221–230 of 348 posts
Btw I'm germany hater. Fking nazis team up with russia to fuck europe again.
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The important question is: Does Narnia have the money, or is it willing to spend, double the amount on your product? Maybe they will just buy half, because their budget is fixed. That's the point you are missing.
....I fail to understand the relevance of what you're saying. A desirable good is still less value/money if the money cost increases. That's what we've been discussing in this thread. Now you're changing other variables?
The direct, immediate price effect is exactly as you describe but at least in the medium term it's also affected to a significant (and perhaps even larger) extent by (a) the major macroeconomic factors that caused the Narnian gold pieces to devaluate w.r.t USD; (b) the changes to the income and global purchasing power of Narnian people caused by that devaluation; (c) the long-term changes to the widget trade and competition; and a bunch of other ripple effects; so the effective price to them won't double; it might increase somewhat (but much less than double), and it might even decrease within a reasonable time if that devaluation fixes some underlying structural economic problem and thus their income; It's quite likely that the devaluation was caused by systematic factors that screwed (temporarily) their productivity and income; so large changes in exchange rate don't happen just because.
The most un-understandable thing is that none of this export wealth reaches an individual, especially a guest worker, a foreigner. It's quite shocking to discover by a foreigner specialist lured to the country by the multitude of positive economic news. Cost-cutting and exorbitant charges and contributions everywhere. The entire export wealth is captured by the oligarch families and the highest level executive caste.
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Indeed, expats are lured here thinking Germany is the Promised Land but realize too late that they can't afford to buy a family worthy home on your average white collar wage and due to how German corporate politics work, most of the non-natives are locked out of the lucrative careers even when speaking the language. Like someone said, Germany is a rich country of poor people.
> Germany is a rich country of poor people I suspect something similar happens across the border in Switzerland. I visited the French part of it a couple of times about 3 years ago and I was surprised how crowded the second-hand clothes stores in downtown Lausanne were (and the fact that there were any SH stores in that area at all). Also, looking at the prices in there and unless there’s some hidden UBI system up an…
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Was half way through your post when I was about to write my comment about hidden champions,glad you mentioned it. This is something that tends to be overlooked quite often. Very very few countries have a model like this.Take the UK, as an example.An average town or even small city rarely has anything that isn't just for local market. For a lot of companies it's kind of fine,as the market is big enough to earn comfy l…
It's absolutely baffling. I've been looking into it for cheeses and ales, so many UK producers flat out say "We only ship within the UK" even though the cost of shipping is covered by the buyer and it would cost nothing, not even extra paperwork, to ship to the EU (for now).
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Productivity can be measured for example by GDP per hours worked, and Germany's productivy is very clearly above Spain's. These are facts, which do not demean Spanish engineers, so no need to be defensive here. You are just taking one incident and using it to brush over economic facts.
Economic facts that don't mean what you think they mean. Lack of productivity has nothing to do with individual performance, but with automation, industrial capital, organization and regulation. Spain suffers from an antiquated labour regulation, including perverse incentives. As an example, many companies refrain from growing over certain size because it triggers a nightmare of regulation and expenses. Also there ar…
The analysis is incomplete. It does not take services into account. Yes, Germany has a positive trade balance in goods. But the trade balance in services is negative. This ... well ... balances the balances. The UK has shifted its economy from production to services. Hence the negative trade balance for physical products excluding services.
This! Germany's manufacturing supremacy can't last forever with lower cost countries catching up fast. UK realized earlier it can't be competitive in manufacturing anymore. Knowledge work is the future in the West, not volume manufacturing.
It will be interesting for my children when either automation or outsourcing has removed the last rung for a typical middle class lifestyle.
Not a word about the fact that Germany simply produces desirable products? Somehow that has to factor in. Financial policy and the education system favors a conservative manufacturing sector that incrementally improves upon what Germany has done for decades. While I got my ME degree in Germany my dad, who is a solid state physicist, spent all his energy trying to accelerate the development of a German electronics sec…
Out of cursiosity: What did he try to do, and what organisations was he using?
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It's also that Germany has a reputation for being the eco-friendly country, while in fact not really caring about its climate impact from some very important domains : high-carbon electricity, heavy polluting industry.
> high-carbon electricity https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Branchen-Unternehmen/Energ... Renewables up 6% in two years, more than compensating for the shut down nuclear power sources. Fossils are shifting to natural gas which (so I've heard) is supposed to be the least bad of them (and fossils' grand total is also going down). It's not all roses, given our inept politicians, but it's far from horrible.
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The Aldi is "third world"? What on earth? I personally shop in Lidl, not Aldi, but Lidl is often compared to Aldi, about as popular and occupies the same price segment. And I eat like a king from there! Excellent protected origin cheeses, meats, wines, organic products... Half the time I leave the Lidl I go with a shopping cart that would make an American foodie drool. My most recent purchase there included Manchego…
Look, I like I lot of things about Germany, but the supermarkets here are a joke. There's more product variety in a single Whole Foods in America than there is in the entire combined inventory of all German supermarkets. Most processed foods (ready meals, frozen pizzas, etc) are also extremely low quality.
Funny because processed/frozen food in the US, even from a expensive store like WF look and taste so disgusting to a french person (ever been to a Picard ?) that I've stopped eating any of them (which is great for my health I guess)