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Comment by sremani | Hacker News Reader

>> university costs 150$ for 6 month.

This is not a German miracle, its simple demographics, most of the Germans are in their productive years of 40s and 50s and their population in teens and 20s is tiny, so their investments are low even though at per-capita level they look tremendous. This is the reason why Germany's hope is automation. They are demographically not in a great place. of course, this will come home to roost in 20 years or so.

[edit] Demographics link: http://www.indexmundi.com/germany/age_structure.html

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Or maybe they figured out that relying on population growth to drive the economy is a Ponzi scheme. Eventually you can't add more population so you have to reckon with aging one day, might as well solve the problem ASAP. Automation combined with exports allows you to grow your economy without adding humans.

If they still wanted to, they could turn on the migration spigot at anytime. Plenty of brilliant engineers and scientists to pick off out of Eastern Europe, Iran, etc. Labor has already come in on its own.

So far population in Germany keeps increasing, as it is one of the most popular countries for immigrants worldwide (and I'm not talking about refugees), so there's a large influx of people from within the European Union as well as from outside of it. Currently there are around 200.000 more deaths each year than births, which is still easy to compensate through immigration. Concerning the birth rate Germany is maybe a bit ahead of the curve, but the problem is similar in most Western countries, even the US. Recently birth rates have been increasing again by the way, so it's not clear if the historically low rates will prevail in the long run.

Also, the fact that education is free isn't really related to demographics, in fact University education has always been free, and the only attempt to introduce a (very moderate) tuition fee in 2006 was fully reversed a few years later due to pressure from various organizations.

Interesting trivia:

If you are from a foreign country and come to Germany to study in the universities, you also pay only that amount. There is a lot of diversity here nation wise in the universities. Education is considered a human right.

No, it's an economic decision. You pay for expensive university via higher costs for specialists. Healthcare is a good example. One reason that it's so expensive in the US is that the education is insanely expensive and doctors need to charge a certain amount to make sure it pays off. In Germany, nearly no one will have more than $10k debt after Uni, so the salary you need to earn as a lawyer or doctor is much lower. And as much of doctors' salary is paid by the state (directly or indirectly), it can be much cheaper to finance universities.

Yeah but there is a counterargument: We don't need more young people because the bip (Gross domestic product) per person is increasing as well. Lets see what will happen :)

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