- 10 Mar 2011 16:01
#13651140
Err, what ?
German and "superpower" ?
You gotta be kidding.
We arent even one of the countries with veto power in the UN, something even Britain and France got. Very superpower-ish, isnt it ? We also dont have any nuclear weapons, again like Britain and France. Not that I personally would want either, but we are obviously not one of the respected big players.
We only have a mere 80 million people - compare to USA with 300 million and both India and China with over a billion. Really the only way Germany could turn into an actual superpower is if we would merge with the rest of europe into, well, the "United States of Europe" or something. At least then we would have about 300 million people, like the USA, so one could consider us an actualy "superpower". With 80 million people, you cannot be a superpower. Just forget about that.
We are the nation with the lowest economic growth in Europe, since decades.
In the past 20 years, we progressed from the nation with the highest average income to the nation with the lowest average income inside the european union. And our wage ratio still keeps falling. Over here our newspapers print big articles about how costly old people are if pensions are raised by 1.1% - less than the inflation of that year, and after many years of ZERO growth. Thats how germans think ! If you ignore east germany, our real wages have stalled since 1990. And since about 2005, when the "Hartz IV" "reform" was introduced, our real wages are FALLING - i.e. the average wages dont even raise fast enough to compensate for inflation. We have now 33% of all women and 13% of all men in the socalled "low wage sector". Thats about as big as in the USA, albeit our Gini is still much lower (i.e. better) than the one of the US.
As the Pisa study showed repeatedly, we have one of the worst educational system in Europe (in fact we have been the worst in the past), with the highest dependency between parent wealth and the quality of the child graduation. Does that sound like a leading nation to you ? People who dont give a damn about education for their children ?
We are economically highly dependent on export, our local consumption is very weak, hardly ever increases since decades. Unsurprisingly, we got hit harder than any other country in europe by the economic crisis.
Out of the countries in the european union, yes we are the one with the most people, and maybe still the economically most powerful. However, thanks to our policies, its likely we'll be the driving force behind the causes that terminate the european union for good, thanks to our low (and falling) wages and low local consumption, driving everyone else into ever growing and increasingly fatal debts.
Of course, compared to the crazy USA, Germany certainly is still a socialism of well distributed wealth and a paradise of human rights. It always depends upon to whom you compare yourself to, doesnt it ? And we're definitely getting there.
Last edited by Negotiator on 10 Mar 2011 16:03, edited 2 times in total.
There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning. - Warren Buffett