7 replies to this topic

[aussiebear]

Unmissable....no geo on the video...

Fact is Bavaria is the richest state in Germany and Germany is now the richest country in Europe. And while much of the rest of Europe is mired in the financial quicksand of a sovereign debt crisis, business in Bavaria is booming, exports are rising and unemployment is at a 20-year low.

How come? Well the Germans have got a word for it and only they know what it means. Mittelstand! It’s the very German secret to the success of modest family enterprises all the way to the global domination of the local auto-giants like Audi.

Foreign Correspondent’s Eric Campbell goes in search of the meaning of Mittelstand and why Germans remain resolutely allergic to debt, committed to hard work and dedicated to the perpetuation of business beyond one or two generations. If only their profligate neighbours living beyond their means, piling up debt and avoiding tax could take a leaf out of the Mittelstand handbook – if there were a such a thing.


http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/

[Pulp_Cutter]

That and, oops, even worse than Rick Perry's Texas, they have no minimum wage.  Wages under 1 Euro/hour are not uncommon in the former East Germany.

That said, personally, I'd rather have German wages if it means it comes with universal healthcare and vastly more affordable college for those who can use it.  But the wage issue needs to be kept firmly in mind, when tempted to glorify 'the German miracle'.

[qqqbear]

Pulp_Cutter, on 14 February 2012 - 09:28 PM, said:

That and, oops, even worse than Rick Perry's Texas, they have no minimum wage.  Wages under 1 Euro/hour are not uncommon in the former East Germany.

That said, personally, I'd rather have German wages if it means it comes with universal healthcare and vastly more affordable college for those who can use it.  But the wage issue needs to be kept firmly in mind, when tempted to glorify 'the German miracle'.

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The whole story revisited if you missed it

http://www.reuters.c...ndChannel=11563

[aussiebear]

Thx for the contrary view. Australia leads the world in casualisation and the use of labor hire intermediates so the numbers in Germany don't seem totally terminal for labor force skill development. Eric's piece, in any case, is a celebration of the older virtues of family enterprise which I posit is also part of what probably is making China's system work. Germany's top tier deserves some credit and when it comes to low minimum wages it would be tough to trump Anglo's, surely.

[Lee Adler]

Gemany has bnefitted from the cheap Euro and massive amounts of government debt. It's a bubble. It will crash. Any other explanation is just the usual mainstream media nonsense, like the Japanese miracle back in the 80s. They said all the same platitudes about the Japanese model then. It's all the same horsecrap. Bubbles make these countries look like they somehow have a better model, when it's just the effects of the bubble.

[shooter]

There is a LOT to the German sensibilities noted.  Hard work, commitment to building things right for the sake of building them right alone, taking the long view, etc.  But those account for maybe 25% of their current success.  It is not ZERO like Lee says...but probably 75%....so Lee is still mostly right.

[Pulp_Cutter]

shooter, on 15 February 2012 - 04:50 AM, said:

There is a LOT to the German sensibilities noted.  Hard work, commitment to building things right for the sake of building them right alone, taking the long view, etc.  But those account for maybe 25% of their current success.  It is not ZERO like Lee says...but probably 75%....so Lee is still mostly right.

Agreed, to which I'd add in Germany you have "the ability to pay someone what their work is worth, even if that's very little".  

Due to technology, we live in a profoundly productive, abundant, world. I do not believe we need to send our maufacturing to FoxConn in order to survive.  On the other hand, I can speak from experience that it's no fun having someone who needs to be constantly pushed to do anything productive, who continually shows up late, and yet who feels their 'work' should be richly-rewarded.  I would be against a minimum wage or any govt interference in the employer/employee relationship, except that we have the example of the child labor sweatshops to show that employers can be fairly self-centered in their priorities - if not outright greedy, even to the point of seriously endangering they people they work with.  

From a (very) small employer's view, minimum wage laws, laws mandating paid leave, and unions, are scary.  Nonetheless, clearly we need some kind of middle ground, in an imperfect, only-crudely-tuned, world of commerce.

I don't know much about actual conditions in Germany - have to defer to Calvin and others who do.  But from the little I do know, IMHO, they may have nailed the right balance, in terms of getting the right combination of employer freedom vs. worker's rights and a safety net/ladder out for enterprising individuals.

[Calvin Bear]

German industry is shamelessly self-promoting and exaggerates its achievements. It specializes in keeping statistics, which, in the words of one of the Chinese government's up-and-comers who is mooted to become their next Prime Minister, are: 'human-made and for reference only...'

Not only that, there is a completely different shadow German industrial world, not connected to the political scene there. German politics is part of the United States' monolithic/megalithic financial and media establishment - especially with regard to publishing, television, and advertising.

It is tricky talking about 'German' business, finance, and industry now - those groups that have been trading and manufacturing in Asia and China for hundreds of years are quite different from those that are part of the 'Euro/Big Bang' financial cartel. The Asian-German companies are quite cynical about what goes on in Europe and are writing off China dollars spent in Europe that are spent just to play along with the bubble-heads running Europe. Bubble? You bet. And huge danger ahead. "Jaan Pehechan Ho." (As the Heineken ad says, in the Hindi language, sung with an English accent, in a Chinese setting... There are super-smart Germans, and super stupid ones.

The German industrial miracle... ...is an Asian, and a global one, that sprang from an already-cosmopolitan post-War elite that have nothing to do with fear-filled Euro-defensive, petty politics and fake money.

There are entirely two completely different worlds out there - one, a political, establishment media-pushed picture, and the other, a story of advanced modern people whose confidence is based on what they know they can achieve competing against governments, entrenched interests, prejudice, ignorance, old-world economic structures, and even old fashioned technology propped up by special-interest run governments around the world.

This is a time of great changes. I wouldn't be sitting on my laurels if I were Audi. They were a good story. Ten years ago.

Calvin J. Bear