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> cleared of inflation energy costs are lower than 2013, 12 years ago This is not the argument you want to make. Energy prices are a significant component of t

> cleared of inflation energy costs are lower than 2013, 12 years ago This is not the argument you want to make. Energy prices are a significant component of the basket used to measure inflation. Like yeah, you expect energy prices to sink if you discount for the rise of energy prices. Germany is suffering from high energy prices its the key factor why the country has been stagnating economically for the past 6 years.

toomuchtodo 10mo ago
Their energy prices are an outcome of incompetence, having tied their energy prices to Russia and a gas supply from them. In hindsight, economic diplomacy is not the path to keeping an authoritarian in check; a strong military and energy independence is. German energy prices will decline with battery storage and more renewables pushing out the last of their coal and fossil gas generation. Should’ve kept the old nuclear generators running too, as long as possible. Alas, a lesson they’ve learned.
- ViewTrick1002 10mo ago
  I think this take is too shallow, and based on hindsight. Germany has had fossil gas ties to Russia since the Soviet time. https://dw.com/en/russian-gas-in-germany-a-complicated-50-year-relationship/a-61057166 https://dw.com/en/russian-gas-in-germany-a-complicated-50-ye... When the iron curtain fell pretty much all of Central Europe liberalized and democratized. The sole exceptions being Belarus and Russia. Thinking they wouldn’t choose the same path is revisionist. I remember growing up and gaming online thinking of Russians as nothing strange compared to anyone else. This changed with first Georgia and then very much Crimea.
  - toomuchtodo 10mo ago
    ‘We were all wrong’: how Germany got hooked on Russian energy - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/02/germany-dependence-russian-energy-gas-oil-nord-stream https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/02/germany-depend... - June 2nd, 2022 > An arrangement that began as a peacetime opening to a former foe has turned into an instrument of aggression. Germany is now funding Russia’s war. In the first two months after the start of Russia’s assault on Ukraine, Germany is estimated to have paid nearly €8.3bn for Russian energy – money used by Moscow to prop up the rouble and buy the artillery shells firing at Ukrainian positions in Donetsk. In that time, EU countries are estimated to have paid a total of €39bn for Russian energy, more than double the sum they have given to help Ukraine defend itself. The irony is painful. “For thirty years, Germans lectured Ukrainians about fascism,” the historian Timothy Snyder wrote recently. “When fascism actually arrived, Germans funded it, and Ukrainians died fighting it.” > When Putin invaded Ukraine in February, Germany faced a particular problem. Its rejection of nuclear power and its transition away from coal meant that Germany had very few alternatives to Russian gas. Berlin has been forced to accept that it was a cataclysmic error to have made itself so dependent on Russian energy – whatever the motives behind it. The foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, says Germany failed to listen to the warnings from countries that had once suffered under Russia’s occupation, such as Poland and the Baltic states. For Norbert Röttgen, a former environment minister and member of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrat Union (CDU), the German government bowed to industry forces pressing for cheap gas “all too easily”, while “completely ignoring the geopolitical risks”. > In February this year, German Green economic affairs and climate action minister Robert Habeck said that gas storage facilities owned by Gazprom in Germany had been “systematically emptied” over the winter, to drive up prices and exert political pressure. It was a staggering admission of Russia’s power to disrupt energy supplies. > “I was wrong,” the former German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, says, simply. “We were all wrong.” We win or we learn.
    - lysace 10mo ago
      See also: Gazprom, Gerhard Schröder (”Putin’s man in Germany” according to NYT) and the German nuclear power shutdown. https://atomicinsights.com/gazprom-profiting-mightily-from-german-nuclear-exit/ https://atomicinsights.com/gazprom-profiting-mightily-from-g... https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/23/world/europe/schroder-germany-russia-gas-ukraine-war-energy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/23/world/europe/schroder-ger...
    - jack_tripper 10mo ago
      >> “I was wrong,” the former German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, says, simply. “We were all wrong.” So when are they retroactively giving back their salaries and pensions for having fucked up the livelihoods of their taxpayers? Politicians have no incentive to ever make good decisions for the future of their country without any skin in the game from which their personal riches are derived. >We win or we learn. Jensen Huang said that failure is learning but sometimes failure is just failure and you should know when to cut your losses before the failure goes from learning to bankruptcy. And Germany did far more failure than actually learning.
      - ben_w 10mo ago
        > So when are they retroactively giving back their salaries and pensions for having fucked up the livelihoods of their taxpayers? Does anyone, ever, in any role, do this? Do CEOs return their bonuses and pay and pensions when they close a business, let alone when they cut the workforce, let alone when they miss the growth of a competitor that is currently still not a direct threat and is instead fighting a battle of attrition with friend of the CEO and would only become a threat if they can take that friend's resources without the attrition destroying everything of value? > Politicians have no incentive to ever make good decisions for the future of their country without any skin in the game from which their personal riches are derived. The penalty for most errors in politics is the same as the penalty in any other job: you lose the job. Most errors, because the really bad errors get you killed, either by an angry mob or by an invading army or by special forces (who may be from the latter while pretending to be the former).
    - braincat31415 10mo ago
  - Gibbon1 10mo ago
    > Thinking they wouldn’t choose the same path is revisionist. Societies tend to not change how things work no matter who is in charge.
    - pyrale 10mo ago
      That is a myopic view of history. Just look around yourself. No society is comparable to what it was 10 years ago, 20 years ago, etc, in any country. If you think nothing changed in a society, you're just poorly informed.

toomuchtodo 10mo ago

Their energy prices are an outcome of incompetence, having tied their energy prices to Russia and a gas supply from them. In hindsight, economic diplomacy is not the path to keeping an authoritarian in check; a strong military and energy independence is. German energy prices will decline with battery storage and more renewables pushing out the last of their coal and fossil gas generation. Should’ve kept the old nuclear generators running too, as long as possible. Alas, a lesson they’ve learned.

