28-01-2005, 12:51 AM
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#1 (permalink)
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Uber Member
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Woking
Posts: 31,194
Party: Libertarian Party
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Germany's Dismal Future
http://www.forbes.com/global/2005/0207/012.html
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An object lesson for us all is the present deplorable state of Germany. It shows what happens when a society is encouraged by its leaders to turn its back on freedom and opt for security at any price.
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Mmmm, what happened the last time that happend?
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Today the German economy is a model--especially for the rapidly expanding nations of the Third World, such as China and India--for what not to do. Stagnant production, static or falling productivity and appalling levels of unemployment are the salient factors. Unemployment figures have recently been revised upward to 4.5 million but could be as high as 6 million when the "hidden unemployed" are taken INTO phpbb_account. These figures are close to those of 1932, at the depths of the Great Depression and just before Hitler came to power. So many being unemployed was one reason Hitler's bid for power was successful.
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Harsh, but fair.
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Three Reasons for Germany's Decline
• The power wielded by its old-fashioned trade unions. German unions insist on short hours, high wages, immense social security benefits and conditions of work that make productivity increases virtually impossible. Their stranglehold on the economy is akin to that exercised by British unions before Margaret Thatcher smashed them in the early 1980s.
• The input of the EU bureaucracy in Brussels. The EU imposes endless rules, whose net effect is to stifle enterprise and squelch innovation. The push toward a European superstate has proved an unmitigated disaster for Germany, which, despite its relative economic decline, is still the biggest net contributor to EU funds. Germany thus ends up financing programs such as the Common Agricultural Policy that work against its interests. Germany pays the EU piper, while France calls all the tunes. Indeed, Germany's subservience to France is one of the most astonishing and inexplicable features of today's world. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder seems content to play the poodle to President Jacques Chirac in the most humiliating and grovelling way, following tamely in courses that demonstrably work against Germany both at home and abroad.
When Germany looked to U.S. leadership between 1950 and the early 1970s, it prospered. Since Germany submitted to French direction, the country has plunged relentlessly INTO phpbb_the pit. Sooner or later the German people are going to grasp this salient truth; when they do, the consequences for Europe will be dramatic. This moment has been delayed, however, by the third factor in the nation's decline.
• Germany's acute sense of failure and unhappiness. This is a collective psychological depression that effectively prevents Germany from taking action to remedy its ills. The Germans agree they're in a mess, and many see the obvious way out. The country needs to make the kinds of structural changes in its economy that Prime Minister Thatcher carried out in Britain 20 years ago, changes that have completely transformed the performance and expectations of the British people. But though most Germans know this, they lack the will--and, of course, the leadership--to carry it out. They stay inert, supine, transfixed by fear and angst, paralyzed by the thought of painful adjustments in their safety-first society--and thus coast toward a disaster comparable to Hitlerism.
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Scares the hell out of me!
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Certainly the European capital needs to be closer to the Union's center of gravity. But more important, the EU needs a revolution in thinking, away from the regulations and controls that are turning the dream of a prosperous and peaceful Europe INTO phpbb_a nightmare of discontent, depression and decline. What Germany needs and Europe awaits is a leader who can break the mold to give both a fresh start. Too much to ask? If so, the alternative will be violence
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I don't like violence, taxi!
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