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Comment by heresie-dabord | Hacker News Reader

> Still, end of an era.

That is an enormous understatement. At 94, Buffet has witnessed history and has represented a vision of betterment, a just society, and sound economic stewardship. These things were not and are not hallucinations.

But for many, it seems, the lessons about co-operation, stable economic growth. the sane application of democratic principles, and the rule of law must be learned again.

It's the end of an era bona fides and respect for truth and accountability as the structural integrity of democratic society.

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I will say that his pragmatism seemed to fall apart pretty quickly when the rubber met the road - unless I’m misinformed (which I may be).

Berkshire was a key player in the rail workers strike of 2022 and Warren didn’t seem to want to give an inch to the working man when given the opportunity to do so.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_railroad_...

I'm not clear how this represents him not being pragmatic, could you say more?

Where did pragmatism enter this thread?

The comment above

Deteriorating conditions for the working class are the main driver of our push toward authoritarian government. A pragmatist would have been more sympathetic for reasons beyond pure capitalist economics.

I just don’t buy this argument. By global standards, even the poorest Americans (with obvious exceptions like the homeless) are relatively wealthy. Comparison is the theft of joy.

Seems kind of silly to pretend it won’t happen though. Especially since we’ve chosen to base social status on wealth.

Well it would be one thing if it were an inevitable natural conclusion. But working people are getting poorer because the owner class is hoarding wealth. It’s simply unjust. It’s the difference between losing your house to a hurricane and having someone burn it down.

You say comparison is the theft of joy, and then ask us to compare to an irrelevant metric.

If living standards are falling, grocery prices have increased, rents have gone up, wages have stagnated, what does the price of eggs in China have to do with my assessment of the local conditions.

Over what period of time have prices at grocery stores and rents not increased? Food and clothes are cheap by historical standards as a percentage of income.

https://ers.usda.gov/sites/default/files/_laserfiche/Charts/...

What does the last two years of that graph indicate?

That Biden/Harris lost because they let inflation get out of control for a fairly short amount of time?

Gah. Maybe that people should stop eating out so much.

Replying to @linotype, below your comment:

> I just don’t buy this argument. By global standards, even the poorest Americans (with obvious exceptions like the homeless) are relatively wealthy. Comparison is the theft of joy.

Define wealth. The cheapest option for many foods in other countries is often not only much cheaper, but also of much higher quality than the cheapest option for the same type of item in the US (bread, rice, etc..) in fact their cheap version could easily be pass for the US premium grocery version.

You are speaking as if there is a single objective agreement between people on what constitutes the most pragmatic answer. There is no such agreement. The foundation of liberalism is that we can not agree on first principles. An authoritarian crackdown is just as much an expression of pragmatism if the actor believes they can win.

> Deteriorating conditions for the working class are the main driver of our push toward authoritarian government.

No, they aren't. It's dubious that even the widening relative gap between the working class and the capitalist class plays a major role, though that at least has the virtue of being a real condition and not a fantasy.

If you have an alternative hypothesis, I’m all ears. The lack of good paying jobs and the knock on effects of expanding wealth disparity seems to be underlying most of the issues driving radicalism, left and right, up and down.

In America, at least, workers think tomorrow will be worse than today and they are resorting to populism to try and reverse the trend.

I don’t think it’s accurate to say that the working class is “resorting to populism to reverse the trend.” If anything, the fact that so many working-class voters support a wealthy oligarchy—one that consistently advances policies benefiting the super-rich at the expense of ordinary people—suggests that a significant portion of the population is being swayed by misinformation and manipulation, not that they’re successfully advocating for their own interests.

Ironically, it’s often the opposite party that actually pushes for policies that would materially benefit the working class. The real fallacy is equating the current wave of so-called “populism” with a genuine effort to improve conditions for workers. In practice, what’s being called “populism” is frequently just another vehicle for entrenched elites to consolidate power, not a movement to empower ordinary people.

> Ironically, it’s often the opposite party that actually pushes for policies that would materially benefit the working class.

Such as?

All the Democrat led states have paid leave and higher minimum wages/overtime exempt laws. And higher unemployment benefits. And longer leave times for new moms. It’s also the Dem states that have free school lunches for kids and more robust Medicaid funding.

Democrats passed ACA, which made insurance even possible to purchase if you weren’t offered it by employer, and the annual out of pocket maximum, ban on pre existing conditions as a criteria for calculating premiums, and ACA premium credits made it more attainable than it was before ACA.

