Why germany is kicking our ass.
 

Damn Germany!

I understand they did not do a stimulus package and their unemployment rate is 8%.

It's been a long time since I lived in Germany and saw what they were doing first hand, but one thing that really struck me was that they have actual vocational training at a young age. A significant portion of their population goes into blue collar work, but there is no real stigma attached to it and the money is pretty good. They actually train them so that they excel at what they are doing. In my US high school in Maine, I'd guess that 75% of the kids in the vocational programs were there because they were slackers, not because they had any sort of mechanical aptitude.

Today, in my county, there is no real vocational program for Middle School and High School kids. There are a couple of courses here and there, but no program. Where are the welders of tomorrow going to come from?

That's how it was in my high school too. The idea that the trades are for losers is so completely wrong. They should be highly respected.

This is a major unnoticed failure of our fucking school systems.

This all coincides nicely with David Brooks in the NYTimes today:

No vocational training here either. We wouldn't want to hurt their self esteem, by teaching them a trade where the could make a living, instead of becoming an English major, working at Burger King to pay their huge student loans.

We don't need welders, glatt. Cheap stuff comes from China, expensive stuff comes from Germany, and we just let our infrastructure fall apart.

Nah, we don't need people who know materials.

We've had a pretty good Vo-tech program at our high school for about a decade or so. The stigma attached to it at first was expected, but now it's pretty much nothing.

:nadkick: Nice idea

But srsly, don't believe everything that's written in a book.

Some of these statements are plausible, some out of date or wrong.

Just a few remarks:

childcare - for pre-school children was at very high standards in former East Germany, less so in the western part. Currently attempts are made to improve the availability to around 30%

free university tuition - Germany being a federal system, some of its states (social democrat governed) have free university tuition, other (conservatives) have introduced fees over the past 5 years or so.

six weeks of federally mandated vacation - while mandated vacation is around 4 weeks (I think), it is true that almost every employee has six weeks

nursing care - a mandatory insurance has been introduced some years ago, to pay for old age nursing. This will however be not be enough to cover the costs - outcome open.

health care - people are allowed to "opt out" of the public health insurance plan and get private insurance instead (obviously this will be the wealthy). Also civil servants get special perks. - The system is exploited by the pharmacy industry. Germany's prices for medication are the highest in Europe. The same drugs cost much less in neighbouring countries.

Günther Horzetzky - never was labor minister, he was a high-ranking official in that ministry though.

-oOo-

A point in case, though it may not necessarily be taken as the rule:

I have found, in my very personal experience, that efficiency is much higher in Germany and that "lower ranks" of employees in the US are discouraged from taking even the minutest initiative or responsibility, probably due to inflationary threats of legal action.

A company I am familiar with, the German segment of an American company, made huge profits even though employees were slacking it for 5 out of 8 hours a day, still running circles around and subsidising the ailing American mother. Eventually the whole company (American + international segments) was bought by an investment company, and given to the sister of one of its directors as a toy. Result: the American part went chapter 11 bankrupt and is now owned by the banks. Little sister is still at the helm.

Just my :2cents:

Once again, we are screwed by our own post-war reparations. Darn those Nips and Huns and their efficiency.

Among many other things she wants, my 14 year old daughter wants to move to Germany. Or at least visit for a long time. And she's making pretty decent inroads on learning the language.

I'd say another reason Germany kicks our ass, which applies to lost of other countries as well, is that most of their people speak more than just German.

Contrast that with the U.S. where people act as though their heads are going to explode should they have to "press 1 for English."

Sayonara! Ciao! Gezundheit! ;)

I believe he chose Germany because they are supposed to be the most successful European state, viewed by wall street and the industrial world. There may be other countries that best them in the categories mentioned, but somehow they have managed to perform, despite a pro-labor government and strong unions. Here the unions get blamed for dragging companies and the country down. If the company/union relationship wasn't so adversarial, they could work together for the benefit of both.

For cradle to grave care, I think the Scandinavian countries come out on top.

We should probably start handing out ticker numbers for the countries that kick our ass.

wanna kick our ass? take a number. next!

