For most of this century, Germany racked up one economic success after another, dominating global markets for high-end products like luxury cars and industrial machinery, selling so much to the rest of the world that half the economy ran on exports.
Jobs were plentiful, the government’s financial coffers grew as other European countries drowned in debt, and books were written about what other countries could learn from Germany.
No longer. Now, Germany is the world’s worst-performing major developed economy, with both the International Monetary Fund and European Union expecting it to shrink this year.
“Germany is hugely successful and has been for years, but now it’s success is slightly shrinking.”
Now please blame socialism and I got that sweet capitalist circle jerk bingo
They did interview both a CEO and a banker for this article so they did their best to get some diverse insights.
germany was and is one of the better working socialistic democracies. calm your prosecution fetish
I don’t feel persecuted, I just want to point out how stupid it is to portrait even the slightest economic hiccup as a major failure, especially after facing two crises in short succession (with the climate crisis not even counted).
In fact, what you pointed out is among the reasons for that: All things considered, Germany is doing pretty OK. And I think economic growth is a much easier to solve problem than becoming a more sustainable economy/society (i.e. having social stability, fixing the education system, becoming less polluting and more independent from the global superpowers).
At this late stage of Neoliberal Capitalism, what’s deemed “economic success” is a measly 2% GDP “growth” and for Germany that can just be from exploiting its access to cheap hydrocarbons from Russia, something which is now pretty much over.
Meanwhile, like everybody else, Germany is suffering the cummulative effects of 4 decades of neoliberalism and its “oh so special” way of managing the Economy (unconditional saving of Financial giants that overextended themselves, like Deutsche Bank, maximizing rewards for asset ownership and pumping up asset bubbles all over the place and so on) not just directly but also indirectly because you’re seeing empoverishment on a per-capita level in the countries to which German companies exported.
I think (all of this is opinion) that the general late stage Neoliberal Capitalism malaise is affecting most western countries and then Germany, thanks to that extra push of loosing the golden goose of cheap hydrocarbons (which was so great for the likes of BASF) is just this little bit worst than most, and after a decade which normalized a few percent of GDP increment as “growth” it doesn’t take much of a “push” to have what is mathematically a large percentual difference in “growth” rates compared to the rest (i.e. when “growth” is 2%, loosing a mere 1% results in half the “growth”).
Last but not least, as we’re living in Peak Bullshit Times when it comes to Politically Important Financial Figures, all of this ends up reported with no sense of proportion so tiny changes in a aggregate figure (not even per-capita) that doesn’t even map to most people’s experience are portrayed as enormously important (notice how in the “good times” we were told 2% was the country “growing”, when that value is statistically within the margin of error of the very processes used to produce those figures).
What? Thats absolut BS
I’m not familiar with what’s happening in Germany, but i do trust apnews. What do you believe is false about the article? Have gas prices gone up in Germany?
This is bullshit propaganda². Did some Lobbyist bought an Article over there? We dont need “breathing room for our energy-intensive industry” we need this lazy fucks to become energy efficient!
Capitalism has cycles. Nothing new.
They fucked around with trying to be civil to russia and learned russia hasnt improved since WWII.
That’s easy, Merkel left
Merkel’s policies are part of the reason Germany is slowing down… Particularly her energy policy has been very poor.
Probably because of greentards (shutdown all nuclear reactors, vehicle standards, too much reliance on putin’s empire, etc), and maybe the vw scams 😅
- low birth rate. Having children is expensive, we have a lack of affordable housing and childcare for families. There should be a major focus to support families, especially academic families. The most successful people don’t reproduce, leading to a massive desrease in intelligence.
- mass immigration from Africa and Arab countries which don’t contribute a lot to the society but cost a lot of money and bring violence to Germany. The government does nothing against this and the people are unhappy about this, leading to increasing social tensions. Also increasing the housing problem massively
- not enough immigration of actual educated people from Asia or america for example. Germany is becoming more and more unattractive for those people
- too many uneducated people living from welfare. If you have a low paying job you may as well live from welfare. Because pay is a joke. Even for educated people, sometimes it is financially just better to live from welfare then to work in some situations.
