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Comment by lhopki01 | Hacker News Reader

This has some ideas that are similar to what happens in Germany.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany

Worker representation at the board level is good for companies as well because it can encourage pay restraint when the company really can't afford a pay rise. A board of very rich people telling you the company can't afford a pay rise for you is very different from some of your fellow workers saying the company can't afford a pay rise.

The German law goes a lot further than this law does though since it applies to all companies with over 500 employees.

Considering Germany is an economic powerhouse this law probably isn't harming the economy.

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> Considering Germany is an economic powerhouse this law probably isn't harming the economy.

Not only a good economy, but it still has industrial output. There are plenty of big German car companies. It's not just "services". Plenty of politicians want to "bring back those blue collar jobs"

> Plenty of politicians want to "bring back those blue collar jobs"

Do they really, or is that a soundbite they can use to appeal to their demographic?

Just a soundbyte to sucker in low educated voters who get all of their political ideas from mainstream media.

And also to excuse giveaways to companies, of course. Who executives will of course give big donations.

Precisely why politicians showing active commitment to not doing this might deserve a chance.

http://dsausa.org

Interesting. The homepage exclaims:

”We believe that working people should run both the economy and society democratically to meet human needs, not to make profits for a few. ”

Sounds pretty similar to the thinking behind the German setup.

There's a large gap between socialism and not taking what are essentially bribes.

Maybe. I'm pretty fond of capitalism, but I have to admit the "everything has a price" mentality can easily be misapplied.

>There are plenty of big German car companies.

These have poor reputations and are only getting worse.

The quality of Audi/VW and BMW are no longer the cutting edge. Their mechanical components are known to fail often and their beauty(the biggest feature) is on par with GM and Ford.

Every 15-20 years it seems like car companies get complacent and need to be affected by the market to 'wake up'.

? German components are always known to "fail often" (oftentimes without adequate maintenance), especially compared to Japanese cars (outside of Porsche). This hasn't changed much with time.

German cars have always been about luxury and performance,not beauty (that would be the italians) and they are still top of the pile. The M3/M5 are the definitive sports sedans still, the S-Class is the definitive full-size luxury sedan, and Porsche is the go to brand for performance sports offerings (look at caranddriver's website, Porsche has 0 offerings with less than 4 stars).

Breaking frequently has been a hallmark of BMWs for over twenty years.

New complicated features aren't as reliable as simpler old ways, but "breaking occasionally" and "expensive to maintain when old" aren't really turn-offs for the people who buy those cars, especially on short term leases with covered maintenance.

Compared to the UK, the German car industry is doing fantastically.

A Betriebsrat is certainly a very good tool to keep some balance in the power structures of a company. And German companies have done very well with this structure.

> Considering Germany is an economic powerhouse

Having seen piles of headlines about stagnant wage growth in Germany, I had to look up some stats, and found these links:

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/wage-growth https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/wage-growth

Except for 2009/10 being particularly bad in the US, wage growth seems much stronger in the US.

And when I look at tech salaries in the EU, I'm not sure I want that. Or at least that attitude to compensation.

> And when I look at tech salaries in the EU, I'm not sure I want that. Or at least that attitude to compensation.

This the same everywhere outside the US though. Salaries are much lower as the skill ceiling tends to be much lower and there is more skilled labour available.

The US just has a huge amount of investment, a small skilled labour force and a more meritocratic outlook in general (bear in mind, even just 50 years ago, being a manager or not would depend on your family and school in the UK for example, and you wouldn't even eat with your subordinates).

I don't think worker representation would change much there, the Americans already have it so good.

I think looking at relative growth numbers is illustrative. Germany should have an easier time hitting high percentage growth than the US, starting from a lower total, but they don't. Though the rest of the continent is doing even worse.

But anyway, it makes arguments of "look how well Germany is doing" not very compelling to me.

I don't hate the idea of codetermination tbh, but I do have lots of questions about how it would work in practice.

At the very least you have to ask whether contractors get a vote, which gets you into a question if incentive and which workers are more or less aligned with a company.

You've chosen one data point. This may support your claim, or it may be that they are a powerhouse and thus able to afford worker representation as a luxury.

OK. I cannot help but be curious how you would differentiate the US. Please elaborate.

From your, presumably different view, what would you prescribe? Allow taking advantage of workers until those in power find enough wealth, and only then give workers a voice?

