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Comment by touwer | Hacker News Reader

Indeed. Zeiss lenses. Medical equipment. Boss. Siemens. The only thing that's really lacking is ict and ai. But that can be fixed

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Niche businesses like Zeiss Lenses can't support the economy of the EU of 450 Milion people, especially that they mostly hire highly specialize people with PhD and up.

Having a company that makes lenses, even really good ones, is not the same as having a viable economy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_economic_crisis_(2022%E...

So, you're basically that, if GDP is not up, or the companies are not doing well, it doesn't matter that they're actually building genuinely useful stuff without which all sorts of people would be in major trouble?

Germany has problems-- immigration, energy etc., and maybe some companies have problems, but the US has put huge efforts into making something even a tiny bit like the German companies that are actually building stuff, presumably because its leaders know that you can't eat software services no matter how overpriced they are-- in the end actually building things is how you get things, once you are no longer forced to get some critical vitamin through trade, and we are there now.

I'm saying that not even the nicest, rarest lenses in the world are a replacement for a viable economy.

And you can't eat lenses either, and people who do grow food also use software, and so do everyone else that makes about 90% of all the other stuff other than food that constitutes the German economy.

Germany is a net exporter of food.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/509215/food-industry-imp...

You know what is not a substitute for a viable economy? Everything except a viable economy. Zimbabwe is also a net exporter of food [1][2].

[1]: https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/ZWE/Yea...

[2]: https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/ZWE/Yea...

Germany has a viable economy. It's one of the strongest, most diverse in the world. It's in a recession right now, but we're talking about fluctuations in the 1-percent range here.

If you think Germany is anything close to a failed state then all I can tell you that you either fell for lies or intentionally spread lies yourself.

A change from 3.7% to -0.3% is not in the 1-percent range. It's a decline of more than 100%, as all the growth is gone. Their economy has been sliding for years, the only change in trend was when they were helicoptering covid cash. They are done for, they won't recover.

They can easily recover if they do like the US and run a fiscal deficit to dig up holes and fill them up, if GDP is all you need.

They can as well make insulin $1000 a pop, so everybody with diabetes will need to pay more, GDP up!

Oh wait, Germany doesn't even have a huge chunk of their population with diabetes because Germans don't live off mountain dew and cheetos...

Definitely, Germany has no future!

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