Anyone know about the German economy? Is is sustainable or not?

[Monkeytrousers]

DP says it isn't, he's more well read than me on this stuff.

Just cos that crap psychologist, whatshisname, has brought a book aout saying we should all adopt it.

no it is not.. the state pension system is final salary based... the working week is 35 hour.. contracts are inflexible and the workforce is expensive,..

A german collegue told me that in the next 10 years over 40% of the workforce will be retired... also the birthrate is dropping

How is that sustainable??

On the plus side cars are cheap in Germany

Thats what I have heard, that it will collapse within a generation.

Bloody utopian nonsence by Olive whatsisname

oliver whatsisname

Germany has been living above its means for a while. Health care and most social benefits are, or were until recently, really really luxurious (certainl healthcare compared to the N HS is out of this world. I am so so glad to have had my pgs here and not in the UK). Birthrate is just 1.3.

The 35h working week is beginning to change. But there are loads and loads of public holidays, lots of people don't work Fri afternoons, it is often difficult to fire people (no bad thing IMO).

Integrating the former GDR (the communist East) which was essentially bankrupt
was and still is a hugely draining undertaking.

Despite that, the German economy is doing reasonably well.

It is certainly more sustainable than the UK economy.

What's the book called, MT?

Well... they make top class stuff.

They get Fridays off.

The have a strong IT and manufacturing base, while the UK lives off financial services(screwed), the service sector(about to be screwed) and selling stupidly overpriced houses(in the process of being screwed).

If that's an unsustainable disaster area, gimmie some of that.

Will find out DaddyJ

Thanks, MT.

You and your dh enjoy some cracking debates

Seriously, can I ask how the topic came up?

Oliver James book was reviewed in the guardian this weekend and he was on the telly on sunday morning giving it some utopian nonsence on some that pseudo live debate show with nicky campbell..

We are reading a lot of stuff at the moment about the crisis of the left, Nick Cohen's What's Left (which Chris Hitchin's has just reviewed on line somewhere too) and re-tuning ourtselves politically as a result. Still left but more pragmatic and political rather than idealist.

Thanks very much, I'll have a look at the reviews.

Yes, the Left is going through a transformation period,
also due to the new geo-political challenge posed by Islamists.
I seem to recall reading some insightful pieces in the London Review of Books.
It's a painful process by all accounts!

Kevlar, I could not agree more. Unfortunately!
2008 could be a very uncomfortable year for the UK.

And of course if the Iranians and the Americans
take this kind of nonsense to the next level
then we're all fucked, to put it mildly.

The oil price has reached silly levels as it is.

It's funny. DP said to me, (he's reading a lot about the Islamist threat to the West and how it has exploited the idea of multiculturalism to get a foothold here and in Europe, which actually seems to be about respecting any other culture but your own) "if your society depends on oil, is oil is it's very lifeblood, what is exactly wrong for wanting to protect the supply?"

I think most people (liberals) think the old left was a humanitatian movem,ent, but I am discovering that individual happiness was never high on their list if priorities, not as high as seizing power in itself. There isn't much to seperate far left and far right in this sense.

Also I was always a bit unsure on how I felt about the war in Iraq, now I do actually support it. They should just have be explict avbout it from the start, it was in our national interest but also a humantarian effort. The Bathist regime was a facist dicatorship and they really should have got rid of Saddam in 1991. The "insregents" are Islamists waging civil war in Iraq, not freedom fighters. It's a shitty cituation, but it was when Saddam was in power too.

Monkeytrousers. I see you've been force fed propoganda.

The Bathist regime was a facist dicatorship
Wrong. They were a socialist state. Not facist. They were also very liberal in personal freedoms (e.g. woman's rights etc).

The "insregents" are Islamists waging civil war in Iraq, not freedom fighters. It's a shitty cituation, but it was when Saddam was in power too.

No that was not the case while Saddam was in power. What on earth do you think would happen if the following happened here. Country X invaded. 1st thing it did was remove every goverment employee, police and army. Then proceeded to say if you were a union card, ex goverment employee you cannot work in the government again.

Anyway don't think Mumsnet IT group is the place for this, so I is outta here

Who do you think fills the power vacuum, when there is no law and order around? Let me tell ya, thugs, criminals, and violent extreme people. They provide protection from other groups. Once you decide to protect your own by getting help, you get sucked up into it. The new government is also filled by people who don't have experience and probably barred from goverment previously.

Don't be so naive of thinking it wouldn't happen here.

Let me tell you whats wrong with stealing the oil. Would you go and steal from a shop or neighbour or anyone ? How is it right to steal from another set of people, just because you "need" oil.

Islamist threat, what a load of crap. Its just goverments wanting to scare people like you into allowing them to do anything they want. Honestly never heard so much crap. Islamist - the word made up to sound like facist. If you ever bothered to look at the details of whats going on in the world instead of looking for a blanket brush, life would become complicated, but better.

Sorry then, totalitatian dictatorship.

I knew it was one or the other. Swings and rounabouts though really

I am trying to look at the details. My posts here, just chatting, are not the sum of my undersrtanding of the issue. Political Islamism is a real threat to the world, niot just the west, but the near east too, as can be seen in Iraq. Iraqi's are by far the biggest victims of the insurgents.

Here's a brief reading list, have a look (or google) the names of

Kanan Makiya
Hirsi Ali
Ibn Warraq

all Muslims standing agianst Islamism. Also read for yourself the writings of teh founders of the Islamist Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb and Abul Ala Mawdudi

Read Phyllis Chesler on feminism and fundamantalist Islam

Anti-totalitarianism by Oliver Kamm

or

Celsius 7/7 by Michael Gove

I could site many atriocities, too many to list which the Baathists commited, the training of government officials by ex-Stasi, forcing people to murder their friends and even family members. Saddam ruled by terror. The path to democracy might be rocky, but I think the people of Iraq deserve the chance to have it.

"if your society depends on oil, is oil is it's very lifeblood"

then you have single point of serious societal weakness which needs to be addressed urgently by the diversification of energy sources and a concerted push for alternative power sources, in order to obviate the need to occupy Middle Eastern countries to protect the dwindling supply of black stuff.

How the hell did we get from Germany to this?

All socetis have weaknesses. we can onky breach the oil problem when technology gicves us an alternative, else it is literally back to the dark ages. And that will cause global war!

People will be working on it, this is why we are building more nuclear power stations I think, cos the wind/water technology is just not good enough to meet supply yet and people do not like it if they are told they have to curtail their energy outlay - they think it's a right not a privledge. We are seriosly f'ed up here as far as energy goes and governments are actually caught in the middle fo all this maddness, trying to do the best they can for us greedy bastards!

Germany, Oliver James, capitalism, utopuian thinking, totalitarianis/fascism, Iraq, oil.

Just recieved this this morning

..greedy b'stards who don't want to go to war but don't want to give up any privledges either.