Surely the U.S. isn't exactly an economic underdog, though?

Nope. Still #1 in GDP. From 2017 [1], top 10 economies:

1. US - $19.42T GDP (25% of world GDP) 2. China - $11.8T GDP 3. Japan - $4.84T GDP 4. Germany - $3.42T GDP 5. UK - $2.5T GDP 6. India - $2.45T GDP 7. France - $2.42T GDP 8. Brazil - $2.14T GDP 9. Italy - $1.81T GDP 10. Canada - $1.6T GDP

Personally, the one that shocked me is Italy, what with the all you see about the country's debt problems, but I hear a lot of that is due to corruption and tax evasion.

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/022415/world...

But Italy’s GDP per capita is way behind Northern Europe, which doesn’t have a debt problem. The Nordic countries have a combined GDP of about 1.5 trillion with about half of Italy’s population.

Rhineland model extends to for example the Netherlands as well. Scandinavian model likewise stresses a more diverse outlook on CSR and corporate stakeholders as well. The French model is a theme on its own - more like the other two than Anglo-American, though a lot more state-centric and mired in eternal strife with unions, where the other two are more about cooperation between the different factors of production.

As good a place as any to remind people German workers have 30 vacation days on average (in addition to 10 public holidays).

Somehow the work gets done!

And it's quite common to work 40 hours a week, sometimes even less. And get things done...

Very different cultures, education systems, and housing costs. I doubt you could make an isolated change and get the same result.

Of course not but let's start somewhere. Make gradual socitital changes in all the areas needed starting with this bill. Education and housing reform would also be worthwhile.

You make a fine argument against isolated and incremental change.

I agree. We should aim for nothing less than paradigm shift.

I believe 35 was standard in France for a while.

And that Germans work the least out of all OECD countries, working 1288 hours per year vs US citizens 1789 hours and OECD average of 1763 hours.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#Average_annual_...

Note that it is because Germany has the highest percent of part-time jobs, especially poor jobs or the mother in a family. The system is built in a way that it is hard to have two real full-time jobs in a family. It works pretty well in the former East Germany but in the former West, the standard is that after 4PM schools etc. are closed. This has improved in the last years, but not to the point to easily have two full time jobs.

This my experience from living 5 years in the former East and afterwards moving to the West (already 7 years).

But the money doesn’t pile as high. That’s the problem.

There’s nothing here that Marx didn’t articulate ~150 yrs ago.

What does that scenario look like if Germany no longer gets to free ride on the Euro at the expense of Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy?

They get to use an artificially cheap currency (cheap for them) to drive the largest trade imbalances on earth. They're plundering the Eurozone and EU, just look at the trade surplus they have in their own economic region ($180b trade surplus just with the EU alone). Were they using their own currency, their exports would suffer immensely. How long can that destabilizing arrangement continue? Not much longer, judging by several of their fellow Eurozone nations.

Even with all of that, their median household net worth is still lower than the US.

What do the internal US trade balances between e.g. California and the rest look like?

California exports to the the rest of us mostly. Lots of food, high end manufacturing, services, and they have a huge slice of the asia-us trade logistics.

So ... why does nobody care about trade deficits in the dollarzone? Why isn't this seen as "plundering"?

Largely shared debt burden via the federal govt?

Exactly.

Is this similar to how California gets a free ride on the dollar at the expense of Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana?

Seriously, I don't understand, what does a cheap currency (what does that even mean) have to do with trade surplus?

> eriously, I don't understand, what does a cheap currency (what does that even mean) have to do with trade surplus?

The way international trade works in theory is like this: when a country is running a trade surplus, demand for its currency increases, so that other countries can buy its goods. That extra demand drives up the exchange rate, which makes its goods more expensive, which drives down exports, which brings the balance of payments (exports minus imports) back into equilibrium.

What happens in the EU is that, because you have a shared currency, this balancing mechanism breaks down, and so trade imbalances between countries can only be corrected via deliberate subsidies (exactly as happens between rich and poor regions inside the US, for instance).

But, more than any other EU member, Germany has blocked this kind of policy, choosing to interpret trade imbalances in moral rather than economic terms (southern countries are too lazy, laid back, inefficient, etc).

