Surprised not to read about the sharp increase in energy costs thanks to the U.S.A. With LNG from America replacing gas from Russia, energy input costs in manufacturing have what, doubled ? How does that not hurt across the board ? A rise in energy costs is deflationary as more money spent heating, driving, & in production equals less money to spend elsewhere.
And why not point out that the destruction of the Nordstream pipeline by the U.S. enabled American high cost LNG to take the place of low cost Russian gas. The head NATO country bombed Germany & nobody wants to deal with the repercussions, not even Adam.
I think refusing to engage with these arguments (though I'm not fully onboard with the idea that the US did it, the other theory of Ukrainian saboteurs seems more plausible to me) is very dangerous overall. It's an elephant in the room and it causes resentment to so divorce the economic issues from these violent geopolitical shocks. It frankly comes across as cowardly.
If you look at the comments to the FT article (which has nary a reference to energy) you will see that many commenters are pointing this out -- only to be denounced as Russian trolls or bots.
Nah, if you read anything beside nyt and wapo as well. Actuall, lately they are spewing filthy Russian propaganda too, just old one, from 1.5 years ago.
I would agree energy is a problem for them, however the US simply took advantage of a developing situation. No one forced Germany to turn off their nuclear power plants.
I would live to see a graph of German growth along side Canadian "growth" both countries have brought in a large number of unskilled immigrants in a very short period
I love Adam Tooze’s writings but the above seems to have two blind spots regarding Germany’s downfall. One, already commented on, is the effect of Germany’s separating itself from cheap Russian gas via the NordStream bombing and via EU policies, and replacing it with expensive US LNG. Texas loves you, van Der Leyen and the whole Brussels bureaucracy, Texas loves you Mertz and the other unpopular leaders of European countries, you’re the best thing ever for Texas income.
The other is the result of a Russophobic aggressive militarization of Germany, the incipient Fourth Reich. More money for military is leading to more belt tightening for most of the populace which means more people voting against the incumbents, which means voting for AFD. The Greens are not viable as they are more militaristic than the conservatives and SDU, Linke is a possible alternative under its current new leadership but it needs to emphasize it’s anti-war stand. A German led war against Russia brings back too many echos of World War 2. Prosperity requires a Europe wide --- that includes Russia - security agreement.
The fact that pointing out the above two points leads to taunts about “Putin’s stooge” point to the paucity and self-limitation of thought brought about by European self-censoring and media policing.
I can see you are not a Russian bot, but you sure do argue like one here. God forbid a nation arms itsself against a much larger one not that far from it's borders, which has been waging wars of territorial expansion continually this century.
You are aware that Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941 was Germany attacking the USSR for territory and not Russia attacking Germany, correct? Yes, Stalin (a Georgian) ordered attacks on Finland and the Baltic states in the early 1940s.
An EU report later found Georgia primarily responsible for the brief 2008 "war". UN reports state that ~ 2,200 ethnic Russian civilians were killed in the Donbass from March 2014 - February 2022 (including about 100/year after the Minsk agreements). Russia was willing to settle in April 2022 with no territorial expansion (except keeping Crimea which is heavily ethnic Russian).
What are the Russian wars of territorial expansion you are referring to?
For the record, just some Russian wars of territorial expansion:
Conquest of Poland in the 18./19. century
Conquest of Central Asia and northern Caucasus in the 18./19. century.
Attack on Finland in 1939/40.
Conquest of the Baltic states and other parts of Eastern Europe in 1940, in collusion with Hitler.
Converting all of Eastern Europe into satellite states after 1945, with invasions in Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968).
Russia is a civilized European country of great cultural merit but will only become a full member of the club once they get rid of the panslavist ideas of a great Russian empire having to save the decadent West.
And Poland conquered Moscow in 1610. (and then later was itself partitioned by Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia).
The Swedes controlled parts of Russia in the 1600's.
Napoleon invaded Russia.
The British and French attacked Crimea in the 19th century.
Germany Austria-Hungary and Russia went to war in WWI.
