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Germany Falls into Recession

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151–160 of 203 posts

Re: Germany Falls into Recession

#151
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the shut down of nuclear power thanks to the Greens The decision to shut down our nuclear reactors came from a conservative government, where the greens were in the opposition. The prices have not been rising due to the shutdown of our nuclear plants, but due to price gauging by electrical companies, and due to russia falling away as a cheap gas supplier. Nuclear only made up 5% of our energy production 2023 and 11…

> The decision to shut down our nuclear reactors came from a conservative government, where the greens were in the opposition. Wrong. The nuclear phase-out original came from SPD/Greens: > https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomkonsens > The prices have not been rising due to the shutdown of our nuclear plants, but due to price gauging by electrical companies, and due to russia falling away as a cheap gas supplier. They h…

> > The conservative government of the last 20 years spend an insane amount of effort to stop renewables by ... introducing NIMBY friendly limitations on where wind turbines can be build, ...

> That's non-sense. Germany built more wind and solar capacity per capita the past 20 years than any other country in the world.

How is "but we built more than others" an argument against "CDU/CSU actively worked against renewable energies by implementing 10H"?

Re: Germany Falls into Recession

#152
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To what extent does each state run its own economy? The EU does not have centralised taxes or a centralised economic policy, but it does have a single currency. It's possible a single currency also requires more centralised financial/economic policies.

There is really just the US economy. We would not say that Pennsylvania is in recession but New York is not. The major difference between states is tax rates. Labor, transacting, anything else economically is practically transparent and frictionless.

>The major difference between states is tax rates.

Also tax spending. For example there's no central EU funded military but each member budgets it differently, just like how there's no New York military and Pennsylvania military.

Re: Germany Falls into Recession

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Since covid, rents increases have far outpaced salary increases. And since 2022 so have bill, groceries, everything. Same story in the US.

Everyone I know who didn't go in to this with a lot of income above their spending level is struggling, mostly due to price increases in things they can't not spend money on. Housing's way up the list, and food, which, I dunno, maybe it's a local thing, but that's up a ton more than overall US inflation figures would lead one to guess. Utility prices are up, too. Basically the only things that are still cheap are opt…

The big problem with food cost inflation is that it is extremely bimodal. Fresh and frozen green veggies are still around $1-$2 a pound. However, now a bag of chips is $5. If you weren't able to afford the time cost of making food from scratch before, you are taking the brunt of food cost increase. IMO, this is another reason to believe the "most inflation is from greed" line. Our farmers up north aren't paying more for illegal mexicans to pick the broccoli, and gas is the same price it was quite some time ago, so their produce isn't significantly more expensive and they aren't really even earning more money. Even beef in our local store is the same price it used to be, including the weekly cheap sale stuff.

But the big conglomerates that own all the branded products saw an opportunity to jack up prices without taking all the heat.

Speaking of which, if you grab a package of mccormick's chili seasoning off the shelf in your store, it will tell you to buy a 15 oz can of tomatoes. Cans of tomatoes have been 14.5oz for at least a decade, and this seasoning product has had that recipe on the back changed at least 4 times in as many years, yet they never admit to the shrinkflation that happened to those cans of tomatoes.

Re: Germany Falls into Recession

#154
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a TL;DR translation for the comic? I don't think I get the humour/point. All I understood is that the government and media are faking the inflation numbers to be lower than reality that people notice.

I don't think the comic is particularly insightful, but here is a translation. I tried to stay close to the original, but you might say some things a bit differently in English: Title: Dishonest Could you explain this to me? Government and media are talking about low inflation, but what I am seeing is that prices are exploding. ...they lie, by deliberately calculating incorrectly or sometimes even skipping details. T…

Ah, it's a comic in the same way as the dreck that Ben Garrison puts out is a "comic"

Re: Germany Falls into Recession

#155
post #18

Actually the biggest blow was not the energy costs, but the interest rates. They went from 1-2% now at 4-5, even 6% for real-estate ( new building and old ) while the prices are still at last year level. For other types of financing, I had a "good" offer which went to 12% interest. I felt like in a 3rd world country. With such expensive money, nothing will be done. The construction economy is really going dow from mi…

Most countries raised interest rates to the same level but they are not in recessesion. I don't know what does it says about Germany's economy... At least in Canada I believe the recession was averted by increasing immigration.