Build Back Better bill a couple years ago would have made paid leave policies nationwide and provided more assistance with childcare.

> All the Democrat led states have paid leave and higher minimum wages/overtime exempt laws. And higher unemployment benefits

They also have significantly higher unemployment rates.

> Build Back Better bill a couple years ago

This bill was named after policy advanced by people who want to turn the general population into a class of permanent renters.

Lets not forget higher taxes!

> Democrats passed ACA, which made insurance even possible to purchase if you weren’t offered it by employer, and the annual out of pocket maximum, ban on pre existing conditions as a criteria for calculating premiums, and ACA premium credits made it more attainable than it was before ACA.

Have you actually ever purchased a plan from the website? The last time I checked, the costs were the same as if I had a plan on my own. Also you could get policies prior to ACA, but were subject to health exams and non-coverage of preexisting conditions. In fact, one could argue that all ACA accomplished of benefit was forcing coverage of preexisting conditions. But let's also not forget the fine, which was applied to people who did not have health insurance under the assumption that it was a choice. In reality, people don't have health insurance if they can't afford it which made the penalty functionally a tax on the poor.

You speak of ACA like everybody will agree with you. A decade later I'm still mad at Obama and want my $4k back.

>In fact, one could argue that all ACA accomplished of benefit was forcing coverage of preexisting conditions.

Aka giving people access to healthcare.

Health insurance is not real insurance, it’s a facade where we pretend premiums are not taxes.

99% of people could never afford the healthcare they get, they would just die. Which is fine, but there is no situation where healthcare + low taxes (wealth redistribution) exists.

So it’s high taxes + healthcare, but with a flattening and top heavy population age histogram, even that doesn’t work.

The worst is when old people only get healthcare (Medicare, which is all there was before ACA). A country is doomed if it’s just sacrificing the future to eke out a few years its oldest.

You ignored my post.

> it’s often the opposite party that actually pushes for policies that would materially benefit the working class.

Except on immigration.

Immigrants are a critical part of the working class in America. Always have been.

> If you have an alternative hypothesis, I’m all ears.

How about if I let you do that:

> In America, at least, workers think tomorrow will be worse than today and they are resorting to populism to try and reverse the trend.

See, belief about likely future conditions is a very different hypothesis than factually-existing current conditions, and a better one. To the extent that, IMO, its at least part of the actual explanation.

It’s the same hypothesis. Its a line trending down, and there is an awareness that today is less than yesterday and more than tomorrow.

> It’s the same hypothesis.

No, perception and reality are different things.

> Its a line trending down

Perception? Sure. Reality? No, it factually wasn't prior to the events that it is being invoked to explain.

Which is why perception of decline is a much more defensible hypothesis as to the cause than actual decline.

It sounds like you think material conditions haven’t gotten worse? Cost of housing, food and healthcare, plus flat wages seem to disagree. I think in this case people’s perception matches reality.

I’ve noticed you refuse to put forward your own reasons, why is that?

> It's dubious that even the widening relative gap between the working class and the capitalist class plays a major role

This description could apply to the French Revolution, Tsarist Russia, the fall of the Weimar Republic, and the Colombian Civil War. Why do you think it is dubious?

> Deteriorating conditions for the working class are the main driver of our push toward authoritarian government

I don’t buy this anymore. The evidence is for a simpler hypothesis: 20 to 30% of Americans are stupid. They vote against their own economic interests, which doesn’t make sense if wealth is the problem. My personal hypothesis is lead exposure. But further empowering that segment with wealth strikes me as counterproductive.

Doesn't explain it at all. The biggest swing from 2020 to 2024 was people under 45 voting for Trump at a much higher rate, mostly driven by men. Anyone under 45 was born at least 5 years after lead gas was banned in cars. They're mad because they don’t see a path to the future they were promised. Calling them stupid is patronizing and counterproductive, even if true.

I’m not saying all Trump voters are stupid. Just that there is a stupid subset that are not rationally motivated. It’s productive to call this out, because I think it requires reworking our political system to deal with their threat. Fortunately, MAGA seems eager to set the precedents we’ll need in the future. (It’s also not patronising because I don’t care what they do as much as that they don’t cause problems for other people. That’s defensive more than patronising.)

