5,004 karma · joined January 29, 2016
Also, you keep railing about "the lazy guys in the south". I'm sorry these stereotypes exist. I don't believe them.
Do you seriously believe the problems of the Spanish economy are all because of Germany? There is absolutely not even a single thing that Spain is doing wrong?
I had to look up what that means. I'm not German. Now what?
> So yeah, let's have that.
Yeah, let's. Italian pensions are about 90% of the former salary? Germany is 50%. Italians make higher payments tough as well. The difference is, Germany is doing that from a much lower debt ratio.
Temp workers are a thing in Germany as well, they get no inion representations. And again, the difference here: German economy is doing well.
Sure the Ruhr existed, have you been there lately? Crazy decline since the 70s. Wasn't a coincidence that the heaviest german metal bands come from there.
> The main difference is that Italy made a few bad choices in the '80s
Exactly. That's why they have this huge debt now, which results in the whole Eurozone shaking whenever interest rates go up. That's why we had low interest rates, which the Germans were very unhappy with. Draghi tried to work on that, but now he is out. Seems like a right to far right coalition might ein the election in the promise of flat tax and not raising retirement age. Will that be the Germans fault as well?
> Let's build the United States of Europe, everyone doing their bit so we can fulfil the federal dream and be done with these petty rivalries from 200 years ago.
Yes, please! But that only works if everyone is in and works on themselves. I don't thinkt the attitude of blaming everything on the Germans is very constructive either.
If we do this fiscal union, are all countries willing to adopt German fiscal discipline? Are all countries ok with levelling out retirement age? Social benefits?
Also, why are you not mentioning that Germany already agreed to the EU taking on common debt during the corona crisis? That the new government is very much pro further integration?
I hear a lot about what Germany is doing wrong. What are the others doing wrong? Germany was desolat themselves after the reunification, they were called the sick man of Europe. They then did harsh and brutal labour market reforms, and a bunch of luck probably as well. Now they are an economic powerhouse. With 0 natural resources, they are all imported.
It's not the Germans fault that Italy has loads of debt. It's not the Germans fault that Spain built useless ghosttowns in the middle of nowhere. They can only export what others are willing to import. And they are not exactly exporting cheap cars at dumping prices, are they?
Sure, Germany is far from perfect and they do lots of things in their own self interest. But maybe the other countries can also try to do better? How long did the Italians keep Berlusconi in power? Draghi threw the towel today, again, because the parties in parliament are unwilling to cooperate to better Italy.
Maybe try to copy what Germany is doing well, instead of feeling like a victim of German evilness.
Can you elaborate on that? What are the ideas that Germany opposed?
A lot of this reads like Germany is the boogie man and every other European country is their poor victim. That's a little bit to one-sided for me.
They are trying to build cars there. Germany's trade surplus also leads to German companies investing more money abroad than at home.
Also, what is Germany supposed to do? What are they doing wrong? EZB is not controlled by Germany, Germany in fact always complained about the low interest rates.
I don't even think the author is fully behind it, seemed more like a thought experiment as a reply to grandparent.
Regarding grandma: I don't want to kick her out of the house. But there is a real issue here: young families can't find affordable places, while old families live in places, that are too big for them because the kids left. If they rent, they also pay significantly less than the younger family, since they are on older contracts. Once new people move in, rent is raised to the new level. The older people don't want to move out, because they would have to pay more for their new, smaller place, than the old, bigger place. Meanwhile the young family also has to finance the pensions for that old family.
Noone is being evil here, but ... it sucks. And every idea to work on it is shut down as being unfair to the people who already own houses. Even building new houses is usually opposed by the people who already have houses in the area. If I never get the chance ever to own one, I don't really feel like I have to protect the interest of house owners.
This however isn't a reason for the rest of the world to accept this. And since the power in the market is highly concentrated and all of it is moving more and more in this direction, regulation enforces these alternative options now.
All this does is regulate the power the provider of a product has over their customer. This does not ruin the walled garden for the people who prefer to stay in it for peace of mind, but it adds a door for the people who want to leave. There is no negative side-effects for the people staying, only the platform providers will have to spend some money and lose some revenue.
