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Why Germany Still Has So Many Middle-Class Manufacturing Jobs

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Re: Why Germany Still Has So Many Middle-Class Manufacturing Jobs

#51

Post by jowiar »

easilyBored wrote: post #38
CPLX wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to hedge, that comment about inheritance tax is literally ridiculous and completely unsupported. The idea that the US has a problem with too little accumulation of intergenerational wealth is patent nonsense.

The idea that the US has a problem with too little accumulation of intergenerational wealth is patent nonsense. This is different from parent leaving you stock and bonds. Father dies, leaves company that makes engines to son and $50 million in cash because he has invested most in his company. IRS+State: son, you owe us half+ of what your father left you, or $1.1 Billion. If he borrows half of company's worth that's n…

The problem with your proposal is that if you slash the inheritance tax, you don't need a trust to pass the wealth down across generations. The whole point of a trust is to avoid multiple halvings. By lowering the inheritance tax to 10%, the money makes it several generations down before even getting halved once.

Re: Why Germany Still Has So Many Middle-Class Manufacturing Jobs

#52

Post by sverige »

mtempm wrote: post #43
educar wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a similar anecdote except the German in my story fixed the tap himself! I was squarely impressed with the skills an average German has.

This is so German actually. I've been living in Australia the past year (which has a lot of Germans) and twice I helped someone change a flat tyre. Both times a German also came to assist, and both times it was an American who didnt know how to change a flat (there arent that many of them in Aus).

As an American with some German ancestry, I find this to be very embarrassing. (The Swedes in my family can all change a tire as well, including my sister, but the German side is embarrassed.)

Americans have become complacent and lazy, with no sense of "know how" or "make do." Hell, kids don't even know how to clean and cook a rabbit, let alone how to catch one with a snare. If the zombie apocalypse ever happened for real, The Walking Dead wouldn't last a full season. Everyone would starve to death.

Re: Why Germany Still Has So Many Middle-Class Manufacturing Jobs

#53

Post by kodfodrasz »

sverige wrote: post #52
mtempm wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so German actually. I've been living in Australia the past year (which has a lot of Germans) and twice I helped someone change a flat tyre. Both times a German also came to assist, and both times it was an American who didnt know how to change a flat (there arent that many of them in Aus).

As an American with some German ancestry, I find this to be very embarrassing. (The Swedes in my family can all change a tire as well, including my sister, but the German side is embarrassed.) Americans have become complacent and lazy, with no sense of "know how" or "make do." Hell, kids don't even know how to clean and cook a rabbit, let alone how to catch one with a snare. If the zombie apocalypse ever happened for…

Would you risk eating a "zombie rabbit"? :)

Re: Why Germany Still Has So Many Middle-Class Manufacturing Jobs

#54

Post by sjg007 »

eksemplar wrote: post #49
lacampbell wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've often idly wondered if you could do Software Development as an apprenticeship. Use industry tools in your work day, and theoretical computer science at night schools/block courses.

You could. The majority of software development isn't science it's craftsmanship and often good business skills make more value than something like calculus or linear algebra. Not for people inventing new stuff or pushing boundaries, but for the horde of developers who are copy pasting, google programming and writing classic ASP every day.

It sucks right. It'd be nice to compute things or design data storage or something.

Re: Why Germany Still Has So Many Middle-Class Manufacturing Jobs

#55

Post by therealdrag0 »

mcthorogood wrote: post #10

The HBR article cites the high inheritance tax in the U.S. as reason for the low number of middle class jobs. But, to the contrary, today the inheritance tax in the U.S. is lower than in Germany.

I didn't really understand that point? Is the claim that if there was no inheritance tax, a family would accumulate enough money to start a mid-sized business? Or is the ownership of a business taxed upon death?

Re: Why Germany Still Has So Many Middle-Class Manufacturing Jobs

#56

Post by skolos »

mtempm wrote: post #43
educar wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a similar anecdote except the German in my story fixed the tap himself! I was squarely impressed with the skills an average German has.

This is so German actually. I've been living in Australia the past year (which has a lot of Germans) and twice I helped someone change a flat tyre. Both times a German also came to assist, and both times it was an American who didnt know how to change a flat (there arent that many of them in Aus).

People go too far with generalizations. I teach my kids not to judge people by nationality, gender or race. My German wife doesn't know how to change tire. These are nice anecdotes though.