I propose another hypothesis, those that haven’t learned of the desire for real change instead of stagnant leadership will continue to make the same mistake each election cycle.

Learn to read the signs instead of calling people stupid for not agreeing with you, and then following it up with an attempt to force their alignment.

Are you using rationally motivated synonymously with economically motivated?

There there's a lot more that motivates voters besides economics.

My hypothesis is that it is simply broad spectrum culture war. Mass communication and global human mobility have simply raised the stakes or control over social Commons. The same time due to related factors, there is low agreement on shared social rules, vales, and priorities.

In the sense that good fences make good neighbors, there is no clear fence today.

There is no trust in institutional norms to provide protection, so every battle for power seems existential.

I find it hard to argue with this. Real politik and the rule of the jungle have always been in effect. It is just less dramatic when there is consensus on the rules and limitations.

Bad education system and social media contribute too. Manipulating the masses has never been as easy and cheap as it is now. Russia in particular knows how to do it in scale.

The idea that companies should just agree to whatever proposal comes in from a union is preposterous.

They were negotiating their way up from zero paid sick days per year.

Crazy this is still a thing nowadays especially in so-called developed economies.

Nothing crazy about that. It's mostly European countries that have mandatory paid sick leave by law for everyone, as they fought for that right in the post-war times when the economy was booming and the world outside the west less safe from outsourcing, and importing cheap labor less easy, so the perfect storm giving labor most power over employers, something that's not gonna repeat again in the globalized world of today.

It was the temporal global exception, not the rule, as the worldwide norm was working people to death for most of history. Companies would gladly give their workers zero benefits if they could get away with it.

Compensation packages are just that - a package. Complaining about one individual component in isolation is disingenuous.

Unions sent a couple of the big car makers into bankruptcy. They've sent all kinds of companies into bankruptcy - the idea that anything they are suggesting is good by nature is about the same as suggesting communism is good by nature. Sounds pleasant, doesn't work.

Businesses that can't stay afloat without underpaying workers have a failing business model. Blaming unions for their eventual demise is foolish.

Communism and Capitalism are actually quite similar in a sense. Neither of them works well in their purest form, both lead to formation of an oligarchy (party elite,billionaires). Most livable countries in the world mix them in form of free market social democracy.

>Businesses that can't stay afloat without underpaying workers have a failing business model.

Yet companies have flourished under that model for decades/centuries. Employers and governments have plenty of levers to make sure workers have no choice but to work while being underpaid.

Sure, but you say that as though the union is only representing underpaid workers. In many cases they represent overpaid workers.

> Unions sent a couple of the big car makers into bankruptcy.

It goes both ways, unfortunately. Industry in general couldn't exist without laborers, and it has a long history of brutal abuse and horrific, dangerous working conditions that killed and maimed many.

I think it's a cultural problem. We aren't far removed from a time when the general business model was to coercively work people to death to extract every penny of value from them, and that mindset hasn't completely been lost. Workers are callously discarded, not at the doorstep of bankruptcy, but at the first hint that profits might not grow as fast as they could.

Yup, it goes both ways. It's not a given that what a company is proposing is good or bad, and it's not a given that what a union is proposing is good or bad. And they negotiate and it is what it is.

IIRC they had PTO days which were apportioned pretty generously, but they didn't have sick days broken out separately. This doesn't mean they had less time off in general than the prevailing compensation packages. It was a great talking point for the media. However, TBH having a 'here's a bunch of time off, do what you need to with it' is kinda better than 'here's some time off for you to vacation, but then this other amount is only usable if you're sick, and if you're not sick it's money left on the table.'

The idea that profits are more important than basic humanity is preposterous.

The unions wanted sick leave, because under the current system, employees were scheduled weeks in advance with zero margin. If the employee was sick, they had to ask for PTO which would get denied because of lack of notice and any margin (other employees to cover the job)

When a company loses money year after year it goes bankrupt. The company disappears. The workers lose their jobs.

It is important for a company to earn a profit. You'll find companies like google and facebook, who are making fat profits.... pay fat salaries to their workers.

> When a company loses money year after year it goes bankrupt. The company disappears. The workers lose their jobs.

If the company operates in such razor thin margins that it can't provide for sick leave for employees, something is terribly wrong.

> It is important for a company to earn a profit. You'll find companies like google and facebook, who are making fat profits.... pay fat salaries to their workers

And you'll find that most companies pay as little as they can get away with. Google and Meta need to compete to get a limited (until recently) amounts of top talent.