They are not in recession yet. Someone was going to be first.

Re: Germany Falls into Recession

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is nuclear not green?

The tinfoil hat theory is this: Nuclear is expensive and takes forever to build. Right now there is a lot of effort and money pushing for renewable energy sources, and it has been immensely successful at proving its viability. Certain groups make a lot of money off fossil fuels, and even though they know that will eventually end, every year they can delay that end is billions in their pocket. The push for "we shouldn…

> Even if we turn around today and start building a hundred nuclear plants all over the world, it will take decades for them to come online and start displacing fossil fuel energy production

A. Construction start to finish is well under a decade.

B. This concern is true of any alternative energy source.

> The push for "we shouldn't do renewables, because they can't do the job, so we should invest in nuclear" is about taking the wind out of renewable's sails.

The push against nuclear is to line the pockets of renewable companies, and exploits the layman's misunderstanding about environment impact of nuclear and its alternatives.

There are just as many manipulative, disingenous arguments by Big Oil as by Big Renewable.

Re: Germany Falls into Recession

#157
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the shut down of nuclear power thanks to the Greens The decision to shut down our nuclear reactors came from a conservative government, where the greens were in the opposition. The prices have not been rising due to the shutdown of our nuclear plants, but due to price gauging by electrical companies, and due to russia falling away as a cheap gas supplier. Nuclear only made up 5% of our energy production 2023 and 11…

> The decision to shut down our nuclear reactors came from a conservative government, where the greens were in the opposition. Wrong. The nuclear phase-out original came from SPD/Greens: > https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomkonsens > The prices have not been rising due to the shutdown of our nuclear plants, but due to price gauging by electrical companies, and due to russia falling away as a cheap gas supplier. They h…

> Wrong. The nuclear phase-out original came from SPD/Greens:

The phase out in it's current form was decided by a CDU led government.

"Chancellor Merkel was so shocked by Fukushima that she turned Germany’s energy focus from nuclear (of which she closed 41% and will close the rest within a decade) to efficiency and renewables."

> After all, the German Ministry of Economics is working on a law to subsidize electricity prices for the industry. They wouldn't do that if electricity was cheap.

Nobody said that electricity was cheap, but that the cause wasn't the 5% nuclear going offline.

> Nuclear provides baseload, wind and solar don't.

Baseload is such a dead horse. Renewables are cheaper even with batteries included.

>In fact, since 2022, Germany returned 19 coal-fired power units with a capacity of 7.3 GW to the electricity market:

Yeah to offset Russian gas. We haven't increased coal/lignite production either, and considering that lignite is pretty much burned immediately that's a good indicator that the missing nuclear wasn't offset with coal. You can actually use the very tool you linked (https://www.smard.de/) to see pretty clearly that the phaseout of nuclear didn't increase energy production from coal plants.

> That's non-sense. Germany built more wind and solar capacity per capita the past 20 years than any other country in the world.

Still far below what would have been possible without the "Solardeckel" and the "Altmeier Dip".

> That's a blatant lie. That project was started by SPD/Greens and the Greens even defended it against criticism:

Nordstream planning started in 1997, when Kohl was still Chancelor.

The Greens should have stopped it when they had the chance though instead of blindly hopping onto the bandwagon.

Note that there is not much difference between SPD and CDU to me personally. I consider both conservative parties, opposed to the goals of the greens. The SPD is only less obviously evil than the CDU.

> The Greens have always been fighting nuclear in Germany.

Believe it or not, the new generation of greens would actually prefer Nuclear to Coal if it was cheaper than renewables, but it isn't so they push for renewables. In a sense the present day greens are not really the ones that governed 20 years ago. I hate most greens from that time period with a passion for example, them killing the transrapid is unforgivable for me personally.

