Do you fear a crash similar to 2001?

[lamarque]

By the way on a side note about german economy:
they are in a good economy now, but that doesn’t mean that it will be a good economy in the future, there are less and less engineers in the faculties, and less and less people studying economy related things or hard degrees, for now they replace that with people from Italy and Spain but many Spanish and Italian eventually for one or another reason decide to return to their country’s and the economy of Spain is slowly starting to recover so the influx of Spanish engineers and educated people will not last forever. They have serious problems as well with the pension system, they don't save like the Norwegians capitalizing savings for future generations, in Germany the current working generation have to pay more and more to support the old people that represent a higher % of the population every year, so they have a lot of problems to solve add to that the tariff war with America, and the slow but steady rise in German sallary that was keep low to help exports and make of Germany an export powerhouse, this make a big problem for a country in witch 50% of the economy is related with exports.

 

[sergio]

Lamarque, I think you took me too literally. I said: "genes - culture or whatever you want to call it." I was speaking metaphorically. Germans do have certain general characteristics. Where, for example, are you likely to find people to be on time? Germany? Argentina? Italy? I think the answer is obvious. The same can be said for Switzerland. I remember a station in Switzerland where there were employees walking around with little computers answering questions about arrivals and departures. The system that you describe in Germany (you quite rightly use the word "rigid") is a reflection of the people. The system was not created in a vacuum. Most Germans may not be financial geniuses but as a group they tend to be efficient, hard working and reliable. They like discipline and order and the society reflects that. I recall a German friend commenting to me that she got an email from the German consulate apologizing for the "delay" in responding to her email. The delay was a little over twenty-four hours! By comparison, I find that many Argentines never even bother to respond to emails. You can wait and wait and you often get no response at all. Yes, lack of sudden change makes Germany stable but the cultural tendency not to permit radical change is behind that just as in the US the peaceful transition from one government to another when a President is elected reflects the same inclination of the American people to maintain stability.

 

[sergio]

By the way on a side note about german economy:
they are in a good economy now, but that doesn’t mean that it will be a good economy in the future, there are less and less engineers in the faculties, and less and less people studying economy related things or hard degrees, for now they replace that with people from Italy and Spain but many Spanish and Italian eventually for one or another reason decide to return to their country’s and the economy of Spain is slowly starting to recover so the influx of Spanish engineers and educated people will not last forever. They have serious problems as well with the pension system, they don't save like the Norwegians capitalizing savings for future generations, in Germany the current working generation have to pay more and more to support the old people that represent a higher % of the population every year, so they have a lot of problems to solve add to that the tariff war with America, and the slow but steady rise in German sallary that was keep low to help exports and make of Germany an export powerhouse, this make a big problem for a country in witch 50% of the economy is related with exports.

I'm surprised that Germany is not training enough engineers and technical people but if you are right it may have to do with the low birth rate. Like many Europeans, there is a tendency to have very small families so the aging population is not being adequately replaced by young people who will work and sustain the system. There is also the issue of the vast number of Middle Easterners who have entered the country, don't have much education, don't speak the language and don't understand the culture. Will they eventually adopt Germans ways or will they change the society?
I don't know how much effect Trump's trade policies will have on Germany but if he is successful in getting Germans to pay their fair share of NATO and they have to increase defense spending, it may be harder to sustain the social umbrella that Germany has now.

 

[lamarque]

I'm surprised that Germany is not training enough engineers and technical people but if you are right it may have to do with the low birth rate. Like many Europeans, there is a tendency to have very small families so the aging population is not being adequately replaced by young people who will work and sustain the system. There is also the issue of the vast number of Middle Easterners who have entered the country, don't have much education, don't speak the language and don't understand the culture. Will they eventually adopt Germans ways or will they change the society?
I don't know how much effect Trump's trade policies will have on Germany but if he is successful in getting Germans to pay their fair share of NATO and they have to increase defense spending, it may be harder to sustain the social umbrella that Germany has now.