ViewTrick1002 10mo ago
I think this take is too shallow, and based on hindsight. Germany has had fossil gas ties to Russia since the Soviet time. https://dw.com/en/russian-gas-in-germany-a-complicated-50-year-relationship/a-61057166 https://dw.com/en/russian-gas-in-germany-a-complicated-50-ye... When the iron curtain fell pretty much all of Central Europe liberalized and democratized. The sole exceptions being Belarus and Russia. Thinking they wouldn’t choose the same path is revisionist. I remember growing up and gaming online thinking of Russians as nothing strange compared to anyone else. This changed with first Georgia and then very much Crimea.
- toomuchtodo 10mo ago
  ‘We were all wrong’: how Germany got hooked on Russian energy - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/02/germany-dependence-russian-energy-gas-oil-nord-stream https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/02/germany-depend... - June 2nd, 2022 > An arrangement that began as a peacetime opening to a former foe has turned into an instrument of aggression. Germany is now funding Russia’s war. In the first two months after the start of Russia’s assault on Ukraine, Germany is estimated to have paid nearly €8.3bn for Russian energy – money used by Moscow to prop up the rouble and buy the artillery shells firing at Ukrainian positions in Donetsk. In that time, EU countries are estimated to have paid a total of €39bn for Russian energy, more than double the sum they have given to help Ukraine defend itself. The irony is painful. “For thirty years, Germans lectured Ukrainians about fascism,” the historian Timothy Snyder wrote recently. “When fascism actually arrived, Germans funded it, and Ukrainians died fighting it.” > When Putin invaded Ukraine in February, Germany faced a particular problem. Its rejection of nuclear power and its transition away from coal meant that Germany had very few alternatives to Russian gas. Berlin has been forced to accept that it was a cataclysmic error to have made itself so dependent on Russian energy – whatever the motives behind it. The foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, says Germany failed to listen to the warnings from countries that had once suffered under Russia’s occupation, such as Poland and the Baltic states. For Norbert Röttgen, a former environment minister and member of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrat Union (CDU), the German government bowed to industry forces pressing for cheap gas “all too easily”, while “completely ignoring the geopolitical risks”. > In February this year, German Green economic affairs and climate action minister Robert Habeck said that gas storage facilities owned by Gazprom in Germany had been “systematically emptied” over the winter, to drive up prices and exert political pressure. It was a staggering admission of Russia’s power to disrupt energy supplies. > “I was wrong,” the former German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, says, simply. “We were all wrong.” We win or we learn.
  - lysace 10mo ago
    See also: Gazprom, Gerhard Schröder (”Putin’s man in Germany” according to NYT) and the German nuclear power shutdown. https://atomicinsights.com/gazprom-profiting-mightily-from-german-nuclear-exit/ https://atomicinsights.com/gazprom-profiting-mightily-from-g... https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/23/world/europe/schroder-germany-russia-gas-ukraine-war-energy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/23/world/europe/schroder-ger...
  - jack_tripper 10mo ago
    >> “I was wrong,” the former German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, says, simply. “We were all wrong.” So when are they retroactively giving back their salaries and pensions for having fucked up the livelihoods of their taxpayers? Politicians have no incentive to ever make good decisions for the future of their country without any skin in the game from which their personal riches are derived. >We win or we learn. Jensen Huang said that failure is learning but sometimes failure is just failure and you should know when to cut your losses before the failure goes from learning to bankruptcy. And Germany did far more failure than actually learning.
    - ben_w 10mo ago
      > So when are they retroactively giving back their salaries and pensions for having fucked up the livelihoods of their taxpayers? Does anyone, ever, in any role, do this? Do CEOs return their bonuses and pay and pensions when they close a business, let alone when they cut the workforce, let alone when they miss the growth of a competitor that is currently still not a direct threat and is instead fighting a battle of attrition with friend of the CEO and would only become a threat if they can take that friend's resources without the attrition destroying everything of value? > Politicians have no incentive to ever make good decisions for the future of their country without any skin in the game from which their personal riches are derived. The penalty for most errors in politics is the same as the penalty in any other job: you lose the job. Most errors, because the really bad errors get you killed, either by an angry mob or by an invading army or by special forces (who may be from the latter while pretending to be the former).
  - braincat31415 10mo ago
- Gibbon1 10mo ago
  > Thinking they wouldn’t choose the same path is revisionist. Societies tend to not change how things work no matter who is in charge.
  - pyrale 10mo ago
    That is a myopic view of history. Just look around yourself. No society is comparable to what it was 10 years ago, 20 years ago, etc, in any country. If you think nothing changed in a society, you're just poorly informed.