> What energy independence?

We managed to get through winter without shortages didn't we?

> And the Greens even have it in their election program:

"New gas utilities and infrastructure needed for the coal-exit must only be build if it is absolutely unavoidable, and if it is build in a Hydrogen ready way."

It's amazing how you read some kind of gas love from this when in reality it's saying the exact opposite, even arguing that gas is only allowed when it can be switched to clean hydrogen for BaSElOaD later.

> The only parties that have sabotaged Germany's electricity grid and climate goals are the Greens with their owngoing FUD campaigns against nuclear power.

Not even Siemens wants to build new Nuclear plants because they are more expensive and take longer to build than simply rolling out renewables.

Would nuclear have been great if we never stopped investing into them, had fast breeder reactors, and didn't loose the knowhow to build them? Maybe. But as is, it's much cheaper, easier, quicker, and more scalable to just throw our entire weight behind renewables.

> I'm really surprised how one can put so much disinformation into a single comment post.

Pot calling the cattle black it guess.

Re: Germany Falls into Recession

#158
post #92

We need new terminology to distinguish between macroeconomic recessions and living standard recessions. Traditionally, those two things are more or less intertwined, so the term "recession" carries connotations of both. With the steady increase of economic inequality, the link between the two meanings becomes less and less firm. The median living standard in Germany has been in free fall for 20 years. By that criteri…

Continuous downtrends, free falls, I'm interested what graphs and charts and numbers you're looking at to arrive at this conclusion. Especially when you've called out that someone (who specifically and where?) has been intentionally misleading. You may be objectively correct about all of this but right now it doesn't come off that way to me.

The median real wage in Germany grew until the 90s, stagnated for a while, then started declining in the early noughts[0], with the effect worse for new entrants to the employment marketplace (i.e. young people and immigrants).

The latter is predictable in a developed country (meaning past peak GDP growth) with high social safety nets and employee protection (meaning an additional burden for newer entrants to clear).

I'm not sure about "free fall", but the median worker's earnings has basically broken even since the 80s or so, with a definite noticeable downward trend since the 2000s.

[0]: https://labourmarketresearch.springeropen.com/articles/10.10...

Re: Germany Falls into Recession

#159
post #100

China is outcompeting Germany as a manufacturer of high value goods, particularly cars [1][2]. Last year it overtook Germany as the second biggest car exporter. In the first three months of this year, China has surpassed Japan to become the world's top car exporter for the first time. This is due to its strength in EVs (while Germany's strength is in ICEs). Volkswagen holds a 2% share of the Chinese EV market while t…

> the shut down of nuclear power thanks to the Greens The decision to shut down our nuclear reactors came from a conservative government, where the greens were in the opposition. The prices have not been rising due to the shutdown of our nuclear plants, but due to price gauging by electrical companies, and due to russia falling away as a cheap gas supplier. Nuclear only made up 5% of our energy production 2023 and 11…

> The decision to shut down our nuclear reactors came from a conservative government, where the greens were in the opposition.

The conservative party was in government when that decisions was made, yes, but this discounts the decades of Greens opposition to nuclear power, and crucially that the strong Greens showing in the Baden-Württemberg elections in 2011.

Without the greens there would have been no impetus to shut down domestic nuclear power.

Re: Germany Falls into Recession

#160
post #82

They shouldn't be shutting down nuclear. Build more nuclear reactors. That will provide more clean energy and a lot of jobs. Modernize the grid. Make it a smarter grid that is more resilient to harm. These projects pay for themselves quickly and are easy to finance with how much wealth Germany has.

What is about HackerNews and the obesession with the decision to remove Nuclear Power, which was only a minority component at it's peak, from the German energy mix, as somehow being the dominant factor in the entire German society and economy? A while back someone unironically described Germany's nuclear power policy as "the single most catastrophic decision ever made by any government in peacetime".

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