I had a conversation about this with my roommate the other day. My friend agreed that the expectation to go to college has created a social stigma against manual labor jobs. Most people with a college degree will not "lower" themselves to that type of work even though those jobs can pay much better than most jobs that "require" college degrees. This has caused a shortage in those fields and part of the problem mentioned in articles above.

What my friend added, something I didn't think of, is that the expectation to go to college actually is hurting the economy. More and more people are spending the first five to ten years of their lives paying back college loans with a job that probably doesn't even use their degree instead of spending it on other things that could help the economy.

Funny thing is, both my roommate and I are engineers and there is a very good chance both our younger brothers, both going to a two year college, will get paid more than us. Yet, there is a stigma against their jobs...

Doesn't matter, they don't have the skills to do those jobs. There seems to be a pervasive idea you only have to show up and be willing, to earn good money... not so. Yeah, yeah, I know your Cousin Louie's neighbor's friend is making $100k right out of high school. His father or father-in-law own the business, or he's doing something illegal. Decent money is not in labor, it's in skilled trades. Electricians, plumbers, machinists, CNC operators, etc, need a tremendous amount of knowledge to do their job properly. The schools have closed, and the apprentice system has all but dried up, largely a result of the jobs being exported.

Pierce, I just have to disagree. As the economy picks up and in the long run you will outperform your brothers will be making less over your lifetime. Most of the statistics show this to be true. Although the entry level is now a BS or BA as a minimum and if you want to make any real money you have to have a masters degree. As the economy picks up it should all improve over time. That is if it ever picks up and if we can avoid the coming socialist revolution plans of the Obama Administration and Dems.

Heh, it really depends. You can accidentally pick an engineering field that goes out of style, and then you're fucked. Ask the nuclear engineers...

Or you can pick a field that goes wildly INTO style, and then everything changes and you're fucked again. I remember thinking in 1995, boy I'm ahead of the curve learning about these great new technologies like DNS and email and the web... I'll be the expert. And for a while, I was. But a few years later, it all became so important and universal that large sections of my advanced knowledge were being broadcast on national TV. Ads during the fucking Super Bowl for domain registration... things only geeks like me were supposed to know about!

But ya know, water still goes through pipes... and the rules of electricity are permanently fixed in physics.

GM stifled innovation (except that required by government regulation) some 30 years ago. How long did it take for spread sheets to finally report the resulting failure? How long does it take uneducated students today to finally create a second class nation tomorrow? How many decades; because an uneducated population decreases living standards only decades or generations later. By then, it is too late. They did not get the education necessary to be able to learn.

Much of what becomes America's most productive people do not exist for maybe 10 or 20 years after being educated. Education is necessary to become productive 20 years later. America that was once #1 in advanced education is now 12th - and falling. Where will America be in 20 years? (Fox News will then blame evil foreigners.) When not educated, then hate and anger are a usual response. How many Japanese cars got bashed in the late 1970s. The least educated cannot ask damning questions necessary to ‘think outside the box’. Will blindly believe everything said by a lady in a GPS. Will blindly think only what a service manual tells them to think. Remember this classic example?

An Idle Control Air Valve system was only three parts. So a tech kept replacing the same computer - four times.

In My check engine light is on, he blindly did what told to do (as any uneducated person would do). He could not even ask what the service manual was doing - could not ask a damning question. When the procedure replaced the same non-defective part four times, did he bother to think? No. Learning to think requires basic knowledge obtained from education. For example, to understand how electricity works. His entire thought process was, “do only what the manual orders”. (All praise our mighty leader – the service manual!) Welcome to communism. We will tell you how to think. Best you don’t get educated.

Education is about learning what is necessary to think for yourself. Nobody can do that thinking without first learning the basics. In America, a majority of students not getting educated are males. How many expect to be taken in by cougars?

Ask your computer tech what a surge protector does. Most have no idea. Most will only recite lies from retail advertising. Most computer techs are so uneducated as to not even know how electricity works. So uneducated as to also get angry because he need not know how electricity (or a computer) works. "I fixed a computer by replacing parts on speculation until it worked. I am smart!" Nonsense. Any 12 year old can shotgun.