- in the light of COVID, a war in Europe, mass immigration and inflation, our politics here do a lot to make life for working people even more expensive, and increase welfare instead of pressuring the people to educate themselves. Green ideology is leading the country to it’s grave. Germany thinks it can save the world climate alone by destroying its own industry, and by making everyone poor. No, we don’t need heat pumps, at least not RIGHT NOW when everyone is struggling. Cost of everything are increasing, taxes are getting more expensive, health care is more expensive, having a car to get to work is getting more expensive, energy is getting more expensive. You work and almost all the money flows towards those things. Might as well live from welfare where the state pays for energy, housing and gas
- not enough people in STEM, too many people study something that leads to no innovation. Innovation is essential for Germany.
On your 6th point: there are more than enough people in STEM. Just the biggest technical university has over 50k students. And there are plenty of other universities around. The truth is that Germany just doesn’t pay enough to have these people actually stay here. That’s because you have a bunch of old greedy fucks run the economy. Source: me, an engineer. It’s easier to just move abroad or work remotely for a foreign company, or move even to one of the neighbouring countries, and make almost double the salary in the field. France, Denmark, the Netherlands all pay me better than Germany ever did. Germany doesn’t innovate because it is owned by old greedy fucks that make it next to impossible to start a company. In the UK it costs under 100 Euros and one hour to register a company. In Germany it costs thousands and A LOT of precious time of your life. I say this as someone who TRIED to start a company in Germany :) This is cultural. Germany has an obsession with being cheap. And it shows.
Anyway, your other points are full of flaws. There are around 4 million people living off of welfare. There are almost 25 million pensioners living off of what you probably don’t consider welfare, but in fact is welfare. There’s your problem. Not only that, but there are less people that live off of welfare now than ten years ago. The numbers have been going down slightly over the last decades. Also take into account the fact that many of them actually work and need welfare to stay afloat.
There should be a major focus to support families, especially academic families.
How would you go by doing that? What do you propose? Funnily enough, almost all students in Germany come from families with an academic background.
The most successful people don’t reproduce, leading to a massive desrease in intelligence.
This sounds like eugenics already. I see you have a big obsession with “the educated class” here. That is… interesting to say the least. Your so called “educated class” won’t produce your goods, keep that in mind. You need everyone to have a healthy prosperous economy.
Green ideology
I see you speak from a very unbiased position here. What is this said “green ideology”?
Long story short: Germany has always been unattractive to foreigners and will stay so. The only people that ever migrated to Germany did it because they didn’t have any other choices. It’s the same with the turkish workers that came here half a century ago. Germany treated them like crap, refused to integrate them for many years, even sent their kids to schools to study in Turkish and didn’t want them to learn German. It’s the same story with arab refugees. It took years for them to get work permits here. The government paid teachers to teach in arabic and refused to teach them German because they feared they would settle here. Many of them have to fight the government to get a work permit and actually be able to contribute to society. This is what the german mentality has to offer.
Older generations aren’t ready to accept people from other countries and cultures here. They want quiet, little slaves ready to work for cheap. Even better if they’re highly educated. This just feeds back into the german cultural aspect of being cheap. That’s why educated people like me work abroad. Germany is mediocre at best. My mates in Eastern Europe make the same as the Germans in my field in Germany. It’s hilarious honestly how much they tell themselves how superior they are, but they work on EE wages. Germans expect everyone to flock to their country and learn their language, but Germans can’t even order at McDonalds in English when they go abroad. They don’t even bother integrating the people that come here, yet they keep saying how they want more skilled, educated immigrants lmao
Look at the people Germany is importing and the conditions they live in. Even people from Eastern Europe get treated like cattle. They get brought here by the corrupt political class to work in meat factories. They barely get any money, they are tricked into living in miserable conditions, they get to sleep in a small room with six other men that are also working in similar conditions. This is how Germany stays afloat. By taking advantage of people and being cheap. This will not work forever. Being cheap and taking advantage of people doesn’t work indefinetely. I just find it hilarious how German society has to wake up to that realization now.