England and the USA invaded Russia after WWI in support of the White Russians.
Germany attacked Russia in 1941, along with troops from Rumania, Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia, Spain, Finland and elements of other countries.
The point is that the history of Europe on all sides is the history of border wars and shifting boundaries. Europoe is sanctimonious about borders except when it itself interferes, helping carve up yugoslavia and bombing Serbia for 79 days until it sliced off Kosovo (and to this day a quarter century later has it essentially occupied by a German commissioner). Look at its attack on Libya and on afghanistan and other Middle Eastern countries.
The Ukrainian war started at least as far back as 2014 when the eastern parts refused to recognize the illegal overthrow of the government, but its provocative causes were well delineated since 1990 by every Russia expert: if the west expanded its military to Ukraine there would be war. NATO in Ukraine is the proximate cause of war. Look at the principle clause of the failed 2022 peace treaty-- no NATO in Ukraine.
All those hypocritical European countries backing Israel in its genocide and in its expansion by saying that Israel has legitimate security conceerns, then turn around and say that Russia's are illegitimate. Look at those hypocrites making demands of the sovereign country of Iran, then saying no one can make demands of the sovereign coountry of Ukraine. Please, hypocrisy look at thyself in the mirror.
Then you have those little chihuahua countries of the Baltics, holocaust collaborators themselves, calling for the breakup of Russia. Are they even aware of their hypocrisy when they then say Ukraine can not break up?
You display the typically chauvinistic ignorance of a Russian troll claiming territories were Russian before Russia was even nation.
Russia attacked and fought against Poland-Lithuania and Sweden in the 1558-83 the Livonian War which it lost.https://www.britannica.com/event/Livonian-War Sweden never controlled "parts of Russia". It held territories on the Baltic that were later conquered and annexed by Russia including what are now the Baltic states, who certainly never saw themselves as "Russian" then or now.
Britain and France did not attack Russia in the Crimean war but were defending the Ottoman empire from Russian aggression in the Black Sea and Caucasus a war that resulted in the genocide of Muslim populations by Russia that continues to this day. Crimea and Ukraine were never part of "Russia" until they too were conquered in the 18th century. See a pattern there? Muslims today are being pressed into Russian military service in Ukraine at ten times the rate of ethnic Russians for a war they have no stake in.
British, US and Japanese intervention after 1918 was complicated and can't be described as an "invasion." They were mainly concerned at Germany's annexations of Russian territory the Bolsheviks had betrayed at the Treaty of Brest Litovsk and their withdrawal from the war. At one point the British even supported the Bolsheviks against the Germans. The Bolsheviks seized power by a violent coup were opposed by the majority of Russians and by most non-Russian nationalities. They fought a civil war against all their enemies and invaded Poland in 1920 where they were defeated. British, US and Japanese intervention was marginal and largely ineffective and eventually abandoned so absurd to call it an invasion.
Hitler and Stalin were allies who carved up eastern Europe between them in 1939. The invasion of Poland in 1939 was a joint operation, the Soviets invading from the east. The Nazis and Soviets even held joint victory parades in Brest Litovsk!
Your selective history only betrays your very obvious agenda to somehow suggest Russia was a permanent victim of its neighbours and foreign interventions rather than a persistent aggressor and destroyer of smaller nations throughout its long and violent history, a serial bully among great powers, the invasion of Ukraine just the latest chapter.
Until Russia abandons its imperial delusions and the pretext of bogus threats to its security to attack and invade its neighbours there will be no peace.