A railway couldn't care less about the employees.

It's called competition - it's the reason you get to sit there and type away on an incredible machine at a very low cost and eat food at a very low cost... The vast majority of businesses are operating on thin margins. Get in the real world, not some fantasy land.

I'm typing this on a Macbook Pro, which is made by Apple with their net profit margin of 24.3% for Q4 2024. BNSF, one of the companies which is the topic of this conversation, has an operating ratio of 68% for 2024 (how much of their revenue goes towards operational costs). Their net income was $5 billion. They can afford to have a little extra employees to cover fucking sick leave.

> Get in the real world, not some fantasy land

Get out of a libertrarian's wet dream and look around you, read up a little bit on various companies financials.

Apple barely make the product. Look at the margins of all their suppliers. That fat line showing about $200b of cogs is filled with low margin businesses - the vast majority of the world is not some outlier like Apple.

Gotta look more than one layer deep financial statement guy. People who actually read a lot of financial statements have looked at a looooot more than the ones of the names on TV.

The topic of this conversation is BNSF and their ilk, I just threw Apple as a fun "you're even more wrong with your anecdote than with your main statement".

What's your excuse for them abusing their employees? Why can't they afford to provide sick leave for their employees when not only do they have billions of net profit every year, many other railways around the world in the same type of business manage to do that and be profitable.

You edited your comments... could you be more disingenuous?

No answer, good to know you agree that companies like BNSF have the money to have basic human decency and empathy towards their employees.

Yes, I edited my comment to add more data points when I collected them.

>I'm typing this on a Macbook Pro, which is made by Apple with their net profit margin of 24.3% for Q4 2024.

Apple's margins are so high because the margins of their suppliers are so low (used to work for one of them) with some used to have suicide nets at their factories. Apple is an exception worldwide when it comes to HW margins, not the norm.

>They can afford to have a little extra employees to cover fucking sick leave.

Shareholders care more about line going up then about the welfare of the workers.

Where do you get your data on BNSF? The data I have shows you’re off by a factor of near 5.

Their own website: https://www.bnsf.com/about-bnsf/financial-information/

Every quarter you click on, <70% operating ratio, $1.something billion net income.

So you’re missing quite a bit of data. BNSF has pension liabilities and took a small loss there last year. Additionally BNSF has only about $500mil of cash reserves and just pushed another near $3bil in maintenance and investment that’s not on their Q4 financial data.

I don’t know how much sick leave costs them, but they’re not as wealthy as a company as you claim here.

Competition is not the reason. The reason is workers choosing to improve things, invent things and make things more efficient. Competition is a way to incentivize people to do that, but it's not the only way.

Workers don't get to do that without some capital allocated. Rowing is one thing, deciding direction is just as important - and you'll find that the people deciding which way to row are largely trying to win.

Deciding direction is also just work. Why does the reward for that kind of work have to be ownership over the work other people do? An architect makes decisions about a building, a doctor makes decisions about treatments, a developer makes decisions about software architecture without needing to own the resulting building, patient or software, and they usually try to do their best.

As long as there is some link between the quality of work you do and the rewards you get, people will in most cases try their best. Allocation of capital is no different, and in my opinion should not be treated differently. Giving capital allocators ownership/percentage of the work others do is too much, and leads to unnecessary centralization of power.

Because everyone involved agrees to it. If you want to be a dictator and decide what others can and cannot agree to, go try. I'm an employee, I agree to do certain things and the company agrees to certain things. No one is forcing either side.

Everyone "agrees" to it because there's no other choice, it's the system we have. Everyone agrees to it the same way people in communist countries agree to do what the state tells them to do. Most people have to agree, or the whole system will collapse.

Even if you could say that people truly choose to give a piece of their paycheck to someone simply for being named the owner, it's not a reason not to consider limiting that right to choose. We limit many things that we consider harmful. This system is producing ever increasing inequality of wealth and power. There are now people so wealthy that they're able to break democracies. This will only get worse and worse.

It's not remotely close to a communist country - folks have many choices as to who to work for and on what terms. Employers have all many choices as to who to hire on what terms. Both sides have to agree. Employees jump around from company to company all the time.

