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.
The deindustrialization of Germany
61–70 of 175 posts
Re: The deindustrialization of Germany
#62Earlier 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.
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
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
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"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
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
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The childred didn't earn it either.
Re: The deindustrialization of Germany
#65Re: The deindustrialization of Germany
#66In 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…
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
#67Re: The deindustrialization of Germany
#68quote: 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.
Time to rename the region CHAD I guess.
Re: The deindustrialization of Germany
#69Re: The deindustrialization of Germany
#70I 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.
[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!