I don’t think making Russia out to be unique among nations is accurate. Look at the expansion of the continental and extracontinental US including the territories conquered from Mexico and Spain and still held, the creation of Germany out of Prussia in the 19th century, the colonialist expansion of Europe across the world, especially the violence underpinning the English empire, the Belgian violence in the Congo, the expansion of Israel with de facto European support, etc. As Thomas Fazi has pointed out there is an autonomous Russophobia underpinning European policies that refuses to treat it as another country. The reality is that you have a powerful country that has been invaded and has security concerns and basically sees NATO in Ukraine as an existential threat, just as the US sees hostile troops on its border as a threat and has not permitted it (hell, the US Monroe Doctrine defines territory thousands of kilometers away as on its border). Be for or against what the US does, in fact it does. Addressing the security concerns of both Russia and eastern Europe through negotiations that could include neutrality (as in the original Ukraine constitution) would be the best solution, as in the real world it will otherwise be settled militarily with needless loss of life. Polls show that is what Ukrainians now want, and the young men who are fighting to avoid being drafted are voting with their feet. For those “sunshine soldiers” who want the war to continue, Ukraine is eager for you to volunteer your body for the military.
Germany can militarize all it wants, but the fact is, germans are the biggest wimps in *europe*, for Pete's sake, not to mention that germany is old.*
There is a reason that military recruiters to not scour the old folks' homes, looking for geriatric metrosexuals to sign up.
*You have never really truly lived until you have gone shooting with germans. All of my german companions had military training, and they thought that *I* was practically Rambo.
One does not become a stooge to the Kremlin to point out that war in Ukraine must come to an end soon. It harms the entire world. So far, it seems German “centrists” chorus with Britain and France for the war to continue while Ukrainians die in rather hopeless war of attrition against a more powerful nation. This serves no one. Russia is not a big military threat to Germany.
1. underlying this is the war in Ukraine which was partly a civil war (W on E Ukraine), partly a Russia vs Nato war, but mostly a US on EU or US on Germany war designed to create an impermeably barrier to trade with Russia or BRICS ever again. And supply high priced gas and steal the industrial production. That was the only goal achieved.
US even blew up NS2 (though some in Germany are determined to blame Ukraine for that!)
2. Worse - very clearly US is stepping back to leave Europe to replace the Ukranian proxies in fighting Russia. If one is not Gloomy about that there is something wrong with you.
3. Thucydides is a bitch, especially for "Friends" of the fading empire.
And of course it is clear that German and other European governments have been very kean supporters of all this - no wonder voters want a change
[Immigration is just the most urgent policy area for Germany or EU. There have been no new policity initiatives for EU in 50 years - other than full scale war against Russia]
Got damn this is depressing, we have to get this nutcase and his cabinet of idiots out of office before we see another REAL Hitler rise up again. Maybe that’s what they are hoping for, that America goes full fascist then Germany. I have German friends though in real life so I hope this won’t happen.
Polycrisis, polygloom, polysolutions - perhaps the time has come to retire poly? What does the polycrisis framing really add to our understanding? We know that even in the best of times governments face multiple cross-cutting challenges and that in tougher times both the range of challenges and the tensions between them get worse. The challenges now are great, but look back over the past century and it's clear that "polycrisis" isnt exactly uncommon
For a bottoms-up viewpoint: my son, a U.S. citizen, worked in Germany for two years (in the medical field). He was struck by the lax attitude of his coworkers. They took sick leave whenever they felt like it, regardless of whether they were actually ill. Among retailers, employees in customer service sometimes acted like they were doing you a favor and seemed like they couldn't be bothered. The reputed German work ethic in general seemed to be missing. These were just my son's impressions, but I can't help but wonder what effect these attitudes might be having on the German economy.
If you speak directly to the leaders of the German automotive industry, you will find a very gloomy assessment of the future due to electric vehicles. There is little profit to be made for two reasons. Chinese competition and the nature of electric vehicles; there are so few parts in an EV that after the car is sold, few high profit parts are sold. An electric motor is far more reliable than an internal combustion engine.
My sister bought a new Mercedes eight years ago. Its computer system is unintelligible.
I completely agree with your view, especially that China's competitiveness in the electric vehicle market will only grow stronger, and with lower prices, Chinese EVs have a huge advantage globally. If changes aren't made, other car manufacturers might struggle to keep up with China
I'm kind of surprised to read such optimism concerning the potential that Germany may transition to a service-based economy, given the widespread impression that such shifts across western economies have contributed to secular stagnation, owing to the more or less inherently low productivity growth associated with that sector.