Best way to get away with some crime is to act all casual about it. Wear a warning west, you can even got one printed with some official town logo the people will recognize.
I either need something really quick, or I can wait. If I need something really quick, they basically need to be very close to me. If they are close to me, I can be just as quick myself. These service only work in dense urban areas. I have 3 supermarkets in 5 minute walking distance.
The non-rapid delivery service in the other hand is a godsend - that's how I got me food when I had COVID. And I guess there are a lot of people sick, injured, old or somewhat indisposed for which this service can be a real life saver. In these situations, I'm also happy to pay for this kind of service.
The rapid delivery part of it always made me feel bad for the delivery people. One time I happened to wait for the delivery on the stairs, he took 15 minute instead if 10 minutes, I was enjoying the sun in the meantime. He apologized for being late and was really stressed about it.
Coal has a similar issue, these plants also can't be turned on and off quickly. In fact, the term "base load" originally was driven more by the minimum amount of power that has to be consumed to keep a plant running. Only now with the move to renewables with varying output the meaning has shifted to the consumption side of things.
Gas plants however can be turned on and off and easily, they work similar to aircraft engines. In Germany, the heat produced is then used for district heating, which gives these plants almost perfect efficiency. It's not a coincidence that Germany picked gas as supplement for renewables during the transition to 100% green energy. Gas (in the form of hydrogen directly ~ methane made from hydrogen) is also a key contender for very long term energy storage (in Germany, you have to save energy produced in the summer for use in winter, the batteries needed for that would be roughly in the order of ~50 million Tesla Model S (100kWh) batteries). The cost of overbuilding renewables and storing the energy in gas, with a lower round-trip efficiency, seems to be lower than building the big battery that would be needed. Wind is also better in winter than solar, which is why wind is such an important and hot topic in Germany. Solar doesn't bother anyone, but wind turbines are huge and people can see them in the landscape. Solar does not have this problem, but during the winter, the output goes down to almost nothing.
Also, Input everything in ETFs, as everyone told me.
I will probably escape to the countryside in a couple of years.
Makes sense.
The "one side of the argument" that I replied to, was the accusation that only people with private offices want to work from there rather then from home.
Also, what's the point your are trying to make?
coffeefirst implied that only people with private offices at work want to work from the office. I gave some counterpoints explaining that there are other good reasons to work from the office. I like working from the office, and I don't have a private room there.
I'm all for remote and hybrid work, but some comments here a bit over the top. Live and let live, why is it a problem for you that I prefer to work from the office? I bend over backwards to make sure the remote people on my team can work from home, even tough this can get pretty annoying if you do hardware.
I live in 50 m² flat, my homeoffice is my bedroom. Tiny desk, one monitor. Here in the office I have a huge table with 2 monitors, the electronics lab and the workshop is right behind me and my team sits here.
Not all jobs are the same and not all people are the same. There is good reason to like working from the office. The fact that you prefer working from home doesn't mean that only people with private office at work want to work from the office.
The decision to keep these 3 plants running or not is not about the waste, but about the fact that they were planned to shut down for years now, and there is some real hurdles to reversing that now. The impact of keeping them on is also rather small. The effort and money is more effectively spent elsewhere.
Recently a former conservative minister got an award for fighting against wind power which is named after a former key figure of the early green movement in Germany, wo later dropped out to figth against wind turbines.
Bavaria is holding back the construction of a crucial north-south connection for electricity, which would bring the power from the wind-rich north to them. But they don't want the power lines messing up their landscape.
Everyone wants electricity, nobody wants to see the infrastructure that makes it.
People are meshugge.
The decision to shut them down happened long ago. They voted against a proposal from the opposition to revert that. The plants were planned to shut down since a long time, there is a lot of unsolved issues around keeping them running, like fuel and personnel. The plants also would impact gas usage only by 1% and electricity isn't a great replacement short term for all the gas used.
In hindsight I think the decision to get out of nuclear was wrong, especially before getting out of coal. But keeping the last 3 running for some more months isn't really a solution for anything.