Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Germany Falls into Recession

cnn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 203 posts

Re: Germany Falls into Recession

#171

Post by slightwinder »

mschild wrote: post #79
barbazoo wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no way that's gonna happen unfortunately. The greens have absolutely dropped the ball in terms of big picture goals. We've been brainwashed into thinking nuclear power is dangerous and the problem of waste is bigger than the problem of having non renewable, oil based, energy. In hindsight I wouldn't be surprised if the oil lobby had a hand in that.

The greens haven't been part of the national government for decades until 2021. I disagree with their decision to not keep the nuclear reactors running, but if you want to point fingers at people it's not them that unilaterally decided to stop building new reactors.

> I disagree with their decision to not keep the nuclear reactors running

It wasn't their decision, the reactors had to shut down anyway for at least some years, as they are lacking fuel and an up-to-date operating permit. The remaining reactors were already running on their last ounce, and it would take some years to produce new rods at Russia, even if we ignore the political problems.

And that's even ignoring the billions(?) of euro for penalties that Germany likely had to pay in that case, because the whole shutdown was executed somewhat shaky from the old government.

Re: Germany Falls into Recession

#172

Post by sottol »

mantas wrote: post #99
c00lio wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not outright exiting the EU. But maybe exiting the Eurozone and removing some other problematic economic straightjackets like overly large tax-financed subsidies.

Or at least several different eurozones. Germany and Italy or Spain are rather different economies to say the least.

Imo that would leave Italy and Spain and their respective union members in the dust competing against the US, China and India.

But maybe that's worth it, or maybe the Brexit will turn out great like pg said due to them not having stringent EU-type regulations on things like AI and banking (though if you're a founder leaving the EU i don't see why you'd go to the UK over the US or Canada).

Re: Germany Falls into Recession

#173

Post by s1artibartfast »

prottog wrote: post #158
cheschire wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).…

Looking only at workers earnings is misleading in both Germany and the United States because it ignores monetary transfers through the government, which is a huge component of GDP.

I can't speak for Germany, but for the US, worker earnings continue to climb if you count government mediated benefits.

Similarly, it's impossible for worker income to grow at the rate of GDP while taxes grow faster than GDP

Re: Germany Falls into Recession

#174

Post by mrguyorama »

paulddraper wrote: post #156
mrguyorama wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Name "Big Renewable".

Re: Germany Falls into Recession

#175

Post by vitehozonage »

cheschire wrote: post #122
p-e-w wrote: 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.

https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

Re: Germany Falls into Recession

#176

Post by nradov »

j-pb wrote: post #168
nradov wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are spreading misinformation. Base load is hardly a dead horse. Batteries might eventually solve that problem, but so far no country has deployed significant amounts of battery storage, let alone done so at a cost that would allow for heavy industrial uses. Until battery storage is proven to work on real power grids, nuclear power remains the only viable option to deliver reliable base load.

Hydrogen gas turbines are also a viable option for that and they have proven to run on real power grids, we will need hydrogen infrastructure not for cars but for steel manufacturing and turbines.

Cool. Let us know when someone has grid scale hydrogen production, storage, and generation actually working at scale and is able to report on real world costs.

Re: Germany Falls into Recession

#177

Post by eecc »

cbmuser wrote: post #124
j-pb wrote: 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…

Ah the usual case of the left/green acrobatics biting rh back. Covering for their bad-faith allies and swallowing poison pills for the sake of the coalition and taking home a couple wins, only to be nailed to the Cross with the same set of talking points. Yawn

Re: Germany Falls into Recession

#178

Post by prottog »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #173
prottog wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).…

Looking only at workers earnings is misleading in both Germany and the United States because it ignores monetary transfers through the government, which is a huge component of GDP. I can't speak for Germany, but for the US, worker earnings continue to climb if you count government mediated benefits. Similarly, it's impossible for worker income to grow at the rate of GDP while taxes grow faster than GDP

Absolutely true, and it's a good point; but I'm not sure if the source I listed for Germany includes or excludes transfer receipts.

Re: Germany Falls into Recession

#179

Post by jasmer »

paulddraper wrote: post #141
jasmer wrote: post #119

There should be a separate set of lending rates for real estate. Sounds kooky at first but really it's a fundamentally different kind of asset.

There are, right?

Fed sets rates banks decide what rates to lend out for mortgages.

Just like we tax things at different rates, we may want to require mortgage lending at different rates, maybe a bit higher if necessary. I don't think that exists, but I could be wrong.

Re: Germany Falls into Recession

#180

Post by dangwhy »

nradov wrote: post #167
dangwhy wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The federal government subsidizes them. Curious how does federal govt subsidize them?

In most cases it isn't a literal subsidy. Fannie Mae acts as a government-sponsored market maker to purchase home mortgages from lenders, then package and sell them to investors. By providing an "artificial" source of liquidity and taking on significant balance sheet risk they keep mortgage interest rates much lower than they would be in a free market system. https://www.fanniemae.com/about-us

got it. Doesn't make sense to limit supply and also subsidize a product a the same time. Wouldn't that automatically increase prices?

How does high prices help the people govt is trying to help. All this makes no sense to me. why are they doing this.

Post reply on HN