It's not optimism. Adam knows that manufacturing requires cheap energy and that Germany has doomed itself to high energy costs through a combination of green energy extremism and the destruction of NS2. The only way to square the circle and pretend that high energy costs are actually a good thing is to claim that Germany didn't want those high-paying manufacturing jobs anyway. No, Germany would much prefer that everyone become a landscaper, an office drone or a food service worker. That's obviously the preferred path to security and prosperity. For someone as smart as he is, this argument is an embarrassment.
Germany‘s problem seems to stem from a combination of business leadership still stuck in the past, and a government with wrong priorities and key personnel frankly not being very good at their jobs.
On the first point: we see much less investment in future technologies than in other countries. We stick with industries with high energy consumption even though the move to green energies predictably leads to higher energy cost, instead of investing in other sectors with lower energy requirements. Our car industry invests in ICE technology, because that’s where they excel. But global demand shifts away from that technology.
On the government: the one good thing the war in Ukraine could offer is for a rallying cry to do everything to modernize the country’s infrastructure, to remove all obstacles to that under a national security mandate or similar. The government could use that to clean up the web of social payments provides by various agencies and to consolidate that into a single one. What does our government do? It does bookkeeping tricks to be able to reallocate money of the special purpose structure (Sondervermögen) for infrastructure investment into very expensive consumptive expenses. In short, instead of solving difficult underlying issues they are applying band-aids. The people are seeing through that, and are deeply frustrated because even with this government having a generational opportunity and very last chance to fix these issues, things just don’t change and probably never will change.
Plus the CDU doesn’t have competent personell since a long time, and even the SPD, which in the past sent very able managers of their domains into the administration, is now exhausted and can only send in their B- or even C-Team.
The result, deeper and steeper, potentially unrecoverable decline. But when the AfD finally takes over? It will only get worse, much much worse.
In Germany as elsewhere, a fundamental problem is with public accounting: There is no differentiation between consumption and investment. It's fiscally prudent to keep consumption (say public sector salaries, or social spending) down to current income. It's not fiscally prudent to forego productive investment (say infrastructure, or research).
I think that the analysis and diagnosis are shortsighted and as such, the proposed solutions fall off the mark. Which most of the comments also criticize. The biases in this essay hurts. Anti Russian and anti AfD, portraid as far right. Maibe Mr. Tooze also needs a dose of Aurelien's essays, to have a taste of how insulated and removed from reality the European elites are: https://aurelien2022.substack.com/
"Germany’s actual problems may, as much as anything, be home grown."
Germany's actual problems are entirely home grown, namely the result of craven german slavishness to the American Empire, even more than the United States itself.
Canvassing this subject without mentioning either the self-harm of cutting itself off from cheap Russian pipeline gas (while simultaneously shutting down all of its nuclear plants) or the idiotic and self-destructive EU deficit limits (which arguably are themselves an extension of Germany’s determination to live in a dumpster rather than take on a mortgage) is kind of unserious. I expect a little more courage.
Surprised not to read about the sharp increase in energy costs thanks to the U.S.A. With LNG from America replacing gas from Russia, energy input costs in manufacturing have what, doubled ? How does that not hurt across the board ? A rise in energy costs is deflationary as more money spent heating, driving, & in production equals less money to spend elsewhere.
And why not point out that the destruction of the Nordstream pipeline by the U.S. enabled American high cost LNG to take the place of low cost Russian gas. The head NATO country bombed Germany & nobody wants to deal with the repercussions, not even Adam.
I think refusing to engage with these arguments (though I'm not fully onboard with the idea that the US did it, the other theory of Ukrainian saboteurs seems more plausible to me) is very dangerous overall. It's an elephant in the room and it causes resentment to so divorce the economic issues from these violent geopolitical shocks. It frankly comes across as cowardly.
It is cowardly.
For that matter, the german attempt to blame Ukrainians ignores the fact that Ukraine does nothing without American direction.
