TIME Magazine - "How Germany Became the China of Europe"
Spiegel Quote:'America Must Learn from Germany -- Before It Is Too Late'
Written by an American MBA, expat who resides in Germany.
Spiegel US newsweekly Time writes that the wide range of German economic and social reforms have been "farsighted" and that German firms, together with those reforms, have forged "the most competitive industrial sector of any advanced economy." The New York Times, meanwhile, says that: "The German economy has been one of the wonders of the world over the last couple of years."
As an American expat living in the European Union the fact that all workers throughout the EU are medically insured as are their families from cradle to grave as a human right and they enjoy benefits such as a child maintenance allowance, paid sick leave, paid maternity leave and paid annual leave by right of law is something that most American workers are blissfully kept ignorant of by the American owned plutocrat media, even in an election year. Because America's top 1% wealth holders and their surrogates are getting disgustingly richer, and as such they have no desire to learn from the economic success of the European Union, and most saliently the success of the top economies in Europe of Britain, France and Germany.
As such the German mainstream magazine Der Spiegel wrote a blistering article, which excoriates America's ruling elites unwillingness to acknowledge and learn from the recent German economic miracle, where in Germany has risen to the third largest exporting nation in the world, which instead of having a trade deficit as is the case in America, they have a trade surplus, wherein they grow manufacturing jobs. As such as a business librarian, this diary provides a review of the aforementioned Spiegel article.
Spiegel quote:"More than anything, Germany is considered a role model for its successes as an exporting nation. While Germany enjoys a foreign trade surplus of €120 billion ($158 billion), America has a trade deficit of €423 billion."
Die "Götterdämmerung" The decline of the American Superpower!
"Götterdämmerung" ("twilight of the gods"), a German expression that means the catastrophic downfall of a system usually in violent collapse i.e. 59 million without medical insurance; 132 million without dental; 45 million on food stamps; millions of homes in underwater mortgages while students living in their parent's basement are drowning in student loan debt; over 2 million Americans in jail. Concurrently the US economy is in full scale deindustrialization.
In America we lose 200,000 manufacturing jobs annually in a whole scale deindustrialization of the American working class, wherein the American corporatist are happy to shred the American working class in order to garner short term profits for themselves and their corporate masters, at the long term expense of the American people.
As a result, the top 1 percent has done progressively better in each economic recovery of the past two decades. In the Clinton era expansion, 45 percent of the total income gains went to the top 1 percent; in the Bush recovery, the figure was 65 percent; now it is 93 percent.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
By contrast throughout the European Union as a counterbalance to the corporatist model, especially in countries like Germany, there are numerous wealthy industrialist families who in their closely held companies subscribe to a time honored European tradition,
wherein they invest substantially long term in their workforce in recognition of the value of human capital, and in doing so forgo the short term profiteering American robber baron model, as they have come to believe that human capital is a long term valuable investment where they honor their workers by investing in workers and worker education and training, in a posture where university education is virtually speaking free, where the tuition charged is so low that American students routinely spend more on books, than German students spend on a semester's tuition! Wherein concurrently blue collar skilled tradespeople are trained in rigorous apprenticeships over a painstaking number of years, therein creating a skilled workforce in abundance, that has made German manufacturing the envy of the industrialized world in a catastrophic model of success. Therein creating an economically empowered working class and social safety net, that supports one of the highest standards of living and social justice of any major industrialized country in the world. This clean, high value, low crime society offers a textbook lesson to the unbridled avarice of the American robber baron plutocracy, whose wealth base comes from a model of oppression and worker exploitation unrivaled among major industrialized countries, that has become an international badge of shame. To which we note that pigs can have no shame.
"Measured as a percentage of GDP, Germany now invests more than 20 times as much as the United States in the industry-related R&D of small and mid-sized companies, says Rob Atkinson, the president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a leading Think Tank in Washington."
Therefore Germany has been able to grow large numbers of technically skilled people to include highly skilled engineers and mathematicians. Also German vocational apprenticeship programs are second to none in the world, where apprenticeships are virtually speaking free of charge. In fact apprentices are paid modest salaries while training.
