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Comment by throwaway_20357 | Hacker News Reader

throwaway_20357

I'm sceptical. Recent movements in Germany point into the opposite direction or rather a continuation of wishful thinking. Yes, a lot of debt-funded defence investment is coming. They also promised some investment in "infrastructure". At the same time the debt increase will delay reforms that are overdue for 20 years and longer. There were already calls that, now, with all brakes off, we can increase rather than curb spending on the welfare state. As it currently looks, the productivity gap with the US and Asia will widen rather than shrink. A very disappointing development to say the least.

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European manufacturing is more productive than US manufacturing. The US productivity advantage comes almost entirely from the US' strong tech (as in software) sector.

Tech (as in software) is what's being cut off to Ukraine, and tech (as in software, MEMS gyros, and GNSS) is how Ukraine keeps blowing up US$3M T-90 tanks with three or four US$500 FPV drones. So I think it's highly relevant to the question of sovereignty.

As far as I know all cheap drone tech is provided by China (to both Russia and Ukraine).

It's largely kind of an international open-source effort, but there is a lot of crucial hardware that is only available from China, yes. Until this week I think Anduril was in a good position to become an alternative to China in two to four years, but this move strongly undermines their credibility overseas.

(Might be just me but it took a couple reads to understand you don't mean US tanks that cost thee million dollars. For me, USD is the currency code I'm familiar with)

Apologies. Around here people commonly write "U$S" but I'm not resigned to that yet.

Germany has slightly higher productivity per hour worked than the US. There's a productivity gap between the US and European economies as a whole (which is a relatively recent phenomenon dating back to around 2005), but Germany is quite productive.

I should have more precisely referred to the "productivity growth gap" (https://www.dbresearch.com/PROD/RPS_EN-PROD/PROD000000000053...)

> There were already calls that, now, with all brakes off, we can increase rather than curb spending on the welfare state.

I'm curious: Where can I read more about this? Which parties (and how many) are saying this? Is there any pushback from Merz?

One example is pensions. For demographic reasons the state pension system is underfunded for years, a situation that is projected to become worse. One solution would be to increase contributions which are already sky-high and make working or opening a business a lot less attractive in Germany. Another is to freeze pensions. Guess what happened? Germany's old government increased the contribution level starting in January this year [1]. Additional, a pension raise [2] has recently been announced and the newly-found debt will provide funding for additional benefits for pensioners [3]. It more and more feels like a gerontocracy.

[1] https://www.deutsche-rentenversicherung.de/DRV/DE/Ueber-uns-... [2] https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/rentensteigeru... [3] https://www.t-online.de/nachrichten/deutschland/innenpolitik...

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