If you look at the comments to the FT article (which has nary a reference to energy) you will see that many commenters are pointing this out -- only to be denounced as Russian trolls or bots.
https://archive.is/WRUsu
Yeah, reality has a distinct Russian bias
If you only read TASS, sure.
Nah, if you read anything beside nyt and wapo as well. Actuall, lately they are spewing filthy Russian propaganda too, just old one, from 1.5 years ago.
What are these esteemed outlets you speak of?
How do you know they are esteemed if you don’t know them?
Especially not Adam.
Hell, Putin could cure cancer with his touch and Adam would bitch that Putin weaponized spiritual healing.
Adam has written in detail about the impact of energy on the German doldrums elsewhere: https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-150-why-cheap-russian-gas. Don't think you will find much agreement, but worth your while.
I would agree energy is a problem for them, however the US simply took advantage of a developing situation. No one forced Germany to turn off their nuclear power plants.
I would live to see a graph of German growth along side Canadian "growth" both countries have brought in a large number of unskilled immigrants in a very short period
I love Adam Tooze’s writings but the above seems to have two blind spots regarding Germany’s downfall. One, already commented on, is the effect of Germany’s separating itself from cheap Russian gas via the NordStream bombing and via EU policies, and replacing it with expensive US LNG. Texas loves you, van Der Leyen and the whole Brussels bureaucracy, Texas loves you Mertz and the other unpopular leaders of European countries, you’re the best thing ever for Texas income.
The other is the result of a Russophobic aggressive militarization of Germany, the incipient Fourth Reich. More money for military is leading to more belt tightening for most of the populace which means more people voting against the incumbents, which means voting for AFD. The Greens are not viable as they are more militaristic than the conservatives and SDU, Linke is a possible alternative under its current new leadership but it needs to emphasize it’s anti-war stand. A German led war against Russia brings back too many echos of World War 2. Prosperity requires a Europe wide --- that includes Russia - security agreement.
The fact that pointing out the above two points leads to taunts about “Putin’s stooge” point to the paucity and self-limitation of thought brought about by European self-censoring and media policing.
I can see you are not a Russian bot, but you sure do argue like one here. God forbid a nation arms itsself against a much larger one not that far from it's borders, which has been waging wars of territorial expansion continually this century.
You are aware that Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941 was Germany attacking the USSR for territory and not Russia attacking Germany, correct? Yes, Stalin (a Georgian) ordered attacks on Finland and the Baltic states in the early 1940s.
An EU report later found Georgia primarily responsible for the brief 2008 "war". UN reports state that ~ 2,200 ethnic Russian civilians were killed in the Donbass from March 2014 - February 2022 (including about 100/year after the Minsk agreements). Russia was willing to settle in April 2022 with no territorial expansion (except keeping Crimea which is heavily ethnic Russian).
What are the Russian wars of territorial expansion you are referring to?
Russia cares so much about ethnic Russians it has sent hundreds of thousands to their death in a senseless war.
For the record, just some Russian wars of territorial expansion:
Conquest of Poland in the 18./19. century
Conquest of Central Asia and northern Caucasus in the 18./19. century.
Attack on Finland in 1939/40.
Conquest of the Baltic states and other parts of Eastern Europe in 1940, in collusion with Hitler.
Converting all of Eastern Europe into satellite states after 1945, with invasions in Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968).
Russia is a civilized European country of great cultural merit but will only become a full member of the club once they get rid of the panslavist ideas of a great Russian empire having to save the decadent West.
And Poland conquered Moscow in 1610. (and then later was itself partitioned by Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia).
The Swedes controlled parts of Russia in the 1600's.
Napoleon invaded Russia.
The British and French attacked Crimea in the 19th century.
Germany Austria-Hungary and Russia went to war in WWI.
England and the USA invaded Russia after WWI in support of the White Russians.
Germany attacked Russia in 1941, along with troops from Rumania, Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia, Spain, Finland and elements of other countries.
