Germany has reported its lowest unemployment rate in 20yrs (DW-TV)

[iamtechus]

Industry is booming and the job market is great in this socialist country.

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,6158584,00.html?maca=en-TWITTER-EN-2004-xml-mrss

Unemployment in Germany stands at its lowest level since 1991. According to government figures, less than three million - or 7.5 percent are out of work. Analysts expect the positive trend to continue.

[Drale]

1. Bet the right trys to say

the reason for this is everyone works for the government.

[applegrove]

2. The right did use to use Germany as an example of liberal policies gone bad. The reality Not So Much

[bemildred]

3. Well, I sure look forward to having the "economic experts" explain this anomaly.

:sarcasm:

[Radical Activist]

4. They started investing in clean energy years ago.

Now they're a world leader in renewables and have the green energy jobs that go with it. That's what America sacrificed by increasing our reliance on coal.

[rucky]

15. ^^^ This is why ^^^

or at least the main reason

[JackRiddler]

5. In part they can thank the Greeks they abused.

The euro devaluation caused by the Greek crisis is coming in handy on the export market.

[inna]

10. Germany abused the Greeks?

[Hannah Bell]

12. The Germans (banking interests) are the leaders of the forces pushing for austerity, i've read.

[JackRiddler]

28. Merkel government and media too.

[muriel_volestrangler]

16. Meh - the dollar-euro rate is pretty close to its average, for the last 3 years

http://www.indexmundi.com/xrates/graph.aspx?c1=USD&c2=EUR&days=1825&lastday=20101028

It's now at about the same rate it was at in Sept 2007, Sept 2008, Dec 2008, July 2009, and Feb 2010. In between those dates, it has been up to 15% higher or lower. The Greek 'crisis' may have caused a blip on the graph of the euro, but not enough for a long term effect on the jobs related to German exports.

[JackRiddler]

18. meh - you should allow for some snark in here

Germany has many advantages on the market. Austerity if anything is a threat to its position.

[muriel_volestrangler]

26. OK, some snark, but 2 others seem to have taken you at face value (nt)

[JVS]

24. Yup.

[lib2DaBone]

6. A high-tech, high-wage economy? Or a race to the bottom..

It's a choice our leaders make.. Our leaders who shape (or SHOULD shape) a "vision" for America.

Then again.. our "leaders" have chosen to spend $100 Billion a year nation building in Afghanistan... while our roads and brides crumble at home.

For all the flag waving and praying and nationalism oozing out of Washington.. there seems to be very few politicians with a plan to re-build America.

[Imajika]

7. The right wing runs Germany...

I wouldn't crow too much about how well they are doing considering the right wing is going to take credit for it.

[tritsofme]

8. I seriously doubt a politician like Merkel could win a Republican primary anywhere

for any race.

Sure she is center-right in Europe, but you couldn't call her that in America.

[Imajika]

9. Oh, I think your quite wrong. Angela "multiculturalism has failed" Merkel...

...would be very popular amongst lots of Republicans here.

She may not be as radical as some in her coalition, but she's pretty conservative.

Merkel is a smart cookie. She knows she can't get away with radical austerity and massive changes all at once, but she is pushing as hard as she can to move Germany backward.

[eridani]

11. 7.5% still means that developed countries are going to have to rethink work hours

You just can't keep on having fewer and fewer people making more and more stuff, and then telling people displaced from making stuff that they can't have any.

[theHandpuppet]

13. The Germans aren't bankrupting their country with endless wars

Just imagine if all the money we have spent on war had been invested here at home.

[Mudoria]

14. They don't have to

for 65 years they've been quite willing to let us spend our money to defend them.

[marmar]

19. To defend them against whom? Who has threatened Germany?

nt

[theHandpuppet]

23. +1

:thumbsup:

[proteus_lives]

27. In the last 65 years?

Remember that little thing called the Cold War?

Now? Probably nobody. We could save tons of money by closing most of the European bases.

