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How Germany is able to run the world’s second largest export economy
251–260 of 348 posts
Re: How Germany is able to run the world’s second largest export economy
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
Germany is a very new country (1871) and still comprised of markedly different regions. the French German axis has increasingly dominated the EU and driven a strong export culture. As globalization has hit a plateau Germany are now in a tricky position. Many are loathe to admit it but the 'desirable products' Germany produces have a very distinctive Germanic flavor which people identify strongly with the idea of Germ…
I totally agree with you, even though what we are all heading towards is nothing but the total eradication of actual diversity, especially in Europe, pretty much on the American model that totally destroyed all unique characters of the American people of the various American states over the last 70+ years. But the "Germany is a very new country" trope/propaganda is not accurate, as is rather easily identified by simp…
Germany has integrated immigrants from all over Europe and beyond, a large Turkish community, Italians, Syrians, and from many other European and non-European countries, so it is in fact heading towards more diversity instead of more homogeneity.
What you could say is that this trend is counter-acted by stronger, general cultural unification trend due to mass media (the Internet, mostly) and the influence of large, multi-national corporations. That trend is global, though, and has nothing to do with Germany in particular.
That Germany is a very young country is also obviously true, as it was united only in 1871. The fact that Germany as a nation played no substantial role in world politics earlier, but only varying fractions who were often opposed to each other and had many wars among each other, was in the end one of the many catalysts of WW1 and WW2. But that's another story, of course.
I agree with you if what you want to say is that the fact that Germany is very young has no particular bearing on its current economy. I don't see the connection either. But the rest of your post is moot.
Re: How Germany is able to run the world’s second largest export economy
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
I personally don't like discounters (including Aldi), but a lot of people that are not in financial trouble go shopping there. Sometimes even well-off people. Germans can be very frugal, and this is especially true when it comes to food (although there are signs that this is starting to change).
It is fine to be frugal or go discount shopping - it is the quality of food at the American Aldi that felt me to like a really bad deal. The chicken thighs say cost fifty cents (not sure of the price but utterly cheap), but once you cook it was almost inedible, a mixture of fat and big thick bones - felt like not even fit for human consumption. Again European Aldi's are not like that.
That's because European Aldi's gets their chicken from Europe, while American Aldi's gets their chicken from America. They don't ship chicken across the Atlantic.
The root issue isn't Aldi's, it's the quality of food on the different continents. Food standards are much higher in Europe, so any grocery store is going to have generally better food than stores in America, unless you only shop at high-end places like Whole Foods and make sure to only buy good food there.
Re: How Germany is able to run the world’s second largest export economy
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I'm American and I find Lidl to be absolutely ghetto; Aldi only marginally less so; but neither of them as scary as Netto! A lot of my friends shop at these places, because they're really cheap, and if you don't actually care who gets your money (or you can't afford to care) it's sorta like why not? In their favor I will say that there is less choice of products than in, say, a Spar or Rewe (mid-market grocery chains…
I feel that where all Aldi’s are relatively comparable, for Edeka it seems to depend a lot on the shop. Where I live there are two Edekas within a 3min drive, one is a bit more fancy than the average Aldi, however the other one has 50 different types of quinoa and people that make you sushi on demand. It is a totally different shopping experience.
Re: How Germany is able to run the world’s second largest export economy
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
If by productive means lying about car emissions to cheat authorities, yeah, Wolkswagen and Audi and whatever are really efficient cars made by really productive german workers. Maybe we could move this conversation to adult zone and non-cartoonist levels beyond "spanish cheap drunk workers living in the beach" and "german saint teetotalers workers"? Thinking that a spanish engineer is less educated than a german eng…
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.
Reading people repeating again and again the same stupid fairy tales about the lazy southern europeans and the diligent northern europeans is frankly annoying. For example the author says that:
> "I don’t think they have siestas in Germany…"
A wild siesta cliché suddenly appears.
You are really funny. For your information, workers in Spain don't have "siestas" since XIX siecle, we have electricity and cars also. I can understand how for many young europeans the entire experience of Spain can fit in a blurry weekend in Magaluf, a bleeding nose and maybe a broken arm after jumping to a pool, but the country is a little more than that.