The point is that the history of Europe on all sides is the history of border wars and shifting boundaries. Europoe is sanctimonious about borders except when it itself interferes, helping carve up yugoslavia and bombing Serbia for 79 days until it sliced off Kosovo (and to this day a quarter century later has it essentially occupied by a German commissioner). Look at its attack on Libya and on afghanistan and other Middle Eastern countries.
The Ukrainian war started at least as far back as 2014 when the eastern parts refused to recognize the illegal overthrow of the government, but its provocative causes were well delineated since 1990 by every Russia expert: if the west expanded its military to Ukraine there would be war. NATO in Ukraine is the proximate cause of war. Look at the principle clause of the failed 2022 peace treaty-- no NATO in Ukraine.
All those hypocritical European countries backing Israel in its genocide and in its expansion by saying that Israel has legitimate security conceerns, then turn around and say that Russia's are illegitimate. Look at those hypocrites making demands of the sovereign country of Iran, then saying no one can make demands of the sovereign coountry of Ukraine. Please, hypocrisy look at thyself in the mirror.
Then you have those little chihuahua countries of the Baltics, holocaust collaborators themselves, calling for the breakup of Russia. Are they even aware of their hypocrisy when they then say Ukraine can not break up?
You display the typically chauvinistic ignorance of a Russian troll claiming territories were Russian before Russia was even nation.
Russia attacked and fought against Poland-Lithuania and Sweden in the 1558-83 the Livonian War which it lost.https://www.britannica.com/event/Livonian-War Sweden never controlled "parts of Russia". It held territories on the Baltic that were later conquered and annexed by Russia including what are now the Baltic states, who certainly never saw themselves as "Russian" then or now.
Britain and France did not attack Russia in the Crimean war but were defending the Ottoman empire from Russian aggression in the Black Sea and Caucasus a war that resulted in the genocide of Muslim populations by Russia that continues to this day. Crimea and Ukraine were never part of "Russia" until they too were conquered in the 18th century. See a pattern there? Muslims today are being pressed into Russian military service in Ukraine at ten times the rate of ethnic Russians for a war they have no stake in.
British, US and Japanese intervention after 1918 was complicated and can't be described as an "invasion." They were mainly concerned at Germany's annexations of Russian territory the Bolsheviks had betrayed at the Treaty of Brest Litovsk and their withdrawal from the war. At one point the British even supported the Bolsheviks against the Germans. The Bolsheviks seized power by a violent coup were opposed by the majority of Russians and by most non-Russian nationalities. They fought a civil war against all their enemies and invaded Poland in 1920 where they were defeated. British, US and Japanese intervention was marginal and largely ineffective and eventually abandoned so absurd to call it an invasion.
Hitler and Stalin were allies who carved up eastern Europe between them in 1939. The invasion of Poland in 1939 was a joint operation, the Soviets invading from the east. The Nazis and Soviets even held joint victory parades in Brest Litovsk!
Your selective history only betrays your very obvious agenda to somehow suggest Russia was a permanent victim of its neighbours and foreign interventions rather than a persistent aggressor and destroyer of smaller nations throughout its long and violent history, a serial bully among great powers, the invasion of Ukraine just the latest chapter.
Until Russia abandons its imperial delusions and the pretext of bogus threats to its security to attack and invade its neighbours there will be no peace.
I don’t think making Russia out to be unique among nations is accurate. Look at the expansion of the continental and extracontinental US including the territories conquered from Mexico and Spain and still held, the creation of Germany out of Prussia in the 19th century, the colonialist expansion of Europe across the world, especially the violence underpinning the English empire, the Belgian violence in the Congo, the expansion of Israel with de facto European support, etc. As Thomas Fazi has pointed out there is an autonomous Russophobia underpinning European policies that refuses to treat it as another country. The reality is that you have a powerful country that has been invaded and has security concerns and basically sees NATO in Ukraine as an existential threat, just as the US sees hostile troops on its border as a threat and has not permitted it (hell, the US Monroe Doctrine defines territory thousands of kilometers away as on its border). Be for or against what the US does, in fact it does. Addressing the security concerns of both Russia and eastern Europe through negotiations that could include neutrality (as in the original Ukraine constitution) would be the best solution, as in the real world it will otherwise be settled militarily with needless loss of life. Polls show that is what Ukrainians now want, and the young men who are fighting to avoid being drafted are voting with their feet. For those “sunshine soldiers” who want the war to continue, Ukraine is eager for you to volunteer your body for the military.