So are you saying wealth is distributed less socially in the EU than it is in the states? I've never heard that before but it could be right, I don't know the details of how countries contribute to the EU. I certainly have heard the moral arguments from Germany, as well as from the rest of the rich EU countries.

Are poor regions in the US effectively assisted by subsidies? I feel in the EU the main problem is lack of integration, for example if I design a product here in The Netherlands, it would be a lot cheaper to set up a factory in say Poland or Spain, but I'd be hesitant to do that because of cultural and language barriers. I suppose that's less of a problem in the US, though in the US distances are greater.

Read again. I'm explaining the connection between exchange rates and the balance of payments. Nothing even remotely controversial. Macroeconomics 101.

Yes, and thank you. I was asking a follow up question regarding your comments about EU vs US subsidy policy making.

> So are you saying wealth is distributed less socially in the EU than it is in the states? I've never heard that before but it could be right, I don't know the details of how countries contribute to the EU. I certainly have heard the moral arguments from Germany, as well as from the rest of the rich EU countries.

What I'm saying is that, once you remove currency mechanisms which automatically bring into equilibrium the balance of payments between EU member states, you can have permanent trade imbalances between countries. German exports remain artificially cheap within Europe because they are Euro-denominated. So Germany keeps racking up balance-of-trade surpluses, which then allow it to go into the southern countries and buy up real estate and major companies, so that they become the effective owners of the country. Obviously they have a vested interest in maintaining the current system.

> Are poor regions in the US effectively assisted by subsidies? I feel in the EU the main problem is lack of integration, for example if I design a product here in The Netherlands, it would be a lot cheaper to set up a factory in say Poland or Spain, but I'd be hesitant to do that because of cultural and language barriers. I suppose that's less of a problem in the US, though in the US distances are greater.

There are quite a lot of factories in southern Europe, because salaries are much lower, but that does not really help the southern countries much, as the profits flow back north into their parent companies' countries. Obviously over time, salaries in the south will also tend to rise, hence the enthusiasm of Germany for an open-borders policy which floods the entire European market with cheap immigrant labour, thus holding wage levels low.

Yes, as we all know. Germany was a total economic failure before the euro was introduced in 1999. /s

Yes? Germany had decades of high unemployment, and low gap growth until relatively recently.

Exportweltmeister none the less.

Yes, it's just that Germany wasn't looked at as an economy to be emulated until relatively recently. Whether that is due to the benefits of being in the EU, I don't know.

Germany running a trade surplus because people like to buy Mercs and BMWs isn't really plunder. And if say a spaniard builds them a holiday flat on the costa in return for the Merc that's kind of a fair trade though on the accounts I think it'd show as an imbalance as property purchases are accounted for differently to shipped goods.

"On the assumption that the primary goal of employers is to maximise profits in the interests of shareholders, codetermination can reorient the company's goals in the interests of workers. A better balance may be struck so that the company interests are not so one sided. For unions, codetermination is part of democratising the economy. It is also a way for workers to better the terms and conditions of their contracts in an orderly and regulated way." [1]

This is a 100% match to the remarks made in the article.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany#Int...

>Considering Germany is an economic powerhouse this law probably isn't harming the economy

US median household annual disposable PPP income is around $34,000.

German median household annual disposable PPP income is around $25,000.

Note PPP means adjusted for cost of living, so that is not hiding the difference.

There is likely some differences in household makeup, etc., but it seems unlikely that any demographic difference is going to make up for Germans having ~25% less disposable income.

So somehow the US system is generating significantly more disposable income for its people.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income

Being median income I have a feeling that the US median is "pulled up" significantly by the top .01% of earners in the US - I have a feeling they account for a far larger amount than the top .01% of German earners.

Also - this does not take into account additional costs such as healthcare that will pull down the US amount.

That's not how the median works though. You're thinking of mean.

I’d have to dig into the numbers, but the wealthiest Americans get their income via capital gains and dividends, which I’m not sure would be included in those figures.

I think you are mistaking median for mean. Mean gets pulled up, median doesn't. It's literally what the guy at 50% mark has.

Since this is the median and not the mean, it seems that the top .01% should have no impact or bias here.

The statistic here tells us that the person right in the middle of the American income distribution makes more than the person in the middle of the German income distribution, even when disregarding the actual incomes at other points in that distribution.

