Hail to the HOFF - mostly know in the US for some reality TV show and long forgotten in Germany…
But read up hereabout the german economy
Ok…so, seemingly I’m wrong. Not like it’s the first time. 
However, their main trading partner doesn’t seem to be Germany, so I doubt that “How about…to ourselves!”, as MOIDALIZE says, is a viable option. I think my other point in that paragraph is still valid as well…to a certain extent, the US is a main contributor to Germany (and Japan’s) prosperity, whether we are their number one trading partner or the number two partner…or the number 10.
(I have to say I am surprised that France imports more from Germany than the US does…thanks for the info both you and MOIDALIZE)
-XT
Fair enough about the USA still being a major export destination for German goods and services, but I’m afraid you’re still over-estimating the USA’s importance to German exporters. Of the $717.6 billion total for the top 15 German export markets in 2005, the USA only comprised $85.5 billion, or 11.9%. That’s still a significant figure, of course, but hardly enough to back up your statement that “the US is a main contributor to Germany (and Japan’s) prosperity”.
I know it’s hard for some Americans to hear this, but in many ways, the rest of the world really can get on without you… 
Germany’s biggest export partner is France.
The US represents a large share (their second largest export country, in fact), but it’s a ridiculous overstatement born by the fever swamp of conceited American exceptionalism to believe that WE are the main market for everything. We’re not. We’re more than big enough to cause real damage if we have economic problems, but that doesn’t mean the world revolves around us.
Edit: And somebody already pointed that out. Should’ve finished reading the thread.
Just to play devil’s advocate here: what if our economic model is so far gone that even that can’t be grafted onto it?
I imagine it would take both a) widespread dissatisfaction with the American Dream, ie that quality of life != money, and b) a constructive, communal outlet for that discontent. To put it bluntly, we’re not that kind of country. We’ll put up with a lot rather than change the game.
Yeah…got that already. See the post above yours…
Um…not it’s not. We ARE the largest single market in the world. The fact that we aren’t Germany’s number one market (while being their number 2 market), is really irrelevant to that fact. If we were the number two market to everyone, we would STILL be the worlds largest single market, unless everyone’s number 1 was the same. Do you suppose that France, being Germany’s number 1 market means that they are the single largest market?
I hate to break this to you mate, but at this time the world DOES revolve around the US…militarily, economically, even culturally (gods help us all). That may change in the next decade or so (it almost certainly IS changing), but for now, it’s not ‘American exceptionalism’…it’s ‘reality’.
-XT
The EU is bigger than the US. They don’t have coordinated policy, but as an entity, their mass exceeds our own.
It’s idiotic to describe the current international economic system as “revolving” around the US. Being the single largest and most important economic entity, as we obviously are, does not make us the center of the universe. Most of the EU trades with itself. China has become Japan’s biggest trading partner. Russia’s most important partners are, again, the EU, with China making strong in-roads. To say otherwise isn’t ‘reality’. Being the single biggest entity doesn’t make us the sun around which everything else circles.
Should be easy for you to demonstrate how the world market revolves around them these days, no? Feel free to do so. We won’t even get into the apples to oranges nature of such a comparison, since I don’t really believe it matters…the US is still the largest market in the world today.
It’s reality. Trying to bury your head in the sand and deny reality to say anything differently, at least for the time being. If the US economy tanks, the ripple effect spreads to nearly every country involved in trade. When the US has a recession, everyone has economic problems, if not a formal recession of their own. The US housing market went tits up and it caused stocks to fall world wide.
The US also has a large amount of internal ‘trade’ with itself. But the EU as an entity (and not as the individual countries that make up the loose economic union) still trade most heavily with the US…to the tune, last I checked, of something like $380 billion a year (with something like $275 billion in US exports back to the EU). IIRC, China imports far less, but imports nearly as much as the US does to the EU, making them your number two trading partner. Here:
As of 2008, the US was still China’s top trading partner from what I’m looking at here. As for Japan, indeed China is their biggest importer…by less than $20 billion. Guess who is number 2?
True, but not really all that surprising…nor does it change the basic equation.
Yeah…it is reality. The US market is still the largest in the world, even bundling up all the individual countries of the EU and looking at them as if they were one united nation.
