold back investments. Add to that the lack of qualified personnel - despite its "recession", Germany currently has record low unemployment.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago>Add to that the lack of qualified personnel - despite its "recession", Germany currently has record low unemployment "Lack of qualified personnel" is just double-speak corporate propaganda for over-abundance of poor paying jobs that nobody wants. And record low unemployment means nothing. You can always drop unemployment by raising the cost of living (current situation) and cutting welfare programs, meaning people will be forced to take any shit job they can find just to stay afloat and boom, you have record low unemployment. IMHO, a healthy economy should always have some unemployment because there's always a glut of shit jobs that ideally should stay vacant because they have poor conditions and pay, but the west's dirty secret is grey area migration which helps keep those shit jobs going.
- rob74 3y agoEr, no, I live in Germany and can confirm that there are actual problems finding personnel for, let's not call them "shit jobs", but jobs with a combination of low pay/high stress/bad working times like nursing home/hospital staff, waiters, bus/train drivers etc.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
- dr_dshiv 3y agoThe motivating data point for the whole story: > Germany will be the world’s only major economy to contract in 2023, with even sanctioned Russia experiencing growth, according to the International Monetary Fund.
- carlmr 3y agoHow did they measure Russian growth? Compared to last year where they had a huge drop? By official numbers? I think they just like to use the numbers that fit their narrative.
- hammon 3y ago[dead]
- taylorius 3y agoGermany relies on so much natural gas for manufacturing (not just for energy, but as a raw material for chemical processing). At the very least though, they should build a few state of the art nuclear power plants. Their obsession with renewable energy is crippling them in this age of high natural gas prices.
- Gasp0de 3y agoBuilding nuclear plants takes forever and Germany has no reliable fuel source. Even Sweden is rowing back from their plan to build 10 new nuclear reactors.
- hnbad 3y agoCan't see the full article text because I'm not going to pay for Bezos' opinion rag and the archive link isn't working for me right now but it's certainly a choice to single out Germany in the middle of the second year (fourth if you consider the pandemic as the beginning of it rather than the invasion of Ukraine, which removed Russia as one of the most important trading partners) of an ongoing global recession and open it by suggesting it's the government's fault. While it's true that the coalition is weak, that is largely the result of the logical third partner, the party Die Linke having self-sabotaged itself during the election season and feeding into the US-style smear campaign of the German right against the Greens (case in point: the most widely read German newspaper, Bild, and its more white-collar sister newspaper Die Welt routinely single out Green politicians due to the obvious political leaning of its owner, Axel Springer). The only remaining potential partners would have been the Christian Union, which we'd been stuck with for 16 years at that point, or the neoliberal FDP, which on paper looked like a perfect match but chickened out of literally the same coalition four years prior after being told that being in a coalition means making compromises. So the result existed on a knife's edge since the start and has basically been held hostage by the FDP, which chickened out of most of its progressive campaign promises that would have aligned them with the other two (even the self-ID law in its final draft is a far cry from what was promised and the cannabis legalization is going to be extremely conservative if it happens at all). Meanwhile the government has to deliver on the various commitments made by the previous government. Angela Merkel, while apparently seen as a progressive internationally, was best known for being static: her biggest accomplishments during the Eurocrisis and the "migration crisis" were seen to be her reluctance to act quickly and instead be extremely reluctant and measured in any response. This worked fine for the most part (while of course resulting on a lot of missed opportunities: the conservative Union led government all but abolished subsidies on solar, killing off the nascent renewable energy industry that had sprung up after these subsidies were launched by a red-green coalition several years prior). However during the early months of the pandemic, her measured and science-based approach (she famously holds a degree in physical chemistry) was at odds with the federal and state-level demands for action while at the same time state-level leaders of her party were using the opportunity to position themselves as her successor when it became clear she didn't want to run for office again. One such example of delivering on the previous government's promises is the action on climate change: the previous government committed to goals that can not be reached without significant changes to cut down on emmissions, but any change to do this is portrayed as Green zealotry. So we're now headed to meet only 98% of the goals (which were already much lower than what scientific consensus says is necessary) but the public impression is that the government is going overboard and giving the Greens free reign. Meanwhile the conservative Union is publicly flirting with the right-wing AfD and enjoying not being in the driver seat this time. For the record, I don't even like the Green party but they're being used as the scapegoat for the coalition government trying to do the bare minimum (i.e. meeting the goals set by the conservative coalition preceding it) while constantly having to make concessions to the neoliberal FDP (which has no problem publicly airing its grievances). So what I'm trying to say is that the economy in Germany isn't stagnating because of the government but because of the global ongoing recession and that the government isn't "weak" because of something it can fix but because of right-wing populism (which much like elsewhere was sent into overdrive during the first year of the pandemic) and having to rely on an unwilling coalition partner constantly threatening to ruin everything if it doesn't get its way. Just focussing on a "strong government" as the solution to this didn't end well last time we had an unstable government during an economic crisis (hint: that was nearly a hundred years ago, you may have read about it in a history book). EDIT: Another FDP-ism worth mentioning is that the center-left SPD and the Greens would be fine with raising taxes to pay for subsidies and improving social welfare programmes while the FDP neither wants taxes to be raised nor additional debt to be accrued, effectively insisting on austerity (which as previously linked on HN is scientifically proven to be detrimental to a country's stability and economic well-being but usually involves wages decreasing and public services being privatized, i.e. sold off to big corporations and wealthy investors).
- badcppdev 3y agoI can't read the article due to the Pay Wall but I'd like to ask if it covered the fact that in Germany life expectancy is going up [0] and infant mortality is going down [1]? I know I've just cherry picked two statistics there and please don't compare to other countries because it's very hard to do an apples to apples comparison. But my point is that any article or new sources that concentrates on money as the measure of success for a country might be coming from a (very common) point of view which maybe doesn't look at what's actually important in the world. 0 - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041098/life-expectancy-germany-all-time/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041098/life-expectancy-... 1 - https://www.statista.com/statistics/806915/infant-mortality-in-germany/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/806915/infant-mortality-...
- DueDilligence 3y ago[dead]
- pelasaco 3y agoNot sure why this was flagged? Maybe people don't agree with the content, but why flagging it?