How come it's always China that is kicking our ass? How come it's never Germany?

Yeah, a one-party total surveillance state with forced-labor camps full of happy uniformed workers running out cheap goods at low wages for sale to the world!

Highest trade surplus in the world means they're totally the global alpha country.

Oh woo me with your powerful currency reserves! The future superpower!!!

Damn it they're "kicking our asses"!!! We must learn from them!!!

Meanwhile, Germany has about one-eighteenth the Chinese population and had the highest trade surplus in the world (in absolute terms, okay?!) until yesterday. Per capita, they're still about 17 times better than China, at any rate if trade surplus is your measure of a country's value to its people.

Germany has a (relatively speaking) comprehensive cradle-to-grave welfare state: maternity leave,
money just for having children,
public child care,
universal public education at a high standard,
world-class universities and research institutes at LOW tuition,
relatively strong unions in all industries organized by region,
workers councils for all companies with more than 10 employees,
worker-appointed representatives on all corporte boards,
well-financed public TV and radio stations,
publicly financed culture, theater, opera fer frack's sake,
taxes kind of on a level with here, believe it or not,
six-plus weeks paid vacation and sick days and holidays if you tote it all up,
waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay higher wages for workers than here,
automatic job training for all high school grads who don't go to college,
retraining and continuous professional blah-blah training up the wazoo,
real pensions without fear that these are going to be sliced,
functioning high-speed rail (too damn expensive though),
functioning public mass transport systems based on surface light rail,
lots of bike lanes,
universal goddamn sense of entitlement and individual rights,
everyone from sewer workers to banksters talking politics all day like it was their birthright and able to name all of their country's states and key institutions, like the goddamn commies they are,
and, most horrifically of all, universal affordable health care on a complex but effectively single-payer model.

Not to mention a lot fewer people in prison, let alone freezing and starving in front of you on the fucking street.

And they do it at a bit more than half of the per capita energy consumption (given a lot of hydrocarbons burning, to be sure).

AND they've got all the high-tech jazz, total world brand-name dominance, and high standardized test scores -- none of which should be the measure of a society, except that they are in our corrupt understanding of the good under capitalism. But that's the point, they meet the corrupt standards of the pundits and commentators who think China is "kicking our ass."

Furthermore, the German test scores are achieved by testing all students, not just a prosperous minority as in China.

Or didn't you know that inside China there are still more than a billion people scratching by under your usual Third World conditions, most of them on the land, and hell I can say: More power to'em! I wish'em well!

So how come it's never Germany that's "kicking our asses"?

So how come it's never Germany we need to emulate before we're destroyed?

so yes, water will seek the lowest level, and wages will too. so will standard of living.

will Obama corrct this course?

is controlled by t ruling clique and a powerful military and even though they are nominally communists, they are admired by the US Right Wingers because they are IN CONTROL of their people.

China now is what the RWers really want us to become-extremely rich rich, extremely poor most of everyone else, no ecological or safety laws, government spys in every large building and on every block, people working for next to nothing while their owners get fabulously rich...
Limbaugh's dream come true.

mark

But Socialists, not so much.

Halt. Ubermenschen?

Bosch, bosch am der kopf. Bosch, bosch!!

Ich bin einfach müde von Amerika. Das Land ist nicht frei weil unserer Arbeiten sind Knechtschaft. Ich nicht spreche richtig Deutsch.

Gruesse,

"JR"

I don't know what the difference is. They're just not as stupid? Smaller world that they like to keep in a domestic peace? Genuine relative enlightenment about what it's all worth in the end?

all week. Spread this one around. You oughtta diary this over at Dkos. Well done.

But they have unions, high wages, health care and a high standard of living.

The PTB doesn't want you to know that.

For Germany’s Banks, a Grim Future
http://www.cnbc.com/id/41638352

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The replies though are spot on...


“The excellent economic situation is not mirrored by the banking system.”

Of course, as it is the banks that are orchestrating, through their boom/bust cycles and derivatives schemes, the concentration of wealth and power and the current collapse of the real economy to herd us into the waiting arms of the New World Order monetary system at the cost of national sovereignty and Middle Class prosperity. The Germans are a thorn in the side of their plans as they firmly believe in hard work and home-grown productivity as well as social welfare.
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An American would rip out all assets and capital from the company replacing it with borrowed capital. He doesn't want his skin in the game. Germans not only leave it in, they build it up. No need for bank loans when you can buy your new machines from retained profits. But then, no profits for the banks either. That is why their factories are top-notch and booming. America has closed all its factories. Germany-1, USA-0


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A smart and industrious people. They also have historic stories of economic collapses in their early industrialization. Hope they catch on (maybe already have?)to the bankers/wankers(any Brits out there, did I call it right?"wankers"?), I still believe they'll be the death of the EURO, as they are not gonna want to pay for other's excess'. JMOs
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I doubt that this generation of Germans has the same work ethic as that of past generations, but here's a story my Oma related to me from her WWII days:

Relatives of hers had some land and had assigned to them some French prisoners of war to work for them. They became friends with my family, and one of them remarked something to the effect of "in France last year our towns bombed, but still nothing done about it; here in Germany however, yesterday bombed and today everyone already busy rebuilding".

The story was much better told by my grandmother with her wunderbar German expressions. It speaks to a folk wisdom that likens the industriousness of the German psyche to that of an ant hill and how the ants spring into even more furious action when their ant hill is damaged.
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