If the US were to suddenly go completely tits up, with our economy completely collapsing, it would take down every other economy on earth. Sort of like if the sun goes out tomorrow we all die. If the EU’s economy went tits up and completely collapsed, it would be a nasty experience, but I doubt the entire worlds financial system would collapse. Same with China. Why? Because if China collapsed tomorrow, the large markets that the US represents would still be here…and there are alternative countries out there who could step in and carry on. But if the US goes down, it takes out the largest market out there, and it would take time (perhaps a lot of time) to develop new markets in other countries on the same scales that they are already developed here.
There is a reason that other countries worry about what America is doing fiscally, and reasons why other countries invest so heavily in the US…and those reasons don’t really have anything to do with their kindness in looking after us, making sure we are doing ok and that we have enough money to continue on because that’s the neighborly thing to do. They have propped us up in the past (and probably will do so in the future) because they realize that if the US goes down it could and possibly would take them down with us. Like I said, this is changing, and I’m fairly certainly that within a decade or so there will be a full shift away from the US being the center of gravity…you can already see the shifting going on as countries like Japan move economically closer to China than the US, or the inroads China has made with the EU. But at this time the US is still the worlds largest single market, and our economy still sets the tone for the rest of the world.
-XT
I never argued that the world revolved around them. I never even implied that the world revolved around them.
Read the actual words I wrote, the ones that are on your screen, not whatever whimsical nonsense pops into your head.
True enough.
And a similar domino effect would happen if the Eurozone suffered a major crisis, as well. So does the world economy revolve around two centers. What would that even mean?
Nowhere have I been ignoring the importance of the United States economy and its influence. Rather, I have stated directly that the US is, indeed, the biggest and most important economy in the world. But there is a difference from being the biggest and having the absurd belief that the rest of the world “revolves” around us in a unique way. It’s not remotely likely, but the Euro currency could theoretically come crashing down with the problems in Greece tearing apart the monetary union, and in that case you’d better believe that that would include pain in the United States and elsewhere in the world, just as happened with the recent US financial crisis.
If the EU disappears overnight, the rest of the world, including the US, is completely boned. Losing the European financial markets alone would be enough to set off a massive world recession. Add in the rest of the continent, and all its people, factories, markets, and trade, and you’re talking a global castrophe every bit as significant as the sudden disintegration of the United States. The world would have a slighter greater chance of survival with the US, but only if international transport could be sustained long enough to offset the mass starvation.
At least this is true.
Yes, we still set the tone for the rest of the world. Yes, other nations worry about our economic policy. Yes, we are the biggest and most important economy in the world. But that’s nothing I’ve ever denied in this thread.
The point is, simply, that the world economy is an interconnected system. It has an obvious most important member right now (the US), but that does not mean that all the other pieces are spinning around us in a unique way. They aren’t. We have, too, the advantage over the EU of having a coherent national policy, which means that we act in unison in ways that the Europeans don’t. But if we lose Europe, it would be a devastating shock, every bit as economically terrible as if we lost the United States. Interconnectedness, even with a clear dominant player, means interdependence. We’re all in this boat together. If you take out any US-sized chunk, like the EU or the collective Far East, the ripples from the effect will swamp all the remaining boats. The result would be hideous.
At that point, it’s not GDP or economic influence you’d be worried about, but just forestalling any food riots. Reliance on the US is real, yes, but not unique or special. This reliance exists in many directions, and in many ways.
Excellent post, Hellestal.
I could make the same argument, merely replacing “EU” for “America” in your paragraph above.
After all, US lawmakers were concerned enough about European banks to send them tens of billions of dollars in assitance to keep them from failing during the recent downturn.
I think arguing about who has the biggest or the most influential economy in absolute terms is missing the point. America has over 3x the population, so the argument is a bit of a distortion. The American system has racked up big unemployment numbers, colossal debts, big deficits and a shrinking manufacturing base. Our workers can’t afford to pay their mortgages, don’t get health insurance (well, until now), and can’t take a vacation.
Contrast with Germany. See what I mean?
Did you realize that Germany’s unemployment has been consistently higher? In fact, it’s higher today and set to go up more than ours is this year. Here is a quick look at unemployment in Germany:
As for deficit, from memory Germany’s deficit is over 2 trillion Euros and, again, projected to go up this year. As a percentage of GDP that’s higher than the US I believe.
Our manufacturing base isn’t shrinking either…only the number of manufacturing JOBS, mostly due to automation. German manufacturing is a niche, vertically oriented thing, targeting more of the high end. I don’t see how such a model would work in the US.