It's not an average, it's a median. That is, there are as many people who have incomes higher than that as having incomes lower than that. How much higher is already inconsequential, a few may have astronomical incomes without affecting the median.

The definition of median is precisely that the top 0,1% affect it only 0,1%.

But household income is very tricky to measure and for example its unclear if they include health expenditure in exactly the same way

Well, it probably comes out to a wash after you subtract copays, deductibles, and other out of pocket healthcare expenses from the US after-tax income.

If you factor in all benefits, the US compensation level is drastically higher than in Germany. US healthcare is far more expensive than in Germany, nearly double in fact.

Per capita it's equal to over 20% of the median full-time wage ($50k).

I think the point was more - if you take the average American paying $1-2k for healthcare per month vs Germany's $0 for healthcare per month, then that alone wipes out the difference in compensation (ignoring the fact that they have cheaper schools, more holiday, a tighter social safety net, better transportation systems, and so on)

All that while producing a significantly higher happiness index than the US. Amazing.

You know what else produces "happiness"? Morphine. Happiness never built a bridge, cured a disease, or discovered a new particle. Productivity matters more, since it leads to satisfaction with a life well-lived, and ultimately more fulfilment than "happiness". Your happiness dies with you. What you accomplish lives forever.

I don't think Germans are happier than Americans because we take more opiates. Your claim that productivity (or, for that matter anything else) is more important than happiness is plain absurd. I prefer a good life over one that ends with me jumping off a bridge I built.

You know very well that I didn't mean that Germans literally medicated themselves into happiness. (AIUI, that's more an American thing.)

My point is that a life of comfort is not the ideal to which we should aspire, and that humanity's accomplishments have not come from people who didn't want to bother exerting themselves.

As I've said previously, European social policy is basically rest-and-vest at civilization scale.

A life of comfort is very much an ideal we should aspire to. There will always be people who have the intrinsic motivation to accomplish grander things. People don't accomplish great things because they are forced to.

> My point is that a life of comfort is not the ideal to which we should aspire

You are equating a life of comfort with happiness. A lot of people have a more nuanced ways of evaluating their lives, where they value facing challenging and meaningful problems while also seeking stability and comfort.

It's why we have better adjectives to describe a good life than "happiness", i.e "fulfillment".

> humanity's accomplishments have not come from people who didn't want to bother exerting themselves.

Many of humanity's greatest breakthroughs came from people who were specifically insulated from the uncertainties of daily survival. From aristocrats experimenting with physics, to lifetime tenured monks (and later academics) who were given the day to day security to pursue lines of thought that otherwise wouldn't be considered.

Despite the oft-repeated cliche, necessity is more often the enemy of invention. Necessity serves as a pruning mechanism to select the best hypothesis of the many that were created when resources were plentiful.

> I prefer a good life over one that ends with me jumping off a bridge I built.

That's a fantastic way to put it. If we aren't being productive to improve happiness (directly or indirectly), then why are we doing it?

That's not a great argument because happiness leads to productivity. Productivity and happiness are not mutually exclusive at all. And at the end of the day what's the point if you're not happy.

Some grand, hand wavy idea of great fulfilment somewhere down the line doesn't cut it, because you know what never built a great bridge, cured a disease, or discovered a new particle? Living with crushing debt, stagnant wages whilst working paycheck to paycheck.

> Happiness never built a bridge...

Back in my day, every Philosophy 101 curriculum included John Stuart Mill, who had this to say.

"Human beings have faculties more elevated than the animal appetites, and when once made conscious of them, do not regard anything as happiness which does not include their gratification."

You're using a very narrow definition of happiness. A uselessly narrow definition IMO, and apparently for no reason but to spread bigotry. Most people wouldn't be happy knowing they hadn't achieved anything (see: Maslow's hierarchy of needs). Even the otherwise rather short-sighted "Objectivists" tacitly accept this view, with "enlightened self interest" being their phrase of choice to avoid acknowledging the origin of that thought.

Modern Germans do not lack in accomplishment. They just choose to balance goal-directed work with enjoyment of its fruits, instead of staying on the treadmill past the point of diminishing returns. Here in the US, there's a bit of a fetish about claiming to work super-long hours to satisfy a Calvinist "work is virtue" image, while actually goofing off for (at least) half of that whenever nobody's looking. That's really stupid. The European approach of actually enjoying that time with family and friends guilt-free seems smart, compared to spending it in the office neither being productive nor having fun.