Re: How Germany is able to run the world’s second largest export economy
#256What is often overlooked is this: Germany was export-oriented before the Euro, during the transition and with the Euro. Germany was export-oriented before reunification, during reunification and after reunification. The industry will adopt to those external factors: Germany was 'Exportweltmeister' with the super strong DM (which dominated European currencies) and it is a leading export nation with the Euro. There are…
I'm reminded of Trader Joe's -- a chain most people think of as a California-based chain of health food stores -- but has actually been owned by a media-shy German family for 40+ years.
Maybe Aldi is a better example?
Edit: Didn't know this, but Aldi bought Trader Joe's and currently owns it.
Re: How Germany is able to run the world’s second largest export economy
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's interesting to me how people view Europe as more equal than the US. Not that the US is a bastion of fairness, but there seems to be a teeny-tiny miniscule amount of meritocracy in the labor force. This doesn't really seem to exist in most of Europe. The top 10% of earners don't make much more than the bottom 10%. Meanwhile, aristocrats are richer than the median by more than in the US. This seems like the opposi…
Europe is fairer than the US. Social mobility: https://www.economist.com/img/b/1280/761/85/sites/default/fi... Inequality: https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/blog_...
Quintiles are pointless. The top 20% isn't much different than the bottom 20%. The middle 80% is pretty much middle class -- especially in the EU, where there's slightly less poverty (actually in the US the poverty rate is lower than the EU, but the "technical" poverty rate isn't very helpful -- there's differences in access to healthcare and education, not to mention costs of living).
The difference in quintiles is mostly age (especially wealth, but also income). The top 10%, 5%, and 1% are more interesting to look at. These are almost entirely laborers (in the US). In the EU, the top 5% is dominated by aristocrats.
WRT to the income chart, the top 1% is mostly laborers (in the US) but is completely skewed by the top 0.001%. It's easy to mislead with that.
Also, I think people are equally concerned with income inequality and wealth inequality. This is only half the picture. In the US, laborers can and do accumulate large sums of wealth. This doesn't happen in the EU.
Some things that I'd be interested to know -- in the US, 50% of people spend one year in the top 10%. I'd love to know what that is in the EU. I'd also like to see 5% and 1%. I'd love to see what percentage of people in the top 10%, 5%, 1% , and 0.1% were born there.
Who cares about the top 20% vs the bottom 20%? It's the difference in between being a waitress and being an electrician. Almost anyone could do any of those things.
The bottom 10% is interesting -- those people are literally poor. How many of them are poor simple because they were born there? The bottom 20%, not so much. A lot of people work low-paying service jobs because they're more interesting than mid-paying desk jobs and less risky than high-paying blue-collar jobs.
The top 5% is interesting -- especially in the US -- because anyone can, theoretically, work their way there (obviously, it's a lot of luck, but it is still mostly laborers, and the difference in wealth/income is considerable).
Re: How Germany is able to run the world’s second largest export economy
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
Bonded warehouses exist for a reason. Internationally shipping alcohol or (tobacco) is genuinely complicated even within the eu. Cheese probably just a perishable pain to post far.
Re: How Germany is able to run the world’s second largest export economy
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
On the other hand you can buy good bread and a lot of other basic foods pretty cheap and in high quality. When I look at American stores there is an enormous variety of cheap crap and then some decent quality expensive items.
Re: How Germany is able to run the world’s second largest export economy
#260As someone who lives and works in Germany I'm always surprised when I hear of the strength of the country. I've worked for several very large corporations here, financial and automotive, and how anything is achieved at all remains a complete mystery to me. It seems to me that all the success reported is directly in spite of their attitude towards technology and IT in general instead of because of it.
The culture here is to outsource everything besides PM, then every few years when the projects fail or are over budget (time or money) to replace the partner with someone new and lose all the domain knowledge those teams had and then they have to start again. I've seen millions of euros wasted in this manner, the only way it'll be fixed is when the current generation of management retire.
I'd be keen to know if anyone else working here has a similar experience, I've tried to 'fix' this culture several times and haven't succeeded yet.
Weirdly, in the last 6 months Azure seems to be making huge inroads, perhaps that'll help.