Complete hyperbolic bullshit. We are in the midst of a housing crisis atm, so that tends to skew things a bit, but over 85-90% of Americans have health insurance, and union type manufacturing jobs (by which I assume you mean REAL workers) provide really GOOD health insurance. Americans in general don’t take vacations in the same way that Europeans do, so this is a BS point to bring up as well, since it has little to do with what we can afford and more to do with differences in culture and work ethic. I make a lot of money (well above the national house hold average) and I STILL only get 3 weeks of vacation a year (and this is combined with my sick leave), so I generally get a single 2 weeks vacation a year.
Yeah…I see that you don’t know much about Germany, and that in fact you don’t seem to know that much reality in the US either. 
I know that the grass is always greener in Europe for some of you guys, but really…you should go there and see for yourself. It’s not that one is better than the other, it’s that it’s DIFFERENT…and I seriously doubt that many of you, pining away for us to be just like them would really like the differences if you lived there. I did live in Germany (granted, for only 4 months), and while I thought it was a great place (one of my favorite on the mainland, besides France), it’s not a place I would enjoy living in.
-XT
This is rather disingenuous, since, as previously noted, Germany is still dealing with the absorption of the former East Germany, where the unemployment rate is roughly twice that of Western Germany.
If the USA had absorbed an ex-Communist wasteland with 60 million persons (a roughly proportionate figure to Germany’s incorporation of the DDR) 20 years ago, do you really think that its unemplyment numbers would be quite so rosy?
How about looking back at the performance (PDF) of the West German economy from 1950-1990? (see page 7 in linked PDF for graph) West German unemployment peaked in 1985 at approximately 9%. If you look at the figures from 1960-1974, their unemployment rate was below 2%! Would you care to compare that to US unemployment figures during that timespan?
It is simply a myth that Germany has been chronically saddled with high unemployment.
Well, for shareholders the amount of manufacturing jobs might not matter, but it certainly does for the workers. For 2005, 29.7% of the German workforce was employed in industry, versus only 20.6% for the USA (source).
Ha. I moved to Europe over four years ago and have no intention of ever moving back to my homeland.
Germany’s debt/gdp ratio is a little higher than the US and unemployment pre-meltdown was higher too although it’s the same now and Germany’s em*ployment level has for a few years been the same as America’s. But West Germany absorbed East Germany twenty years ago and has ploughed trillions of dollars into building up a third world economy to levels now matching the western part of the country. Population-wise East Germany was a third of West Germany, so that would have been like America absorbing Mexico twenty years ago, something that would have had quite an effect on government borrowing/economic growth/unemployment levels, no?
Germany has generally honest union leadership, led by men who understand(and accept) technical change.
In contrast, the US labor unions are either run by criminals (the Teamsters) or idiots (William Wimpisinger of the Machinist’s union was a good example).
The UAW is a mixed bag-they certainly have helped the destruction of GM, and have fought any accomodation to the new reality of a global economy.
Apropos of nothing, here’s a clear example of the axiom “you get what you pay for.”
I don’t see it as disingenuous at all…it’s reality. I seriously doubt that anyone following along in this thread is unaware of WHY the Germans have such high unemployment. No one held a gun to West Germany’s head and forced them to reunite with the East…they did so knowing the potential consequences. Also, it’s been over a decade now, so claiming that their unemployment would be less than 2 percent (if only they hadn’t voluntarily chosen to reunite the country, despite the consequences) seems a bit speculative to me.
Hard to say, really…the US has a population of over 300 million. There are well over 20 million illegals in the US at any given time, after all, so the scales are a bit different. But if the US had absorbed, say, Mexico, in the 90’s, then our unemployment would probably be higher, yes…of course, we’d have known that going in, most likely.
Bit of an apples to oranges comparison, since we are tossing about the term ‘disingenuous’ and all. For one thing, IIRC the US and Germany doesn’t measure or calculate unemployment in the same way, so the figures don’t correspond exactly. Were I to guess, I’d say that the US’s average unemployment from the 60’s through today is probably lower than Germany’s (IIRC, the average was something like 6-7% from the 50’s through 2006, and I doubt the average has been substantially effected yet, despite the recession), though again, I believe we calculate things differently, so it would be hard to tell. But I know that double digit unemployment, even before the re-merge with East Germany, happened during several periods in Germany, while I don’t believe it happened in the US except during the late 70’s to mid-80’s…and there were times when US unemployment (as we measure it) was pretty stable in the 3-5% range.
