this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2023
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Germany went from envy of the world to the worst-performing major developed economy. (apnews.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 171 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The key here is to have a conservative government for 16 years in a row to make absolutely sure anything innovative is made as hard as possible to achieve.

Germany was governed for the last 16 years by people that desperately want to live in 1996 because that is when their back didn't hurt and "everything was great" (?)

[–] [email protected] 84 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And from 2025 we will have another 16 years with the conservatives if we are very lucky not to have the far right take over

[–] [email protected] 68 points 1 year ago

Don't forget the other 16 years under Kohl from 1982 to 1998. Basically we have been CDU governed for more than 3/4 of the last 40 years. And because people are upset that some changes are necessary now they are going to vote CDU again (or worse).

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

That is not what the article says at all though. It solely blames the SPD and current government. It‘s just good old German bashing without much substance.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Actually, there's this:

These outside shocks have exposed cracks in Germany’s foundation that were ignored during years of success, including lagging use of digital technology in government and business and a lengthy process to get badly needed renewable energy projects approved.

Other dawning realizations: The money that the government readily had on hand came in part because of delays in investing in roads, the rail network and high-speed internet in rural areas. A 2011 decision to shut down Germany’s remaining nuclear power plants has been questioned amid worries about electricity prices and shortages. Companies face a severe shortage of skilled labor, with job openings hitting a record of just under 2 million.

For some reason, they don't mention the CxU though. I am also annoyed that they don't mention the debt-stop mechanism which CxU added to the constitution and which FDP is now leveraging to make shitty economic decisions.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago

They don‘t because they don‘t want you to think about the failures of the conservatives. They even frame problems that occured in the Merkel era as problems the SPD introduced as if 16 years wasn‘t more than enough time to fix those. Of course they do not apply the same logic to current problems but instead put the blame on germany as a whole. And don‘t get me started on their far fetched disgnoses of said problems. It‘s a shit article to say the least.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A 2011 decision to shut down Germany’s remaining nuclear power plants has been questioned amid worries about electricity prices and shortages.

This is just a populist talking point. The nuclear power plants were at or very close to the end of their design lifespan, only covered a small single digit percentage of power usage and produced the most expensive electricity among all the power generation in the country.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

While it's true that this is a populist talking point, some minor quibbles:

  • In 2011, nuclear produced around 18% of German electricity. In 2022, that had decreased to 6% as Germany had been shutting off a few reactors each year. Essentially you're right though, Germany never rivaled France's 70% nuclear figure and if nuclear were supposed to have a future, Germany would have needed a lot of new reactors and that would have been cost-prohibitive.
  • Canada proves that you can extend the lifespan, given significant investment.
  • With nuclear, a lot of the money is spent upfront. By the time you make that calculation, the biggest chunk of the money is gone, as long as you don't build new reactors or perform massive do-overs like Canada did. Thus discussing the economics of already-built nuclear reactors is a bit pointless, unless you're purely doing it to learn from your mistakes (i.e. prevent building new reactors).
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

To this day, I don't understand why digitalization of government operations is a political topic to the degree it is in Germany. I mean, I would expect it to be an internal process, something the bureaucracy would handle. But instead, it's a significant campaign issue, something that German politicians talk about and have political programs designed around.

It wasn't a political topic like this in the US. I haven't seen British media doing it. Maybe some other countries have digitalization as a political issue and just don't mention it in English-language media, so I'm unaware of it there, and it's just shown up in English-language German media.

And while I get wanting to be a tech leader in this area or that, I'm skeptical that digitalization of government processes is a major driver of that. Yet it seems to get lugged up every time someone is talking about high tech industry in Germany.

I'll believe that there are savings to be had, and those might benefit German industry, in the broad sense that reducing government costs is helpful. But I don't think that digitalizing government is a huge enabler for German domestic high-tech industry.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Every party wants digitalization. But no one managed it so the parties stances are more like "we can do it better than the other ones"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

But I don’t think that digitalizing government is a huge enabler for German domestic high-tech industry.

It is when the government interactions are literally the only processes left that can not be done digitally.