> somehow the US system is generating significantly more disposable income for its people.

Then why are so many people complaining about the cost of living, housing, healthcare, education etc? Could someone remind us what is and what isn't included in "disposable"?

Primarily because people love to complain, it's the number one sport of all of humanity.

The US median cost of living is lower than in: Germany, France, UK, Australia, Sweden, Finland, Canada.

Healthcare is a very legitimate complaint. It's plainly outrageous. Even in the case where the bill is often mostly footed by an employer, that comes out of wages to one degree or another.

Housing is not a legitimate complaint (everyone doesn't live in NYC, LA, Seattle and SF). The median US costs on rent and housing are lower than any comparable disposable income nation, and you get far larger accomodations (space) in the US than the other nations.

Education is not a legitimate complaint. The US is overflowing with modestly priced, high quality in-state university choices, including quite affordable state schools. If you spend $160,000 on a shit paying degree from a tier two school for no good reason, that's on you. You don't get to bitch about doing something that dumb when you could have gotten the exact same degree for $40,000 and paid for half of it with a part-time job over four years.

> The US median cost of living is lower than in: Germany, France, UK, Australia, Sweden, Finland, Canada.

Could you please refer me to a source for cost of living comparison? I am not disputing this assertion, I have just been unable to find a good source comparing cost of living between countries.

> You don't get to bitch about doing something that dumb when you could have gotten the exact same degree for $40,000 and paid for half of it with a part-time job over four years.

$40,000 euros for a degree is still a ridiculous amount. It costs $11,000 to go to Oxford per year right now, and before the ridiculous fee increases it would be about $11,000 for a 4 year degree.

It's about $5,000 per year on average across the EU, with some countries offering free tuition. Because, hey, it turns out educating people ends up a net benefit to society!

You can't ignore the fact that taxes are higher in Europe. So everyone is paying for college, constantly, in addition to that numbers you quoted.

denmark pays their students the equivalent of 700usd per month while they're in school

> educating people ends up a net benefit to society!

Education benefits but degree mills whether Asia, America or Europe don't benefit much. And this is increasingly common.

> Housing is not a legitimate complaint (everyone doesn't live in NYC, LA, Seattle and SF). The median US costs on rent and housing are lower than any comparable disposable income nation, and you get far larger accomodations (space) in the US than the other nations.

I don't think this is accurate. Maybe it used to be, but not anymore. For example, Numbeo says:

> Rent in Germany is 30.85% lower than in United States (average data for all cities).

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_result.jsp?cou...

It would be better to find more official data, but I wasn't able to find anything for Germany.

> Education is not a legitimate complaint. The US is overflowing with modestly priced, high quality in-state university choices, including quite affordable state schools. If you spend $160,000 on a shit paying degree from a tier two school for no good reason, that's on you. You don't get to bitch about doing something that dumb when you could have gotten the exact same degree for $40,000 and paid for half of it with a part-time job over four years.

$40,000 for four years of education + living expenses? Do you think students are living out of garbage cans? $10,000/year will probably cover in-state tuition + books/fees/etc., sure, and what do you think is a reasonable cost for housing, food, transportation, etc. for a student?

Disposable income is income after taxes. What you are looking for is discretionary income, which is income after taxes and necessities.

Right, so systems with taxpayer-funded healthcare are at a big disadvantage in this comparison?

Exactly! That's the point I made elsewhere in this thread [0].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17766788

Not only that, but renters in the US pay a substantially higher proportion of their income on housing than in Germany. (See http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/brief_intern...) I'd bet the story is similar for transportation.

and yet that disposable income doesn't provide a longer life expectancy or more happiness; germany beats the US in both categories (and others):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report#2018_Wo...

IIRC according to OECD data, American workers average ~1800 hours/year, Germans ~1400/year, which maps closely to that income difference.

So basically Germans are equally productive, hour for hour, but have collectively chosen more free time over more purchasing power.

(Also that chart has 2016 data for the US and 2013 data for Germany, making the comparison somewhat awkward)

Disposable income is income after tax. Europe has higher tax rates that the US, so this is to be expected. It also has better services. So what you don't see in this comparison is that in return for their higher taxes, they for example get free or cheap higher education and healthcare.