[Quantess]

25. LOL.

[JackRiddler]

30. Against whom have "we" been "defending" them the last 20 years?

Cold war ideology aside.

[MissHoneychurch]

17. Better take that info with a grain of salt

German politicians tripped over themselves this week to announce that unemployment had sunk to an impressive low -- under 3 million. But German papers study the statistics and wonder how long the good times will last.

...

What's kept the German economy from hemorrhaging jobs over the last two years is a "short-time" work program that encourages firms to keep workers even if they have to cut back hours (say, to one-third, of the usual week). The government covers up to two-thirds of a worker's regular salary, as well as monthly pension and health-care payments. It's a subsidy. Training for new jobs has also been subsidized, and the program has proven far more flexible in rough times than traditional welfare. It can't last forever, but conveniently for politicians it keeps jobless numbers low.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,725886,00.html

[LostInAnomie]

20. A lot of Germany's magic unemployment numbers are from paying firms to not lay off.

They have a program in place that is paying firms to keep employees that would have been laid off working part-time. It's not from some kind of incredible economic ideas. They're paying to keep the numbers artificially low.

[JackRiddler]

29. Preventing deindustrialization is not an "artificial" measure.

Actually, Germany is distinguished by the fact that they still measure unemployment the same way as 30 years ago, and don't massage the statistics to disappear the unemployed, like the US and UK (where most of the declines since Thatcher have been thanks to statistical ruses).

The US has an industrial policy too. Unfortunately its subsidies are concentrated in the megadeaths sector, producing a bunch of weaponry we're better off never using.

[moondust]

21. Yes but how many gazillionaires do they have?

Everybody knows that's the real measure of prosperity...

:sarcasm:

[pampango]

22. Social democracy may let us live nicer lives; it also may be the only way to be globally competitive

http://www.huntingtonnews.net/columns/100807-kinchen-columnsbookreview.html

His conclusion, based on five trips where he tries to understand so-called European socialism firsthand, is that we're not the best place for middle-class people. First he tries France (which has become a rhetorical stand-in for the continent as a whole in many Americans' minds), but he eventually ventures into Germany to see what some call the "boring" Europe. He says the French model is flawed because workers don't have the advantages of Germans, with a say in the company's future, and are constantly striking. Germans, with their powerful unions, rarely go on strikes because they have a real voice in their employment.

In Germany, Geoghegan finds the true "other"—an economic model with more bottom-up worker control than that of any other country in the world — and argues that, while we have to take Germany’s problems seriously, we also have to look seriously at how much it has achieved. Social democracy may let us live nicer lives; it also may be the only way to be globally competitive. His anecdotal book helps us understand why the European model, contrary to popular neoliberal wisdom, may thrive well into the twenty-first century without compromising its citizens' ease of living — and be the best example for the United States to follow.

OK, some facts about Germany, the largest economy by far in the European Union and the fourth largest in the world, measured by gross domestic product per person (GDP), with a thriving export-oriented manufacturing sector -- like the kind we used to have when we manufactured goods that were desired around the world.

Germany, with 83 million people and few natural resources, is the world's second largest exporter, with $1.170 trillion exported in 2009. You know who is the largest exporter and it ain't us. Hint: It begins with C and ends in A. and has more than 1.3 billion residents. Germany's service sector contributes about 70 percent of the total GDP of Germany, with industry another 29.1 percent and agriculture less than 1 percent. Most of the country's exports are in engineering, automobiles, machinery, metals and chemicals. Germany is the world's leading producer of wind turbines and solar power technology.

Geoghegan tells us that the average number of paid vacation days in the U.S. is 13, compared with Germany’s 35. New mothers in the U.S. get three months of unpaid job-protected leave and only if they work for a company of 50 or more employees, while Germany mandates four months’ paid leave and will pay parents 67% of their salary to stay home for up to 14 months to care for a newborn. U.S. life expectancy is 50th in the world, compared to Germany’s 32nd.