Top German minister sets out reform agenda with demand for more work | dpa international
dpa-international.com

Germans must work more and for longer, Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil said on Wednesday as he outlined his plans for reforming the struggling German economy.

  • Pip@feddit.orgEnglish
    1·
    4 days ago

    The volume of labor is one of the few levers to create growth, next to investments in assets, education and product innovation. Economic growth is paramount, so good on them to take this unpopular but effective measure.

    • taguebbe@feddit.orgEnglish
      10·
      4 days ago

      No, there is a point of diminishing returns. And there are many much more important things they could fix. The infrastructure in germany is crumbling, our IT-competence is lacking, our industry relied on never ending sales of ice-cars with bad software (and gov.-bailouts, which the corrupt CDU and SPD are happy to provide). 50% of the populations wealth was inherited, we desperatly need a wealth-tax. We need foreign workers, but they are met with (structural) racism, a rising Afd, terrible buerocracy and so on. We should be investing in renewables, but our current gov is going for gas and oil - while the Globe is biting there nails because the global market for fossil fuels is… In turmoil, let’s say. Germany as a production-focussed industry will come to an end. Decades of Investments in the far east are taking their toll. The only resource the country has is engineering. We should focus on education and building up specialised industry, not longer work hours. That will solve none of the countrys problems in the short run, nor in the long run.

      • Pip@feddit.orgEnglish
        0·
        3 days ago

        With all the problems you describe, and I agree they exist, solving them will require more labor. Streets, solar panel installations, education, better public services, IT services… All of those require more labor, more work. It’s a part of the solution but not the only one.

        • smiletolerantly@awful.systemsEnglish
          7·
          3 days ago
          1. increasing work hours is a one-time “boost”. It gives a numbers bump once. It’s not continued growth.
          2. working LESS has been shown time and time again to actually make workers more productive
          3. working more will mean even fewer children, a problem we desperately need to address and which will harm the economy even more in the long term
          4. our social contract is broken. Fixing the economy and the country can’t be done by extracting more work from the working class. The decades-long profiteers from privatization and giga-profits need their stolen wealth ripped from them. I can not understate this point. Literally all our economical and most of our societal problems could be fixed relatively easily by spending money: repair infrastructure; properly fund and repair the Bahn; pay teachers enough to make the job attractive, fix up schools, make proper education available to everyone; pay higher wages, so parents can choose to only have one parent working, but also provide free Kitas; and so on. I even would go as far as to say that materially and directly improving people’s lives like this would deal a blow to the rise of right wing politics and faschism, since a lot of those voters are simply frustrated with their misery and powerlessness (not all, obv…). A supposedly center-left party going “höh–höh, suck it, work more” does the opposite of this. And to get back to this bullet point: the money for ALL of that and more IS THERE. Just… Unjustly held by the few.

          Now tell me again, why is it on me to spend additional years of my life toiling away to “fix” the economy when it’s ineffectual, counterproductive down the line, and a much easier, more just solution exists?