If the German government cuts funding for those two sectors, passes on the savings to people by reducing tax rates, and requires them to pay for those services out of pocket like the US, the disposable income may reach parity, but the people would probably be worse off in real terms.

Right. It’s a moot comparison.

They all have healthcare when they need it and have no health-related bankruptcies or anxiety over such. Having a part-time job isn’t crippling to their health and safety. Their transportation systems are cutting edge as well.

If you combine only the tangible cost benefits of healthcare and transportation availability, that should account for approximately the difference in disposable income.

>So what you don't see in this comparison is that in return for their higher taxes, they for example get free or cheap higher education and healthcare.

Household disposable income is net including those social benefits, so the complaint is incorrect. Here's the definition used in these datasets:

https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-disposable-income.htm

But in the US, kids below 15 are not counted, this means that the population is artificially set at 80% of its real number.

These PPP income are pretty hard to compare. You have so much local variability within a country that you can only really compare the same kind of family situation in the same kind of city. You also need to compare against what you get from the system. For example, in the US, a part of your revenue is in your PPP if you are not ill, but if you get a cancer, you are good for a good stack of expenses depending on your health insurance, in the EU, the health insurance will cover all the costs. If you are in Denmark, you get access to free education (you even get paid to study), in Germany education is free.

As a French who has been working/living is several countries in the EU and have friends nearly all over the world, I can say, the real factor, if you are an engineer, is where you live, that is, the cost of housing. Because the salary as an engineer will be nearly the same in the country you live but the cost of living can vary a lot.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Germany doesn't fund its own defense. (The tiny amount Germany spends is insignificant; the German airforce doesn't even bother keeping its aircraft airworthy.)

We in the US fund our defense and Germany's defense (and cover the rest of the free world too) and still end up with more post-tax income than Germany does. That's a massive productivity gap.

> We in the US fund our defense and Germany's defense (and cover the rest of the free world too)

I agree that the USA has used its military to keep a kind of pax americana. But that is not the complete story. The super expensive wars on Afghanistan and Irak didn't had anything to do with "the free world" and a lot with oil.

BTW That may have changed nowadays, but it was a very good idea that Germany had a low military budged.

Right. We're able to fight two stupid wars at the same time and provide blanket defense coverage for our allies. It's a huge financial burden. Bringing up the US's stupid expensive wars of choice just reinforces my point. We're so productive that we can afford these follies.

But not single payer health care, free education, modern transport infrastructure, parental leave, and renewable energy

It's all about priorities.

Looking at how those wars have ballooned our national debt, I disagree that we can afford those follies

Your point is a valid one, but Germany has a lot of restrictions on what military force it can have. It's not necessarily a choice.

What's the point of 'bothering' to keep a token airforce airworthy when your total military personnel is capped to far below a useful amount (350,000) for any reasonable attempt at defence, and for historical reasons you are incredibly adverse to using them overseas?

Yeah, bad things tend to happen when Germany gets focused on their military. Let's not encourage them!

Post-tax income is an irrelevant metric because higher taxes are compensated by the services they pay for. Our level of defense spending is not insignificant, yours is offensive. We don't need to outspend the rest of the world, we just need to convince Russia that invading the EU is not worth it.

You keep talking about defense.

Is that like preemptive forward defense in other peoples countries?

> So somehow the US system is generating significantly more disposable income for its people.

Disposable income doesn't factor in the higher cost of healthcare (huge) or other "taxes" that aren't taken into account.

Purchasing power is a metric that needs to be adjusted by actual cost of living and quality of such living.

It is accounted for. PPP stands for Purchasing Power Parity.

1980s quality healthcare has been dropping in cost. The problem with healthcare prices today is that it covers many new advances that are still expensive.

The only fair way to compare healthcare over time is if the exact same quality of care drops in price over time.

>Considering Germany is an economic powerhouse this law probably isn't harming the economy.

Germany is economically successful. But here is few things for you to know about it: 1. the industry taxed near to the limit. 2. Welfare is not cheap by any means. 3. Germany is an ageing country, and the amount of welfare payouts will go even further.

I not fan of idea that a company can be public, nor the form of relationships in between its owners and management that evolved in the USA: 1. I find the idea that a man owning a single share of the company can sue the management to death for doing virtually anything. 2. The subsequent dominance of extreme CYA attitudes that American managers are famous for. 3. The fact that company ownership became an extremely bureaucratised thing.