America became a great power when Hitler drove 'thinkers' from Europe. America continued to prosper when so many 'thinkers' came to America to be educated - and then stayed. For example, who created Intel? America's recent contempt of immigrants has even diminished that source of educated thinkers. Made worse when America, at the highest levels of government and industry, stifled science: stem cells, wasted money on the Constellation after failing to make a decision until the last minute, drove out basic research (ie quantum physics), wasted tremendous men and money on mythical threats (Saddam), and even sold some of this nation's once most innovative institutions to foreigners (because research is an expense; not an asset).

Who owns the Bell Labs? The French. How quickly does the Silicon Valley go through one year of H1B visas? To find employees with sufficient education, 60% of new employees now come from India and China. It would be higher. The need for educated employees is that large. But the entire one year's worth of visas are gone in the first week. Finding educated Americans has become that difficult.

He could not understand what the service manual was doing due to insufficient education. Could not even understand how three simple electrical parts worked. To 'think outside the box' means one must first obtain basic knowledge. Too many just know they are smart because they feel - rather than learn how much they did not know. Then get angry when America needs educated immigrants.

Let's see. CFL light bulbs were created in GE in 1973 by Ed Hammer. Why was the design finished by Ellis Yan - a Chinaman? Why do virtually all CFL bulbs come from China? America no longer has the education necessary to make the next generation light bulb even 35 years after it was invented here?

Government had to require the innovation. "GE balked at the standards at first, knowing that they could impact their U.S. manufacturing. But the company also saw that with restrictions gaining momentum in more states and other countries, some kind of legislation was unavoidable." GE would not innovate until forced by government regulation? GE is mostly a company of finance people. A symptom of a slowly growing problem in America - people without education that makes them innovative. Finance guys - also called uneducated - could not see innovation in a light bulb for 25 years?

The question was America verses Germany. The Economist has recently discussed GE verses Siemens. Remove GE’s finance division to learn what is slowly over the decades happening to America. GE is mostly a finance company. Little in GE today is from innovation. Where would GE be if they manufactured those innovative light bulbs 25 years ago? A world leader. GE has fallen significantly behind Siemens. Because Siemens at the highest levels of management is about product and innovation. GE does what any dying nation does - less innovation and lots of finance. Don’t worry. Be happy – says a nation of communication majors.

I know, it's the damn teacher's unions. :lol2:

Notice anything here ?

Yeah yeah, every tech company is like the UN now... meanwhile, here I sit trying to get web development projects so I can keep my house, while the IT jobs market doesn't really need those H1B people any more. They needed them in the 1990s, but IT jobs have fallen by almost a third in the last decade... here's the graph.

http://cellar.org/2010/itjobs.png

Bullshit. Real money comes from selling an idea. It could be selling the pet rock to the general public or selling the idea that you can run a company to your Yale roommate's rich father. It could even be selling the idea that your plumbing skills and prices are better than the plumber down the street's. You don't need any degree for that.

As IT jobs dropped, the Silicon Valley increased its needs immigrants to due jobs Americans can no longer do. The Valley needs ICs. That is not integrated circuits. This demand for 60% of new employees is recent - as is the resulting IC joke describes the problem.

:corn:

Article in the Post this morning is saying that it's more than just labor that makes manufacturing jobs head overseas. Many countries offer subsidies to woo companies . The Post used the example of a LED light bulb manufacturer. This guy from Florida has innovated a new light bulb using LEDs, he's got a small factory in Florida, but is ready to really ramp up production. So he's considering where to open a big new factory. Not only is labor here more expensive in the US, but he's being offered about $4 Million in subsidies by countries like Mexico and China. They are trying to woo him, and the US is offering him pretty much nothing to stay.

Modest personal gain doing something that is also good for his country vs greater personal gain doing something that doesn't help his country at all. It's a difficult decision.

As a product of the Capatalist system surely the choice is simple.

When he's rich the benefits will trickle down , right?

When he's rich, he can piss on everybody else?

Trickle down went out the door with all the factories that did too.