Old Socialist comments.
The opening paragraph of this exhumation is not surprising:
Nearly twenty-five years ago this newspaper called Germany the sick man of the euro. The combination of reunification, a sclerotic job market and slowing export demand all plagued the economy, forcing unemployment into double digits. Then a series of reforms in the early 2000s ushered in a golden age. Germany became the envy of its peers. Not only did the trains run on time but, with its world-beating engineering, the country also stood out as an exporting powerhouse. However, while Germany has prospered, the world has kept on turning. As a result, Germany has once again started to fall behind.
That Golden Age ushered in by ‘a series of reforms in the early 2000s ushered in a golden age. Germany became the envy of its peers’ – The Reader will take note that proof of that ‘age’ is presented in the negative?
Europe’s biggest economy has gone from a growth leader to a laggard. Between 2006 and 2017 it outperformed its large counterparts and kept pace with America. Yet today it has just experienced its third quarter of contraction or stagnation and may end up being the only big economy to shrink in 2023. The problems lie not only in the here and now. According to the imf, Germany will grow more slowly than America, Britain, France and Spain over the next five years, too.
To be sure, things are not as alarming as they were in 1999. Unemployment today is around 3%; the country is richer and more open. But Germans increasingly complain that their country is not working as well as it should. Four out of five tell pollsters that Germany is not a fair place to live. Trains now run so serially behind the clock that Switzerland has barred late ones from its network. After being stranded abroad for the second time this summer as her ageing official plane malfunctioned, Annalena Baerbock, the foreign minister, has aborted a trip to Australia.
A bit of argumentative reductionism might helps to try to grasp The Economist’s argumentative points, if they exist as such, instead of being chock-a-block assertions about a time period ‘Between 2006 and 2017’ attached to ‘not as alarming as they were in 1999’.
A collection of sentences and or paragraphs might help illuminate?
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For years Germany’s outperformance in old industries papered over its lack of investment in new ones. Complacency and an obsession with fiscal prudence led to too little public investment, and not just in Deutsche Bahn and the Bundeswehr.
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The geopolitics mean that manufacturing may no longer be the cash cow it used to be. Of all the large Western economies, Germany is the most exposed to China. Last year trade between the two amounted to $314bn.
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Another difficulty comes from the energy transition. Germany’s industrial sector uses nearly twice as much energy as the next-biggest in Europe, and its consumers have a much bigger carbon footprint than those in France or Italy.Cheap Russian gas is no longer an option and the country has, in a spectacular own goal, turned away from nuclear power (see Europe section).
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Editor: The utter dishonesty of The Economist, not to address the fact that America and or its hirelings/allies destroyed the Nord Stream pipelines!
THE COVER-UP
MAR 22, 2023
The Biden Administration continues to conceal its responsibility for the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines
Seymour Hersh
5 months ago · 1994 likes · Seymour Hersh
Editor: a collection of clichés follows:
Increasingly, too, Germany lacks the talent it needs. A baby boom after the second world war means that 2m workers, on net, will retire over the next five years.
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For Germany to thrive in a more fragmented, greener and ageing world, its economic model will need to adapt.
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The temptation may therefore be to stick with the old ways of doing things.
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Instead of running scared, politicians must look ahead, by fostering new firms, infrastructure and talent. Embracing technology would be a gift to new firms and industries. A digitised bureaucracy would do wonders for smaller firms that lack the capacity to fill out reams of paperwork.
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Editor: After that collection of clichés, the The Economist offers an Agenda 2030:
Just as important will be attracting new talent. Germany has liberalised its immigration rules, but the visa process is still glacial and Germany is better at welcoming refugees than professionals. Attracting more skilled immigrants could even nurture home-grown talent, if it helped deal with the chronic shortage of teachers. In a country of coalition governments and cautious bureaucrats, none of this will be easy. Yet two decades ago, Germany pulled off a remarkable transformation to extraordinary effect. It is time for another visit to the health farm.
The insufferable arrogance of Oxbridgers, and the pretenders to that toxic status, yet not one reference, to two rhetorical actors in German Political History, Realpolitik or Ostpolitik? Surely those references could have transformed the jejune into The World Historical?
Old Socialist
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