Someone can decide to start a company tomorrow and keep 100% of the outcome (less taxes) if they want to do that instead - it's trivially easy to be 100% owner of a business - a couple hundred bucks online and you can set the legal entity up in minutes. Now, you then have to provide sufficient value to customers so that they make the choice to part with their hard earned dollars - and that's where it all falls down for many. But it has nothing to do with power or lack of it.

You can choose who to work for, but you can't choose the nature of the relationship. It's always the same, you're a worker who has to give away a part of what you produce and you have to do what the owners tell you or you're gone. That choice closer to getting to choose which government official you work for in a communist country. That choice only prevents the worst abuses, and only if you're not in a position desperate enough that you have to accept any owner's offer. It does not give a person freedom from being exploited.

A capitalist system would collapse without workers, so not everyone can be a business owner. Someone needs to actually do the work, capital does nothing on its own. I guess you could imagine a world where everyone is a one man business and a subcontractor in someone else's business, but that wouldn't really change the nature of the relationship. The ones with capital would still be in a position power and take a part of what people with no power produce.

Many employment contracts have equity components to them. As for "giving away what you produce" - no, you are agreeing to trade it for cash, not give it away. You basically imply that anyone trading work for cash is being exploited.

A capitalist system would collapse without workers, without capital, without a decent legal system.

Many people do work as one man businesses. It does change the nature of the relationship because the economy isn't a one way river. There are all manner of feedback looks - you mine copper, I buy your copper, make some electrical component, sell it to the manufacturer of a Komatsu, they make mining trucks, sell it to you. It all goes round and round.

The evidence for (price) competition improving production efficiency and product fit is overwhelming, examples abound in everyday life, it's hardly worth mentioning.

What are some notable examples "workers choosing to improve things"?

Most innovation is done by workers working for some company, no? Product development, research, etc is usually done by workers for a salary, not because they're competing against someone. Competition is not needed for paying people to improve things.

Competition has a lot of negative effects as well. Competition by definition has losers. Competition leads to resentment and conflict. Competition forces people to do things they might not want to to survive, because the moment someone is willing to do something to get an edge, everyone is forced to.

The vast majority of companies can afford sick days for their workers. It's even good for morale, job satisfaction and performance.

Ones that choose not to treat their workers with basic dignity are badly managed.

American railroads have pretty good pay and benefits, including some of the last defined-benefit pensions left in the private sector.

They didn't want to give in on same-day sick days (not the same as prescheduled PTO, which they did have) because it kills what they call precision train scheduling, which is basically running trains with the absolute minimum number of people possible. I'm not saying this was right or wrong, just that it's the reason.

They pay fat salaries because the talent they need is in high demand, not because they have fat profits. In any industry where that is not the case, a union is a must.

> You'll find companies like google and facebook, who are making fat profits.... pay fat salaries to their workers.

And here I was, under the impression that both Google and Facebook paid their moderators as little as possible.

That link mentions a dispute between 12 unions and 6 rail companies one of which is amongst the dozens of companies owned by Berkshire, run by Buffett. I see no mention of Buffett personally getting involved?

...more personally involved than owning a large part of the company and directly running it? How much more personally involved can you get? Otherwise corporations would be above accountability. The whole system falls apart if executives and the board (and ideally, shareholders) can't be considered personally responsible.

> and directly running it? How much more personally involved can you get?

Ms. Farmer is the CEO of BNSF Railway[1], she is the one “directly running it”.

Moreover, Berkshire/Buffet is notorious for _not_ micro-managing, for letting its subsidiaires enjoy greater autonomy than they would in an usual conglomerate.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathryn_Farmer

Right, but what is the point of letting companies own other companies if this also doesn't imply transitive accountibility? It's hard to imagine we can't find reasons to imprison the board of blackrock, for instance. Such a massive company has disproportionately small social responsibility.

We should extend this logic of accountability. If your kid does something wrong every living parent and grandparent should be held accountable. The world would instantly be better.

Not sarcasm.

Buffet reminded me a lot of Angela Merkel.

They stood clearly and simply for good moral judgment, fair systems and looked at the bigger picture to carry most people forward. They also based all their decision in facts, truth and science. They learn't their trades (economics & politics) over time and weren't afraid to adapt as times changed.

Their slow and steady presence did more for equality and fairness than many others. We will need to find these values again after the current times have played out.

It is ok, I understand how you are thinking.

But unfortunately I think Merkels legacy will be "Wandel durch handel".

Trying to pacify Russia and Putin through increasing trade. Did not work.

