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The deindustrialization of Germany

politico.eu

61–70 of 175 posts

Re: The deindustrialization of Germany

#61
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's directionally correct though, no? What's the case to be made that Germany is ascending? The fact that most German billionaires inherited their wealth is pretty telling I think.

It shows that inheritance tax in Germany is too low and that unfortunately there is no longer a wealth tax.

Or just hike the capital gains tax. Those billions of dollars have to be put somewhere, and the ultra-rich aren't going to hide it under the mattress. Inheritance tax is fairly easy to avoid with sophisticated tax planning.

Re: The deindustrialization of Germany

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i would not be so hopeful. A big problem is that germany does not operate in the global lingua franca - English. This really shows when countries like Australia and Canada - combined, both have a population less than germany’s - are able to attract the best and brightest from around the world. Another problem is one that plagues all old world countries - societies are based around ethnicity. These combine to mean tha…

Eastern European people are very much german orientated. Most speak better German than English. So no you are not right. Germany is immensively popular by tech migrants from Russia. Poland, Hungary, Czech etc.

> Most speak better German than English.

That's not true, at least not in Poland.

Also, current German take-home salaries for coders are lower than Polish (gross amounts are similar, but in Poland a lot of coders are self-employed, with very lox taxes), with vastly higher costs of living. If anything, Germans programmers should emigrate to Poland - they're not getting a great deal in their country.

Re: The deindustrialization of Germany

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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[flagged]

Rich people get paid for being rich. Poor people get paid for working. These things are not the same.

"But rich people don't get paid for being rich, they get paid to take risks! To invest!"

There are two definitions of investment running around. One definition has a moral component: you sacrifice consumption today in order to build factories or take risks, thereby enabling greater consumption tomorrow, improving the world and taking a cut of the improvement. That's fine. Great, even! There's a second definition that is amoral, though: anything that you put capital into that provides a return is an investment. This second definition is just fine with "create a problem, sell the cure" and indeed encourages a lot of it. If you look at economic sectors, the ones that are doing really well (health care, housing, education) seem to have this as a high level strategy. Underproduce doctors, price goes up. Fuck up the zoning, price goes up. Pump more debt, price goes up. Merge up the competitors, price goes up. This is deeply unfortunate. Capitalism gets most of its legitimacy from the idea of competition as a check on power, but it seems that most of the money is made by figuring out how not to compete. They teach the Prisoner's Dilemma on the very first day of business school with this very lesson in mind. Don't play the game, play the meta-game! Don't build a product, build a moat! This is highly problematic.

When the economy expands by multiples but most people see their pie slice not only failing to keep pace in relative turns but failing to grow in absolute terms, that's a problem, a failed promise.

What's the answer? The right will hop up and down shrieking "Stalin!" "Mao!" any time you talk about taxing assets, but no, 100 million people will not starve to death if capital gains income gets taxed as regular income, or if we meet in the middle with work hours so that people are allowed to raise their own kids again, or any of a dozen other progressive policies. They tried to coup the last Roosevelt and they'll try to coup the next one, but the prospertiy gospel's own failed promises will be its undoing. We've fixed this before and we'll fix it again.

Re: The deindustrialization of Germany

#64
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The childred didn't earn it either.

It's surprising to me that Europeans aren't more opposed to generational wealth. Didn't many countries fight multiple wars and revolutions to overthrow/re-instate the entrenched agrarian aristocracy? why would Europeans be comfortable allowing the Entrenchment of a modern aristocracy a hundred years later?

Re: The deindustrialization of Germany

#65
Keep in mind that politico is a subsidiary of Axel Springer, which is largely controlled by a man that has recently been exposed to have actively ordered chief editors write in support of the party of economic liberalism (FDP) before the last election in Germany. I.e. it is entirely possible that this article is also politically motivated.

Re: The deindustrialization of Germany

#66

In addition to this general malaise, the EU Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) is going to have a big, negative impact on all of the EU, especially Germany, and especially the software industry. The CRA itself is insane, requiring, for example, that conforming software phone-home. Which is, of course, the opposite of what we should be pushing for. Note that something similar is probably coming to the US in the next few years…

When you look at open source AI, for example, EU laws are a huge problem: Not only the act you mentioned, but also GDPR, where it is not clear so far how the "right to be informed" or the "right to deletion" can/must conceivably be implemented. (From my interpretation I also don't see how OpenAI can conform to the "right to be informed" without publishing its training data).

And of course the AI act, which might make it possible for the publishers of open models to be sued if a third party misuses it: https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/06/the-eus-ai-act-could-have-...

Re: The deindustrialization of Germany

#67
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you only talking about the lender's fault when it comes to bad loans.

Because assessing and assuming risk is literally their entire reason to exist.

Why doesn't the borrower assume responsibility for taking risky loans?

Re: The deindustrialization of Germany

#68
post #49
post #40

quote: Germany ranks only eighth in the Global Innovation Index Is it so bad? For 83 millions people economy.

Considering that Switzerland is No. 1, Sweden, Netherlands or Singapore are all above Germany, I'd guess population is not a big factor in computing this index.

> Switzerland is No. 1

Time to rename the region CHAD I guess.

Re: The deindustrialization of Germany

#70
post #13

I have tried to go against some of the arguments because some are wrong, some are okayish, and some are just plain wrong, but I gave up. The article moves all over the place pulling random facts from all kinds of places in support of the idea that Germany is declining. Maybe that's true, maybe not. This article appears not rigorous enough to come to a right conclusion.

how many planets are there, mr dice?

[rolls dice - dice gives a 6]

unbelievable ... not 3, not 15, but 6 - that's remarkably close to 8!

you're some smart dice, aren't you!

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