Spiegel quote:"The United States has no equivalent to the German training system or comparable programs for retraining or continuing education."
Therefore the German society is able to produce goods that countries to include developing countries around the world want at competitive prices, while leveraging economies of scale, which the United States is not able to do, because unions which have been traditional sponsors of employee education have been routed in America in the GOP led class warfare, which has left America's manufacturing base internationally impotent, and has led to large scale evisceration and destruction of the American working class, which is rapidly being deskilled, de-industrialized as a product of the GOP led class warfare against the masses of the great American working class.
Steven Rattner was a former economic adviser to the Clinton administration who presently the personal financial manager of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's personal fortune, and he is very bullish on the German economic model, which he feels may be leveraged into performing its miracles in the American economy. Here's why:
Spiegel quote:Rattner previously served as an economic adviser to President Bill Clinton. Barack Obama had been intending to make him a secretary in his administration, but then he assigned him the job of rescuing the American auto industry during the financial crisis. People in Washington are listening to what Rattner has to say on how things should go forward with the rest of America's stagnating economy. And Rattner is saying: "Germany is a model for the United States."
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Spiegel quote:By now, Rattner has become quite knowledgeable about the issue, as well. He calls the German idea of Kurzarbeit "a model," referring to the "short-time work" program that the German government used during the crisis to avoid layoffs by encouraging companies to reduce workers' hours while making up for some of the workers' lost salaries and benefits itself. Likewise, he says that Germany's system for training skilled workers is a "clear role model for us or any other country" and that its intelligent industrial policies are also worthy of being imitated by Americans.
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Throughout Europe in general, and Germany in particular, there are a number of very wealthy middle European families, who rival the power of the corporate state to some extent in promulgating a traditionally long held economic model that values workers as an investment in human capital, that is time honored, and has as such time and again proven to be an important source of wealth creation, not only for the owners of these closely held companies, but also for the workers and their communities by creating a stable employment and therein tax base, that adds value to the lives of its employees as well as the community at large in maintaining a stable economically empowered working class in an affluent society, than is unimaginable under the corporatist American model, which sees its workforce as disposable, and as such is unwilling to invest in its American workers in accordance with the German model. The American model has had disastrous effects for the American working class communities at large, in what must be seen as wholesale de-industrialization and gentrification, which spells economic doom for the American working class, whose voices will not even be heard substantially in the 2012 election, where issues cannot be discussed substantially, wherein instead so called qualities of the candidates are focused on by the plutocrat owned American media. That's what makes this piece from the mainstream German magazine the Spiegel a particularly interesting read, as it raises the questions that the plutocrat owned American media will not ask, and that is why oh why does America refuse to learn from the success of the German model, which has surpassed America and is now the third largest exporting nation in the world.
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Spiegel quote:Likewise, Rattner underscores how the Mittelstand also has its own range of problems. For every stable, family-owned company, he argues, "you'll find one that has the idiot son."
Above all, he praises the United States for having "the most flexible labor market in the world."
Well, well what does that it mean when he says .......
"Above all, he praises the United States for having "the most flexible labor market in the world."
Let's see now while we can admire Mr Rattner's know how, we don't necessarily have to agree with him on everything now do we?
Could it mean that my fellow MBA is saying that given the complete lack of security in employment in the American workforce that the workforce is the most flexible because management can get rid of it's workers at will, given the lack of employment security,thanks to weak labor laws, which offers employees almost no labor protection according to the OECD chart below. If so doesn't that give new meaning to the words ONLY IN AMERICA!! :-)
Held out not as a moniker but rather as a working class international badge of shame!
To read the full Spiegel article please feel invited to click on the link below:
http://www.spiegel.de/...
In keeping with the Daily Kos site's mission, in the 2012 election electing better progressives is absolutely essential. Otherwise Washington's K Street lobbyists will literally buy them out from under the progressive electorate as soon as they take their oath of office. Therein it becomes absolutely axiomatic that as a community we must support the site's mission in electing better progressives, who will conscientiously represent the 99% instead of the plutocracy's 1% ruling elite to the detriment of the great American working class who built America.