I'm a big believer that a business must have an owner. My own experience working in public companies: an omnipresent atmosphere of "ownerlessness" and people not minding "leaving things broken" for reasons that they are not paid to fix them. Without a clear "boss" around, work tend descend into being a Brownian motion. And all of that gets progressively worse closer to C-suite offices, if the company is of type that changed few generations of management.

Words of my father: "a collective ownership of business is like life in family where a woman has 10 husbands, all trying to make love to her at the same time."

>1. the industry taxed near to the limit. 2. Welfare is not cheap by any means. 3. Germany is an ageing country, and the amount of welfare payouts will go even further.

Want to explain to me how this is even a bad thing? It sounds like the Germans have solidarity for their fellow people/workers and realize everyone should be provided the basics for a peace of mind and overall better workers that can rest and enjoy life outside of work.

American capitalism doesn't have to happen everywhere. It's a system that provides for the few instead of the many, unlike Germany that provides for the many instead of the few

>Want to explain to me how this is even a bad thing?

I believe Germany can do even better if they can find ways to reduce the ratio of people in workforce to welfare recipients. Don't forget, we talk about that in the context of EU. Germany is carrying half of EU on its shoulders.

>it sounds like the Germans have solidarity for their fellow people/workers and realize everyone should be provided the basics for a peace of mind

Doing just "basics for a peace of mind" is doable with not much less, but nevertheless less money. The few developer countries in Asia can show how to do that well. My main criticism is that Germany's welfare is more expensive that that of other countries because not only direct payouts are moderately high, but welfare paid infrastructure and services are taking quite a lot too: lifts for pedestrian overpasses in the middle of nowhere, free transit ticket for people with minimal and non-mobility hampering disabilities, access to free housing (depending on a state) for people with income that qualifies as high in countries just across the border... and on and on

Big issue with all extensive welfare systems in the West is that in them, needs of people in need are not being known by people who are entrusted with administering welfare to them. I can easily pull out many example of welfare states where people in need live miserably. When the welfare does not benefit to the person in need, what's use of it? In that case it just becomes wasted money.

With all my militant atheism, I can give high mark to welfare administrators in the gulf region. Zakat distribution by mosques is very straightforward, addressing needs of people in need in the most straightforward way.

>and overall better workers that can rest and enjoy life outside of work.

I believe a professionals can enjoy life even more if they simply get higher salaries. In that context, I believe that German labour councils serve a good role, making people understand that "they can't milk a dead cow."

It is very good when both sides can come to terms knowing how much money they can extract from the business before it kicks the bucket.

You wrote: "Germany is carrying half of EU on its shoulders." This statement is ludicrous! There is no prosperity transfer of any kind to poorer states in the EU, and a very clear wealth transfer to the center of the EU. May I suggest you read "And the weak suffer what they must" by Yannis Varoufakis?

>It's a system that provides for the few instead of the many, unlike Germany that provides for the many instead of the few

That's a silly argument. US citizens make more on average than German citizens. Both systems provide for the many (with the US arguably providing moreso for that middle of the curve).

The problem is the unfortunate people on the left side of the curve who get hit with medical bankruptcy, a loss of industry, etc. Those people get screwed in the US where there is a better safety net in Germany.

> I'm a big believer that a business must have an owner.

Surely you are also a big believer that a country must have a king. If not, why not?

> Words of my father: "a collective ownership of business is like life in family where a woman has 10 husbands, all trying to make love to her at the same time."

Quotations aren't even arguments if they come from famous people.

>> I'm a big believer that a business must have an owner.

>Surely you are also a big believer that a country must have a king. If not, why not?

No, I believe that monarchies are weak, and risky. There might be modern day monarchs doing best for their realms, but the chance that after 3-4-5 good successions will come a man "who wrecks it all" is just too high. This is what history has demonstrated.

In case of business, the risks are not human lives. In case of a failing business, an employee is free to vote with his feet at any moment, moreover if he is valuable specialist in a competitive market. In such circumstances, business owners are compelled to do well do deter desertions. This is in big contrast to command economies dominated by state businesses. Speaking about command economies, that not necessarily assumes communists countries - just how much of F500 a decade ago were de-facto state co's? GE - with net negative tax rate, GM - needs no explanations, defence companies - being de-facto one with their states in every country, agri businesses with roots in banana republics, dozens of megabanks kept alive by financial life support from taxpayers.