“Defending the Ottoman Empire.”
Do you even hear yourself? 🙄
So are you able to address substance or do you just call those who point out inconvenient facts "Russian bots"?
It’s a useful flag to identify those incapable of independent thought, let alone systemic analysis.
Germany can militarize all it wants, but the fact is, germans are the biggest wimps in *europe*, for Pete's sake, not to mention that germany is old.*
There is a reason that military recruiters to not scour the old folks' homes, looking for geriatric metrosexuals to sign up.
*You have never really truly lived until you have gone shooting with germans. All of my german companions had military training, and they thought that *I* was practically Rambo.
One does not become a stooge to the Kremlin to point out that war in Ukraine must come to an end soon. It harms the entire world. So far, it seems German “centrists” chorus with Britain and France for the war to continue while Ukrainians die in rather hopeless war of attrition against a more powerful nation. This serves no one. Russia is not a big military threat to Germany.
That was the most erudite misdiagnosis of Germany's economic problems that I've ever read.
1. underlying this is the war in Ukraine which was partly a civil war (W on E Ukraine), partly a Russia vs Nato war, but mostly a US on EU or US on Germany war designed to create an impermeably barrier to trade with Russia or BRICS ever again. And supply high priced gas and steal the industrial production. That was the only goal achieved.
US even blew up NS2 (though some in Germany are determined to blame Ukraine for that!)
2. Worse - very clearly US is stepping back to leave Europe to replace the Ukranian proxies in fighting Russia. If one is not Gloomy about that there is something wrong with you.
3. Thucydides is a bitch, especially for "Friends" of the fading empire.
And of course it is clear that German and other European governments have been very kean supporters of all this - no wonder voters want a change
[Immigration is just the most urgent policy area for Germany or EU. There have been no new policity initiatives for EU in 50 years - other than full scale war against Russia]
Oh dear someone is discovering how very confused they have been
Got damn this is depressing, we have to get this nutcase and his cabinet of idiots out of office before we see another REAL Hitler rise up again. Maybe that’s what they are hoping for, that America goes full fascist then Germany. I have German friends though in real life so I hope this won’t happen.
Polycrisis, polygloom, polysolutions - perhaps the time has come to retire poly? What does the polycrisis framing really add to our understanding? We know that even in the best of times governments face multiple cross-cutting challenges and that in tougher times both the range of challenges and the tensions between them get worse. The challenges now are great, but look back over the past century and it's clear that "polycrisis" isnt exactly uncommon
For a bottoms-up viewpoint: my son, a U.S. citizen, worked in Germany for two years (in the medical field). He was struck by the lax attitude of his coworkers. They took sick leave whenever they felt like it, regardless of whether they were actually ill. Among retailers, employees in customer service sometimes acted like they were doing you a favor and seemed like they couldn't be bothered. The reputed German work ethic in general seemed to be missing. These were just my son's impressions, but I can't help but wonder what effect these attitudes might be having on the German economy.
idealist bs, productivity per hour worked in germany is comparable with the US. this is purely structural
Yes, per worker. But since Americans work more hours, their overall productivity is higher.
do you see how this contradicts your sons observation
Oh, yes. Thank you. I'll let him know his observations are BS, as you helpfully pointed out.
If you speak directly to the leaders of the German automotive industry, you will find a very gloomy assessment of the future due to electric vehicles. There is little profit to be made for two reasons. Chinese competition and the nature of electric vehicles; there are so few parts in an EV that after the car is sold, few high profit parts are sold. An electric motor is far more reliable than an internal combustion engine.