Well, I didn’t actually assert this.
But what do you suppose that proves…or, what point are you trying to make there. First off, what does ‘industry’ mean exactly? Manufacturing? Well, no mystery there if that’s the case…due to increasing automation, US manufacturing has shed quite a few jobs and will continue to do so in the future. Our economy has become more service based, since it’s difficult for us to compete with you guys at the high end, or compete with countries like China or India on the low end. That said, our manufacturing output has been and continues to rise, despite the fact that we have shed a lot of jobs in this sector. Of course, in other sectors we’ve added jobs. Since you mentioned 2005, during that period the US’s unemployment was a touch over 5%. In 2005, according to this chart, Germany unemployment was over 10%. Granted, Germany was laboring under all that dead weight from the East, and that’s going to factor in.
And I’m happy for you…really. It’s tough to move to another country and make it work. Myself, I’ve lived in Germany (for a few months) and loved it…but wouldn’t have wanted to stay. I also lived in Canada for 2 years, and loved that as well…but, again, I wouldn’t have wanted to move there permanently. My sister and her family moved to Ireland several years ago and has recently moved back…they loved it, but they just couldn’t afford to live there (wish they had held out for another year, then I could have gone and visited them…never been to Ireland, drat the luck!).
I’m glad it’s working for you and wish you all the luck in having it work out as you want it too.
ETA, found this wiki chart that shows the unemployment rates in the US from the 50’s through 2005. I’m too drunk to remember why I was looking for this, unfortunately, or what my point was, but since I managed to actually be able to find something I thought I’d put it in…maybe tomorrow if I sober up I’ll remember whatever point I was going to make with this.
-XT
The conversation began with a discussion of the merits of the German economic system, and the presence of high unemployment rates vis-a-vis the USA was offered as evidence. I am merely trying to offer as counter-evidence the fact that much of that unemployment can be atrributed to the historic anomaly of absorbing the DDR. That’s all.
And I never asserted that “their unemployment would be less than 2 percent if only they hadn’t voluntarily chosen to reunite the country”.
You’re probably correct there, but then again, you can’t have it both ways. If you can make assertions about Germany’s unemployment rates prior to 1990 (you’ve offered no cites, by the way), then I can use the same statistics to compare how Germany performed relative to the USA .
Why guess? I presented evidence that German unemployment from 1960-1974 was at or below 2%. By way of contrast, the average unemployment rate for the USA during the same time period was 4.99%.
Cite?
I didn’t say you did. That was more of a general statement.
To repeat, my point is that for workers, a high level of industrial employment is a good thing, generally speaking, whereas for shareholders, a high level of industrial employment is a bad thing, again generally speaking.
Industrial jobs in advanced economies tend to be good jobs for the workers themselves, and also important for their societies as a whole.
Thanks for the kind words. If you’re ever in County Cork, hit me up for a pint of Murphy’s. And I don’t want you to think that I hate the USA or anything like that. I’ll always love the USA and can’t wait until my next visit this summer. Ireland is better for me. I’d never say that the Irish (or European) system is made for everyone. I just get a little tired of the “USA #1!” cheering that I hear everywhere, including the SDMB.
I have to agree that the absorbtion of East Germany gives them a pass on their unemployment numbers.
As for the relative debts of the countries, you are correct that Germany has a higher debt as a percentage of GNP than the US. 77% v 52% according to this. However, take a look at the projections for the future. US projections:
I didn’t find such good info for Germany, but here is one projection I found:
Germany’s case seems more stable from this perspective. It seems plausible that they could actually reduce their debt if circumstances are favorable. The US debt is not going down any time soon AFAICT.
And then there is the question: “What does each country get for all this debt?” As has been pointed out, Germany offers healthcare and higher education for all. Further, their socialist agenda has led them to become the world leader in solar power generation, with fully half the world’s solar installations and policies that are being emulated by other nations.
What does the US have? A million-plus dead Iraqis. Some really wealthy fat cats. Foreclosures out the ass and crisis-induced unemployment.
What do you think of the US emulating the German model in terms of supporting green tech? It is certainly working for them.
Interesting article that argues that the US trade and economic policies are stuck in the Cold War mode of trading away domestic economic prosperity in exchange for bases and other concessions to our military.