Democracies elect idiots "who wreck it all" all the time. That is not the problem with monarchies. The problem with monarchies is that a monarch will promote the interests of the monarch, the nobility will promote the interests of the nobility. Only a democracy will promote the interests of everybody. That is true whether we talk about a state or a company.

> In case of a failing business, an employee is free to vote with his feet at any moment, moreover if he is valuable specialist in a competitive market.

A non-democratic economy works for certain people under certain circumstances. That is simply not enough.

Equating democratic elections, the act of freely chosing how you run your society, to what amounts to fleeing a sinking ship is beyond ridiculous. So is calling the US a command economy.

> Democracies elect idiots "who wreck it all" all the time. That is not the problem with monarchies.

It actually is a recurring problem with monarchies (and often that's how democratic republics get established); heredity is no guarantee of competency.

Nothing is a guarantee of competency. It's not a problem with monarchies, it's a problem with anything involving humans.

True, and democracy here is a big red "emergency brake" button. In a monarchy or de-facto monarchy (all states that saw multiple presidents-for-life from the same family are in that bunch as well) you have none. Only alternatives given to people in them is to start a civil war.

There's always assassination. Look a the Roman Empire - most of the truly catastrophic emperors were either assassinated, or nearly assassinated before they died of other means.

Not that I'm advocating we go back to that or anything.

Your statement seems unfair. The people elected in democracies are not somehow uniquely benevolent and socially driven. They, at least in rolling with your worldview, once again will promote their own interests first. The election aspect changes very little. Our electorate is mostly poorly informed and easily manipulated. Try answering any question by asking 130 million people, of no qualification, after exposing them to months of emotionally charged misinformation, mud slinging, and FUD -- all carried out by the best manipulators money can buy. The answers you're going to get explain how we can have a 15% approval rating for the congress that we put into office.

That said even though democracy is quite an awful system, it's probably the least awful of the alternatives. We, the people, are very unlikely to meaningfully change anything in any given election - but that power is, at least technically, there. Whereas if you have an awful monarch/dictator/life serving republic/etc then your only option is a bit messier.

> The answers you're going to get explain how we can have a 15% approval rating for the congress that we put into office.

If the manipulation is completely and totally successful, then shouldn't they be able to maintain a higher approval rating than just 15%?

After elections individual congressmen become completely invisible to nearly all of the voting public. How many voters could tell you just 5 things, positive or negative, that their congressman did during their last term? People who know nothing about what they're voting on don't suddenly become actively involved after voting.

The only reason people care about the president is because he maintains a high visibility throughout his term. Even then it's very superficial. I'd be extremely surprised if the average voter could list 5 actual effected policy decisions of Obama that they liked/disliked. Yet they will love or loath him in spite of the lack of that knowledge. The various videos demonstrating this effect are my favorite. Individuals will be surveyed on what they think of described "Obama" policies, which are actually Trump policies - or vice versa. Their view on the policy invariably has little to nothing to do with the actual policy, and everything to do with the name attached to it.

So it seems trivial to then maintain high approval ratings during the term (no one knows what you’re really up to, before during and after the term)

Presidency sees a lot of marketing from each side, so high approval ratings might be more difficult to maintain, but congress should be far less of a battleground.

If you’re correct, then theres no reason for them to have 15% approval except out of sheer laziness; just as no one questions them during the election process, no one should be questioning during the term too

Individual members of Congress have high approval readings in their districts, usually. Congress as an institution has a low approval rating, because people hate the 532 members they don't get to vote for, not the three that they do, in part because each member blames results unpopular in their district on the rest of Congress.

I love the 'least awful type of government' line of reasoning.

It sounds like we tried 100s of different things since we got rid of royality and after a lots experiments 'representative' democracy was proven best.

I think it's more the case of the new royality finding it quite comfortable and this is one of the standard FUD lines we get.

Democracy is not a system, it's a principle. The principle that the people rules. Today's representative democracies apply that principle very imperfectly.

The rulers don't have to be particularily benevolent to promote the people's interests if their interests and the people's interests are the same.

> Democracies elect idiots "who wreck it all" all the time.

> Only a democracy will promote the interests of everybody.

Doesn't the first statement contradict the second?

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