Quote:
Originally Posted by Firestormalpha
The short of it being, that it's not as simple as the article I posted makes it sound. Correct?
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I think that's pretty much correct. It plays to that "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" notion we all like to think we believe in. The idea being that if we end unemployment benefits and a bunch of government programs that all the lazy ne'er-do-wells will get off their lazy butts and go back to work.
That only works if the assumption is correct that people are sitting around suckling the government teat and just being lazy.
But that's not what I see in America right now. I see a lot of educated skilled people who are just dying to work but are un- or under-employed.
And the article doesn't go into the vast number of things that Germany has that we don't. Germany tends to treat its workers incredibly well comparably. The work week averages 35 hours. Most jobs have 3 solid weeks of vacation time, paid. A typical salary for a job like teaching is what we could call upper middle class here. They haven't beaten down their unions to the point where a highly skilled professional such as a pilot makes $20k a year and has to work a second job while not in the air.
They also lack some things we have. Their stores aren't chock full of cheap Chinese shit electronics. They don't have cheap clothing options. Most people have a wardrobe that's 1/3rd or less the typical American's. It's a different form of consumerism -- everything they want and buy and make and do is done at a qualilty level. They aren't vast hoarders of cheap crap from Wal Mart. They aren't afflicted with the "buy buy buy" obsession that makes us so succeptible to the abusive economy caused by a huge trade deficit with people who send us cheapass knick knacks to satisfy our 20 second attention spans.