Live data from Hacker News

Why Germany Still Has So Many Middle-Class Manufacturing Jobs

flipboard.com

11–20 of 165 posts

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

#11
Wow, that's a pretty appalling article.

Seems to avoid even mentioning the desire of most of Europe to try and learn from what went wrong after the Great War. In 1918-1930 Germany was left so weakened by peace treaties that the seeds were sown for WW2.

Post-WW2 the allies felt that a Germany crippled would only bring future wars, and a huge co-ordinated effort to build a sustainable industry and economic growth was put into motion. Germany and the people of Germany should profit from peace. Part of this was the Marshall Plan, part the European Recovery Program.

This positioned Germany to have a couple of advantages, namely that the Victorian era mass production methods that had been pioneered could be discarded (but remained in place in a lot of the other European developed countries). In Germany these were fully replaced by WW2 era production methods as most of Germany's industrial capability had been destroyed or damaged.

Additional processes to limit industrial capabilities (the key method of which was limiting steel output of the Ruhr Valley, which acted to restrain all industry) meant that industry was incentivised to find a larger profit per unit rather than slimmer margins from more units.

Combined with not being able to maintain a military, Germany was able to invest in skilled manufacturing like no-one else were able to.

Over a course of 50 years this resulted in not just a modern manufacturing capability to be put in place, but for that to be at the very highly skilled end of manufacturing.

The reason so many of the mid-sized market leaders come from Germany can be traced back to post-WW2 policies to ensure that Europe could be at peace. Some of these policies were undoubtedly exploitative in the short term, but long term have achieved their goal.

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

#12
post #8

> Tax advantages are another reason. The high taxes on assets in France and the inheritance tax in the U.S. prevent the accumulation of capital necessary for the formation of a strong mid-sized sector. Really? How?

In fact Germany has an inheritance tax.

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

#14

He missed the main reason: currency suppression. Germany has managed to suppress the value of its currency over the years to make its exports artificially cheap, which encouraged growth, creating manufacturing jobs. It did this firstly through reunification (dragging down the value of the DM) and subsequently by joining the Euro (Southern Europe had the value of their currencies pegged higher than their 'natural' val…

Not sure why you are down-voted. It's obvious that this is part of the trick and many economist have pointed it.

It works the other way too, the currency of other countries in the Eurozone is above what it would be without Germany, and all that without a fiscal stabilizer between the countries, like it do happens in the United States between different states.

It's a recipe for disaster if the goal is an united Europe. Now, if the goal is to make Germany richer then we are in the correct path.

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

#15

He missed the main reason: currency suppression. Germany has managed to suppress the value of its currency over the years to make its exports artificially cheap, which encouraged growth, creating manufacturing jobs. It did this firstly through reunification (dragging down the value of the DM) and subsequently by joining the Euro (Southern Europe had the value of their currencies pegged higher than their 'natural' val…

I don't understand why this comment is being down voted. While "currency suppression/ currency manipulation" is usually spoken about in association with fraud, this is most certainly one of the reasons that has allowed German manufacturing to remain competitive despite having higher labor costs. Excellent comment.

e.g. see this article on Politico which basically says the same thing: http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/05/26/trump-right-.... The reunification part though: I had not thought about that, and is an interesting revelation.

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

#16
post #11

Wow, that's a pretty appalling article. Seems to avoid even mentioning the desire of most of Europe to try and learn from what went wrong after the Great War. In 1918-1930 Germany was left so weakened by peace treaties that the seeds were sown for WW2. Post-WW2 the allies felt that a Germany crippled would only bring future wars, and a huge co-ordinated effort to build a sustainable industry and economic growth was p…

does the fact that Germany is right smack in the middle of Europe between Eastern European powers that can supply cheap (EDIT: and skilled, looking for better universities or opportunities) labor and Western/Northern European markets that can afford their goods have anything to do with this?

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

#18
post #11

Wow, that's a pretty appalling article. Seems to avoid even mentioning the desire of most of Europe to try and learn from what went wrong after the Great War. In 1918-1930 Germany was left so weakened by peace treaties that the seeds were sown for WW2. Post-WW2 the allies felt that a Germany crippled would only bring future wars, and a huge co-ordinated effort to build a sustainable industry and economic growth was p…

does the fact that Germany is right smack in the middle of Europe between Eastern European powers that can supply cheap (EDIT: and skilled, looking for better universities or opportunities) labor and Western/Northern European markets that can afford their goods have anything to do with this?

Not really as that only represents time since the Berlin Wall fell.

Whilst the flood of cheap labour is of course an important factor since then... the companies being talked about established themselves long before the borders were opened.

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

#19
post #11

Wow, that's a pretty appalling article. Seems to avoid even mentioning the desire of most of Europe to try and learn from what went wrong after the Great War. In 1918-1930 Germany was left so weakened by peace treaties that the seeds were sown for WW2. Post-WW2 the allies felt that a Germany crippled would only bring future wars, and a huge co-ordinated effort to build a sustainable industry and economic growth was p…

I wonder how/whether increasing the defense budget would help the German economy. Let me just say right away, that I am in no way advocating for increasing the supply of arms and ammunition in the world, which already seems to be at dangerous levels. However, if Germany invested as much in military R&D and a domestic arms industry, I wonder if that would boost the economy as it has done in the US.

Also, the immigration system seems less broken for smart people to emigrate to Germany. Could probably get the best global talent as well.

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

#20
post #11

Wow, that's a pretty appalling article. Seems to avoid even mentioning the desire of most of Europe to try and learn from what went wrong after the Great War. In 1918-1930 Germany was left so weakened by peace treaties that the seeds were sown for WW2. Post-WW2 the allies felt that a Germany crippled would only bring future wars, and a huge co-ordinated effort to build a sustainable industry and economic growth was p…

It's interesting, because many of the neighboring countries were in much better shape after the war, but since they were forced by the Soviets to reject the Marshall plan, Germany got ahead economically and Eastern Europe became the "poor part of Europe" again.
Post reply on HN