Germans have freedom to study what they want to study, the government dont have much to say in that. And if the trade policies of trump goes into effect the impact for germany will be huge, even the impact of england quitting the european eunion will have a big impact in germany.

 

[pizzadreams]

It could be worse. I have to pay 1/3 of my gross salary to social security (which is then redistributed to retired, unemployed and people who cannot work because they are ill.) and then 1/3 to taxes. I only keep 1/3 of my gross salary for myself. As a consumer, I have to pay again 21% VAT on (almost) everything I buy.

Taxes in itself are not necessarily a problem, because Belgium has a stable economy. The work ethic and la viveza criolla are more the problem.

You only get to keep 1/3 of your salary to oil a corrupt and incompetent state. It could be worse? really? Belgium does have a stable economy, like many European countries, but it also has a more free economy than that of Argentina and a GDP per capita more than 4 times higher. It has a high tax burden, but still considerably less than Argentina, and its government spending is 4 times lower than Argentina. Thats not taking away what you said which I agree with 100% regarding the work ethic and especially the viveza criolla, but if we are to focus exclusively on that, we might need to accept that things will never change because it is ingrained in the collective consciousness. Italy (where the majority of args come from) is still an still incredibly corrupt country, so it is depressing to realize things might indeed never change...

 

[pizzadreams]

A couple of things that are wrong in your observation, first of all is not related to genes that is just a stupid comment to make as if the education will come already codified on our genes lol, neither necessarily with culture, a hell lot of Germans will vote for a left socialist wasteful or a populist government without thinking twice about it or a new hittler like party, or will expropriate all the profit of companies to pay for poor people and im talking of germans that are in the university, not of germans that have no education. Is surprising how many of them have no clue of economics or consequences related to populism, and i can assure you that they are terrible with personal finances (I lived there for many many years, my ex girlfriend is from there and I know a lot of people from there and have many many friends so im not talking lightly about something i don’t know), im in the other side Argentinean but I hate populism and i will consider my self smart fiancially speaking (and im quite sure that didnt came codified on my genes or my culture), the thing that really keep them going the way they go is the system they have in place.

Even if all Germans will vote for and extreme and stupid measure they will only manage to change the head of state witch actually have very few real power to change things (they know from their past what can happen if someone get to much power, so they put a system that is so divided in roles and competences that is almost imposible to change anything, many germans hate this do, they feel as if nothing can be changed, you will be surprised of how many are not happy with their system specially among new generations). In other words their biggest advantage is not how smart they are (they average), neither are they financially or economically clever, their advantage is how rigid the sistem is that make their economy super stable and they benefit as well from very specialized institutions that govern important subjects without intervention of the president witch has really few power, in this side of the world we see Merkel as a very strong head of state, while she is only a face in Germany that has not much to do with the important decisions. The lack of suden changes make an ideal field for a stable economy that companies love.

What you said is interesting. Can you elaborate on your opinion that Germans are terrible managing their personal finances?

Argentines (or any nationality for that matter) also have no clue about economics. We shouldn´t mix up arguing passionately about something and knowing the name of every member of an administration with actually understanding basic principles of economics, which the Argentines have no clue. Back to the Germans, I don´t think they´ve a reputation as being stingy for nothing. That´s noticeable when, contrary to the Argentines, you see how cautious they are with their money when vacationing. The economy has a huge current account surplus as well.

Finally, regarding education, you say they are average as far as their intelligence goes. German technology and engineering is known to be one of the best in the word, and Germans score highly on the PISA test. So what sort of indicators are you basing those claims on?

 

[pizzadreams]

By the way on a side note about german economy:
they are in a good economy now, but that doesn’t mean that it will be a good economy in the future, there are less and less engineers in the faculties, and less and less people studying economy related things or hard degrees, for now they replace that with people from Italy and Spain but many Spanish and Italian eventually for one or another reason decide to return to their country’s and the economy of Spain is slowly starting to recover so the influx of Spanish engineers and educated people will not last forever. They have serious problems as well with the pension system, they don't save like the Norwegians capitalizing savings for future generations, in Germany the current working generation have to pay more and more to support the old people that represent a higher % of the population every year, so they have a lot of problems to solve add to that the tariff war with America, and the slow but steady rise in German sallary that was keep low to help exports and make of Germany an export powerhouse, this make a big problem for a country in witch 50% of the economy is related with exports.

