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German industry bleeds nearly 500,000 jobs amid 'structural shift' (dpa-international.com)
submitted 1 week ago by to c/europe@feddit.org
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[–] 2 points 1 week ago (11 children)

You may have missed that there is a war ongoing in Europe, and the threat goes far beyond its current state.

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  • [–] 16 points 1 week ago* (3 children)

    You might have missed that the same party blocking any new debts while amassing a massive investement backlog and letting the military rot for decades campaigned on "no new debts!", instantly took on literally a trillion of new debt for military, economy and infrastructure investments the moment they won... and then managed to actually even reduce the investements into infrastructure compared to their (because of them) cash-strapped predecessors while all spending on "the economy" was gifts and tax breaks for their rich buddies that do exactly nothing for the economy. Oh, and of course they started demolitioning social systems because somehow, magically they have no money...

    So just fuck off with that "but there is a war!" screaming they constantly use to divert from their obvious corruption. That we can only spend money on the military when we fuck the people is already a fairy tale in the first place. There is enough money if we finally starting taxing people properly. Instead they just funnel off hundreds of billions in debt to their mostly untaxed donors, then start raising taxes on workers and reducing social spending because they need money for the military and the money dedicated exactly for this magically vanished (and we all know where it ended up).

    Why do idiots always need to copy any insanity from the US where they are also brain-washing people into thinking that military spending is the reason they can't afford health care or stuff, while much of that "military spending" is just hidden industry subsidies and corrupt waste and they also actually spend massive amounts in healthcare... it's just bad by design to make the rich even richer.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago* (2 children)

    @Ooops@feddit.org

    So just fuck off

    Thank you for your polite comment.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    Thank you for –just accidently of course– getting rid of all the "...with the screaming they constantly use to divert from their corruption"-context.

    What an interesting coincidence that people parroting populist talking points always use the exact same populist tactics.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 week ago

    Which is totally not going to get misused by using it to fill gaps in the regular budget. Right?

    You may have missed that there is a war ongoing in Europe, and the threat goes far beyond its current state.

    How exactly do you think these two statements are connected?

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  • [–] 3 points 1 week ago (4 children)

    The problem ist, that especially with the background of this already ongoing war, deindustrialisation is the worst one could do. Because this deindustrialisation creates a dependence on powers that cannot be trusted.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 week ago (3 children)

    I agree this is the case for defense industry including industries the defense industry needs. But the rest? Why does Germany need such a big car industry in a world where China has learned to build cars (even better ones) themselves (and it was absolutely foreseeable that this would happen) and the US goes full protectionism (ok this one was less foreseeable)? Trying to keep that alive is a waste of resources.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago* (2 children)

    It is not a waste of resources to produce things locally. Transporting everything, including trivial industrial goods half way around the World is a massive waste of resources, and is highly vulnerable to accident (see Ever Given being stuck sideways in the Suez Canal), natural disasters (see CoVID leading to the closure of most Chinese sea ports), conflict (see current events in the Middle East), and shifting alliances. Especially with a virtual monopoly on outsourced industrial production, China has acquired a position where it can blackmail pretty much the entire World by simply enacting an embargo.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago* (1 child)

    I didn't say Germany should not have a car industry at all. I said the size the car industry Germany currently has should not be artificially kept up. Of course cars bought in Germany/Europe should be produced in Germany/Europe.

    The whole "Exportweltmeister" (export world champion, a term proudly used by Germans for a while) thing was never sustainable. Unfortunately voters think its the Greens/Energy transitions/whatever fault the whole thing comes crashing down now.

    (That being said, cars are a waste of resources wherever they are built)

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago*

    The German car industry is a prime example of how greed ruins sales. The decline of their quality started in the mid 1990s, and has a name: The Lopez Effect. After the CEO of VW back then who did famously increase profits by systematically decreasing product quality, and coercing parts manufacturers into unsustainable low pricing.

    On top of reducing their quality, they re-focused on the international upscale market, and raised their prices, leading to fewer domestic sales. This can only work for so long, because, even with long-lived products such as cars, after some time, even the most stupid idiot will notice that you aren't selling a product worth the price you are asking and will stop buying from you. If you sprinkle in some good old fashioned enshittification (which was pioneered by the car industry even before enshittification became a word through the computer/IT industry discovering it and some dude writing a book about the phenomenon), in order to increase profits from repairs and servicing, you will hurt your long term sales even more, because nobody wants to buy a car that spends more time in the shop than on the road and needs expensive servicing at a licensed workshop for even the most trivial maintenance and repairs, such as changing a burnt-out light bulb.

    If you know cars from the early 1990s and their quality and longevity, you cannot help but seeing modern cars as nothing but overpriced piles of garbage (I don't want to say "scrap", because modern cars are more cheap plastic than metal) that can't be kept in service for any prolonged time period without unsustainable costs due to impossible repairs.

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