Don't forget the climate-change-decision-accelerating decision to mothball all their nuclear reactors. This was a monumentally poor strategic decision from multiple angles.

It doesn't have to have been totally wrong always, but it's certainly been wrong at least since the invasion of Georgia in 2008.

Yes. But that wasn’t a rational outcome. By any measure Russia is momumentally worse off after basically anything it’s done in the past three years.

That has to be about a different Angela Merkel, the one I know had one priority: preserving status quo.

Which recent German politician in power wasn't about preserving the status quo? The entire country and culture is all about the status quo.

I'm. It sure of the "recent" definition but Schroeder's tenure brought a lot of changes (which one can argue against, but it was not conservative).

> slow and steady presence

> preserving status quo

That sounds like the same thing to me?

She also was for making Germany economically dependent on gas pipelines to Russia, even though she knew that she was funding Russia's war in Ukraine.

I am not inclined to give her a free pass on that.

> They also based all their decision in facts, truth and science

What? She shut down nuclear power plants to ramp up coal and Russian dependence.

Idolizing people is rarely helpful.

She shut down nuclear power because of extreme pressure from the population. Tens of thousands protested around her office. Nuclear is complicated (and mostly fear driven) in Germany. Oddly enough the first exit was done under Schröder who is a russian asset. Makes you think.

> Oddly enough the first exit was done under Schröder who is a russian asset. Makes you think.

Oddly enough? Schröder was in a coalition with the green party that had emerged from the anti-nuclear movement two decades before.

> Tens of thousands protested around her office

Germany has a population of 84 million people. 10,000 should not be able to dictate a policy decision of this magnitude, regardless of how loud they are.

> Nuclear is complicated (and mostly fear driven)

The politics of nuclear are complicated, the science (more engineering) of nuclear are complicated, the imperative is clear and simple. You are correct that it's mostly fear driven, but stoked by "green" advocacy organizations and/or manipulated by people with a stake in the continued use of fossil fuels (and largely the latter funding the former).

True leadership would stand up to both of these pressures, making people understand that the voice of 10,000 (or even 100,000) people can not dictate policy alone and educating people on the reality of nuclear power, while also fixing some of the real issues with nuclear power (an aging power plant fleet and an inability economically build better replacements).

Merkel totally flopped on energy policy.

We've been running nuclear here in Canada for over 80 years now. CANDU is very safe and not very complicated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor

Did you know about this? https://thewalrus.ca/nuclear-accidents/

Sure, NRX and NRU were research rigs running experiments far outside normal reactor envelopes. And I think it's amusing that it's considered INES-5 when very little actually happened and there was...no..wider...events... literally. If the worst we can cite is a 70 year old research accident that killed no one and ultimately produced design fixes we still use, you have a the strong case for nuclear safety...Anyway: The Walrus needs to find some new civic interest story around Barrie to write about or something, it's an awful rag. We could decarbonize our grid completely with 15 new reactors, if I was PM we'd be popping them up like it was CANDU Christmas.

The protestors were not a very vocal minority, but representative of the majority opinion. At the time well over 80% of Germans wanted an end to nuclear power. (Although now following the Ukraine invasion and rising energy costs the opposition has significantly softened.)

In a democratic system it is simply difficult to maintain such extremely unpopular positions. Governments which do so don't last long. Merkel flip-flopped and maintained her Chancellorship.

She finally agreed to shut down nuclear because Fukushima happened just a few days before the state elections of Baden-Württemberg. She was afraid of a rout so she agreed to do the above, and her party lost to the Greens anyway.

Measured governance. I feel the same, although I'm sure the Europeans and Germans not at all, but they also talked Angela out of nuclear, so one might argue the Germans are a bit too measured compared to their Chancellor.

> They stood clearly and simply for good moral judgment

Merkel has severely underestimated Putin. She played a role in the continuous betting on Russian oil. Merkel has called the internet “neuland” and wasn’t her government also the one starting with hydrogen subsidies. I donno about you but to this day I only hear lots of talk about hydrogen but near zero results. So all the wrong bets.

Also I don’t know whether you noticed but Germany is expected to be in a recession for three years in a row now.

About equity and fairness okay I guess you are right. Everybody in Germany will be poor if things continue like this.