Re: Why Germany Still Has So Many Middle-Class Manufacturing Jobs

#57

Post by binarray2000 »

everybodyknows wrote: post #45
KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #21

The article asks why there are so many successful mid-size companies in Germany, and it lists reasons such as continuity of leadership, scientific competencies, system of apprenticeships and others. I don't see how this answers the question in the title. How does the school of mathematics of the University of Goettingen help make German factory workers competitive with Chinese ones? Why aren't these companies moving…

Wage suppression. Seen most obviously by simple comparison to other Eurozone states: http://fortune.com/2014/10/22/why-germany-is-the-eurozones-b... This is not something Germans -- such as apparently the author of OP -- like to talk about.

To add to less talked about downsides of the "German boom": Wage suppression has caused the fact that Germany has the largest low-wage sector in Europe.

An article in English:

http://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=18499

> The share of low-wage workers (less than 2/3 of the median hourly wage) rose from 17.7% in 1995 to 23.1% of all workers in 2010. The number of low-wage workers increased from 5.6 million in 1995 to 7.9 million in 2010.

Another article, from Süddeutscher Zeitung, in German:

http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/bremse-fuer-die-wirtsc...

Re: Why Germany Still Has So Many Middle-Class Manufacturing Jobs

#58

Post by stephen_g »

apo wrote: post #8

I was surprised the article didn't mention the euro, specifically how Germany gets to denominate its goods in a cheap currency that doesn't fully reflect its strong fiscal policies.

This is a huge thing - Germany couldn't run its huge trade surplus without its currency appreciating and reducing its competitiveness otherwise. It's a pretty bad deal for the consumption-based Eurozone economies though - they have to internally devalue instead of just being able to devalue their exchange rate.

It's one of the major problems with the Euro... It was a terrible idea from the start, and situations like Greece were foreseen by economists like the great Wynne Godley decades ago (see Maastricht and All That, London Review of Books, Oct 1992). Unfortunately the mainstream of economics still doesn't have a developed enough understanding of monetary systems to have worked that out yet...

Re: Why Germany Still Has So Many Middle-Class Manufacturing Jobs

#59

Post by vacri »

easilyBored wrote: post #38
CPLX wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to hedge, that comment about inheritance tax is literally ridiculous and completely unsupported. The idea that the US has a problem with too little accumulation of intergenerational wealth is patent nonsense.

The idea that the US has a problem with too little accumulation of intergenerational wealth is patent nonsense. This is different from parent leaving you stock and bonds. Father dies, leaves company that makes engines to son and $50 million in cash because he has invested most in his company. IRS+State: son, you owe us half+ of what your father left you, or $1.1 Billion. If he borrows half of company's worth that's n…

I find it funny just how much public mindshare the Estate Tax gets in the US: "only the largest 0.2% of estates in the US will have to pay any estate tax"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estate_tax_in_the_United_State...

The estate tax is there to stop (or at least slow) the systemic rise of a new monied aristocracy. In any case, if you want to leave loads of money to your kids, the answer is "don't wait until you die", because you can give them a huge chunk each year before seeing that tax.

> I'd look to lower the inheritance to children to say 10% and abolish trusts that fund generations of lazy, spoiled brats living from their great-great-grandfather's money.

How would giving them the money directly instead of via a trust fund stop that behaviour?

Re: Why Germany Still Has So Many Middle-Class Manufacturing Jobs

#60

Post by sleepingeights »

panzer_wyrm wrote: post #7
lightedman wrote: post #5

Because German engineering is world-renowned. This much has been known for a good long while. You can take a German bearing of 'low quality' vs. a Chinese bearing of 'high quality' and easily tell that the German bearing is far superior. It only makes sense such engineering capability would result in a lot of manufacturing work in the middle-class range.

And the reason that this is true is because Germany protect those jobs and values people that mastered their craft. Which are the valued blue collar jobs in US - doctor, chef, programmer and lawyer. That's it.

The US only values lawyers.

Doctors, programmers, chefs are significantly imported from other countries... particularly India and China.

Over 50% of the doctors and specialists visited by myself and friends were Indians. Also, over 50% of the highly skilled software personnel and upper management I worked with were Indians.

* However, none of the lawyers were imported. The position coveted by the US is simply lawyer. A friend of mine had a father who was educated as a lawyer in the country he immigrated from and is one of the poorest person I know. Shame, had they been educated as a doctor or software engineer, then they and their adult-son would not have found poverty as quickly if at all.

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