My sister bought a new Mercedes eight years ago. Its computer system is unintelligible.
I completely agree with your view, especially that China's competitiveness in the electric vehicle market will only grow stronger, and with lower prices, Chinese EVs have a huge advantage globally. If changes aren't made, other car manufacturers might struggle to keep up with China
I'm kind of surprised to read such optimism concerning the potential that Germany may transition to a service-based economy, given the widespread impression that such shifts across western economies have contributed to secular stagnation, owing to the more or less inherently low productivity growth associated with that sector.
Aaron Benanav, who I believe Tooze has written approvingly of before, has discussed this in the New Left Review recently, but that's just one example. https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii140/articles/aaron-benanav-a-dissipating-glut
It's not optimism. Adam knows that manufacturing requires cheap energy and that Germany has doomed itself to high energy costs through a combination of green energy extremism and the destruction of NS2. The only way to square the circle and pretend that high energy costs are actually a good thing is to claim that Germany didn't want those high-paying manufacturing jobs anyway. No, Germany would much prefer that everyone become a landscaper, an office drone or a food service worker. That's obviously the preferred path to security and prosperity. For someone as smart as he is, this argument is an embarrassment.
Germany‘s problem seems to stem from a combination of business leadership still stuck in the past, and a government with wrong priorities and key personnel frankly not being very good at their jobs.
On the first point: we see much less investment in future technologies than in other countries. We stick with industries with high energy consumption even though the move to green energies predictably leads to higher energy cost, instead of investing in other sectors with lower energy requirements. Our car industry invests in ICE technology, because that’s where they excel. But global demand shifts away from that technology.
On the government: the one good thing the war in Ukraine could offer is for a rallying cry to do everything to modernize the country’s infrastructure, to remove all obstacles to that under a national security mandate or similar. The government could use that to clean up the web of social payments provides by various agencies and to consolidate that into a single one. What does our government do? It does bookkeeping tricks to be able to reallocate money of the special purpose structure (Sondervermögen) for infrastructure investment into very expensive consumptive expenses. In short, instead of solving difficult underlying issues they are applying band-aids. The people are seeing through that, and are deeply frustrated because even with this government having a generational opportunity and very last chance to fix these issues, things just don’t change and probably never will change.
Plus the CDU doesn’t have competent personell since a long time, and even the SPD, which in the past sent very able managers of their domains into the administration, is now exhausted and can only send in their B- or even C-Team.
The result, deeper and steeper, potentially unrecoverable decline. But when the AfD finally takes over? It will only get worse, much much worse.
The (German) Foreign Minister threatens:
“Next week Russia either bows… or we enter the war directly.
And if it turns into a world war then let it be for Ukraine.”
And Afd is the problem?
In Germany as elsewhere, a fundamental problem is with public accounting: There is no differentiation between consumption and investment. It's fiscally prudent to keep consumption (say public sector salaries, or social spending) down to current income. It's not fiscally prudent to forego productive investment (say infrastructure, or research).
I think that the analysis and diagnosis are shortsighted and as such, the proposed solutions fall off the mark. Which most of the comments also criticize. The biases in this essay hurts. Anti Russian and anti AfD, portraid as far right. Maibe Mr. Tooze also needs a dose of Aurelien's essays, to have a taste of how insulated and removed from reality the European elites are: https://aurelien2022.substack.com/
"Polygloom": not just a German problem. A useful economic and sociological concept.
"Germany’s actual problems may, as much as anything, be home grown."
Germany's actual problems are entirely home grown, namely the result of craven german slavishness to the American Empire, even more than the United States itself.
Canvassing this subject without mentioning either the self-harm of cutting itself off from cheap Russian pipeline gas (while simultaneously shutting down all of its nuclear plants) or the idiotic and self-destructive EU deficit limits (which arguably are themselves an extension of Germany’s determination to live in a dumpster rather than take on a mortgage) is kind of unserious. I expect a little more courage.