Silent approval of Putin's invasions to Georgia and Ukraine doesn't look like "good moral judgment, fair systems"

"The current times" are a direct result of decisions like that of Merkel to throw open the borders of Germany to a million unchecked foreign men. If there's one reason that the AfD is the largest party in Germany today, it's because of that decision Merkel made a whole decade ago. How was that "based in facts, truth and science", or "slow and steady"?

The million unchecked foreign men (and women) are presumably propping up the German economy as we speak.

There will always be people that dislike change, but it may ultimately be better to start integrating them earlier rather than later. If you make it through the bad times (e.g. now), at the other end is the outcome you desire.

>The million unchecked foreign men (and women) are presumably propping up the German economy as we speak.

How many of those unchecked are women? What's the point of having borders then? Or law enforcement putting criminals in jails, when they could be out there propping up the economy. As long as your illegal activities are putting money into the state coffers, you should be allowed to continue unchecked, screw the laws.

Yeah sure, they might cause some trouble for the lower and middle class living amongst them, but think of the economic gains for the top 1%! Their real estate and stock portfolios have never looked so good. And if people vocally disagree with this you call them fascist and put them in jail for threatening your "democracy".

How does Poland's economy manage to grow faster than Germany's without illegal immigration? Maybe they can send some researchers there to find out.

> How does Poland's economy manage to grow faster than Germany's without illegal immigration?

They are having babies.

>They are having babies.

Do you research things before you say them? A quick google search shows Polish fertility rate (1,26) is lower than Germany(1,46).

> The million unchecked foreign men (and women) are presumably propping up the German economy as we speak.

The refugee crisis didn't appear to have a significant impact (positive or negative) on the labor market based on a recent study by the IZA and ZEW [0] - "Our estimates suggest that those migrants have not displaced native workers but have themselves struggled to find gainful employment. We find moderate increases in crime, and our analysis further indicates that while at the macro level increased migration was accompanied by increased support for anti-immigrant parties, exposure to asylum seekers at the micro level had a small negative effect." [0]

There are systemic issues with the German economy that aren't related to immigration. A lot of the current malaise can be attributed to the economic slowdowns in Russia (with the Russian Invasion of Ukraine) [1] and China (due to Zero COVID and the subsequent indigenization) [2], due to how tied German industry was with both markets [3].

[0] - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ecca.12420

[1] - https://dgap.org/en/research/publications/no-more-illusions-...

[2] - https://ecfr.eu/article/the-end-of-germanys-china-illusion/?...

[3] - https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/001/2024/130/arti...

I cannot believe that there are people praising Merkel with a straight face. She is literally a laughing stock in Europe, I put her as the poster boy for immigration crisis together with the energy crisis. The only thing she did was shove problems further in the future not caring about the consequences.

I think you have a strange definition of "laughingstock". Germany went from an economic powerhouse of Europe to factory shutdowns and a bunch of bumbling sniveling elites who are afraid of the people they are leading and want to ban them from having a say.

>the bigger picture to carry most people forward

The bigger picture of getting germany dependent on russian gas while screwing eu allies.

Buffet was "carrying most people forward" how exactly? Squeezing companies he had shares in to be as efficient as possible, leading to poorer quality and outright dangerous working conditions isn't bettering anyone other than shareholders, which aren't most people.

> a vision of betterment, a just society, and sound economic stewardship

Please point out one case in which he wasn’t firmly on the side of capital over societal advancement. As far as I can tell he is deeply invested in oil and keeps shilling Coca Cola (and that’s probably only the surface).

> At 94, Buffet has witnessed history and has represented a vision of betterment, a just society, and sound economic stewardship

How exactly did he "represented a vision of betterment, a just society, and sound economic stewardship"?

> But for many, it seems, the lessons about co-operation, stable economic growth. the sane application of democratic principles, and the rule of law must be learned again.

Who are these "many" that need to be taught about those "democratic principles" and the "rule of law". How are these related to Buffett?

> It's the end of an era bona fides and respect for truth and accountability as the structural integrity of democratic society.

What?

> Who are these "many" that need to be taught about those "democratic principles" and the "rule of law". How are these related to Buffett?

The current status of things in US politics is what I assume is being referred to here. Happy to be corrected.

>It's the end of an era bona fides and respect for truth and accountability as the structural integrity of democratic society.

You're splitting. Psychiatrically binarizing things into two possible states - a psychiatric pathology fueled by online propaganda in this context.

I wish I could have breakfast with him and just talk about what it all means. I hear he goes to some local diner.

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