cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/20506285
While the article is right in that the German economy sucks, a lot of its reasoning is bullshit.
For example, Tesla was definitely a rude awakening, but stock valuation means jack shit with the NYSE running on pure price speculation.
Also yeah they are closing factories in Germany, but they sure as hell are keeping those in Eastern Europe. What did they think would happen when they got built, and they got built bigger than those in Germany?
Point is, this downturn is not because a lack of innovation or whatever, but just the neolib policies changing tack as they were always supposed to in a downturn.
Fuck axel springer_ with its monopoly on news.
German GDP is still growing every year, just a bit slower. Stuff like this happens in capitalism. It doesn’t have much effect on other companies.
Germany has the second lowest public spending to gdp in the EU. Only Irelands is lower and Irelands GDP is overstate due to tech companies. At the same time the German government has an amazing credit rating and a lot of investment oppurtunities in the green transition and infrastructure.
The only thing Germany has to do, is to borrow some money and spent it somewhat well. Right now debt to gdp is falling during economic problems, so borrowing can very easily done sustainably.
That would also improve the mood in the country, which is highly important.
The dependence of the machinery sector on car production and the consequence of economic simplification due to EV production being simpler was a problem known since at least the 1990s, if not since the 1880s, but little was done during the Merkel governments to diversify beyond R&D, which products were simply exported or were directed towards car production productivity (car production per worker or material).
And yet, as recent as ~2018, I read an article in a German metallurgy trade magazine about hydrogen cars and the amazing Fertigungstiefe (“depth of production”) that could be achieved in that sector. In other words, they tried to spin the fact that hydrogen cars are complicated, expensive POS’s as a positive: It would mean a lot of German labor would be needed for them, nevermind that nobody in their right mind would buy these things. Even right now, the wider German populace hasn’t quite understood that hydrogen cars will not materialize, ever.
[Addendum: Conveniently, the Greens are in the government now to serve as scapegoats for this industry that first made itself majority-dependent on the Chinese market and then failed to watch as China iterated on their manufacturing processes, started focused research on batteries and electric motors, and finally enacted legislation outmode ICE cars.]