Many of the things you mentioned, such as labor shortage, is a problem in most if not all developed countries like Canada or Australia. I didn´t look up the numbers, but just because there might be fewer people taking up STEM studies doesn´t mean that much. You gotta look at the big picture. Do more Germans study engineering than the Spanish or the Italians? I´d be surprised if it isn´t the case. I find many of your claims odd. Germany has come under fire exactly because they have a tendency to save up in excess, materialized in a surplus very much criticized by Trump.

 

[pizzadreams]

On a last note, Germans or Europeans might be more inclined to vote for populist or radical parties now, but unlike the Argentines, it´s not something that´s ingrained in their culture or a recurring phenomenon. On the contrary, they tend to vote for moderate candidates. Let´s also not forget that as good as Macri´s intentions might be, he is still a populist, and not just as rhetoric goes, in many ways economically too

 

[lamarque]

What you said is interesting. Can you elaborate on your opinion that Germans are terrible managing their personal finances?

Argentines (or any nationality for that matter) also have no clue about economics. We shouldn´t mix up arguing passionately about something and knowing the name of every member of an administration with actually understanding basic principles of economics, which the Argentines have no clue. Back to the Germans, I don´t think they´ve a reputation as being stingy for nothing. That´s noticeable when, contrary to the Argentines, you see how cautious they are with their money when vacationing. The economy has a huge current account surplus as well.

Finally, regarding education, you say they are average as far as their intelligence goes. German technology and engineering is known to be one of the best in the word, and Germans score highly on the PISA test. So what sort of indicators are you basing those claims on?

In general germans don't look at all in what they spend, neither they worry to much about their savings, they trust to much on the state for providing when they get old, when you talk to them about the posibility of the state failing on this they just cannot make in their head this scenario. Besides they spend in stupid things all the time that they never use again, and very few of them are interested in finances to start with.

In answer to the question about their result in a test, that is mostly because they have a good education system, and as well their system worries a lot about preparing kid for that kind of exams to start, but is not inherent to the average person, actually in average there is few diference between countrys on inteligence, the diference is how aplied and how well economically is the family of the person in question that mark the grade he/she will get at the end of the day, japanese as well do perfectly on this kind of test but that is not because they are inteligent per se, is mostly a mix of been aplied and hard workers, they really put effort on having good marks because their future depend on that (they even have a say for this, perseverance beat everytime inteligence), while in other countrys your future depend more on your connections, your demonstrated experience, or your creativity or your smartness and not on a paper.

Besides im not so sure if you understand their education system, at the very early age of 10 you are already told what group you belong to, there are 3 levels, the gimnasium that is the kids that are going to go to the university later on and the suposed smart kids or kids from good families, the middle level with is called Realschule with are kids that didnt hold enough promise to get into the gimnasium and probably are going to finish studying some vocational thing and not a university degree and lastly the Hauptschule with is where the worst of the worst is sended, this system is great producing really good results on the top students because they don't need to go at the ritmic of the slowest students of the class and mostly kids from goods families are there in where only the ones that have no other worry than their grades are there, but is as well quite controversial that you can be marked for the rest of your life at the age of 10, and mostly kids that are sent to the realschule or haupschule are the ones that become more nationalist, xenofobic and extremist at the end of the day. Even in Germany you see big differences between the region you where born, the education system in the southern richest states is very good, while in the north eastern states the kids performance is really bad in comparison. Maybe the problem here is what you understand when you use the word intelligence, and maybe we are miss understanding each other. I would like to develop a little more the idea but I jus got visits so I let it there.

 

[Bajo_cero2]

Pizzaidiot: really? Even the IMF asked to go back to former fiscal policies of the K. Perhaps it is only that you are clueless about this country. We are ruled by a band of criminals.