Why is the NY Times dragging Germany's success story through the mud?
By John Amato Thursday Oct 29, 2009 5:00amDean Baker makes an astute observation:
Okay, I'm not on vacation, but this is a BTP flashback. My original write-up of this NYT news article was way too positive. This article was essentially a diatribe against Germany's welfare state. To make its case, it turned an incredible success story -- Germany's relatively low unemployment rate -- into a failure.
The basic deal is that Germany adopted an explicit policy of encouraging employers to shorten work hours rather than lay off workers. The government allows unemployment benefits to be used to pay workers to cover most of the loss in wages due to the shorter workweek.
As a result, Germany's unemployment rate has barely changed in the downturn. Its unemployment rate at present is 7.7 percent. This is down from 7.8 percent earlier in the year. Germany's unemployment rate in 2007 was 8.4 percent, 0.7 percentage points higher than the current level.
This is an incredible success story. Imagine Barack Obama's approval rating if the unemployment rate today was anywhere close to its 4.7 percent average for 2007. Think of the millions of unemployed workers who would not be struggling to pay their rent or mortgages or meet other bills if only our leaders were as smart as Germany's leaders. We could do something along the same lines in the U.S.
But NYT readers will be spared such thoughts because the article described the policy as a complete failure. To make its case, the NYT even used the German government's measurement of unemployment (which counts part-time workers as being unemployed) rather than the harmonized OECD measure that is directly comparable to the unemployment data in the United States.
This was not news reporting.
Dean is one of the best economists we have.
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More NYT's piffle and malarkey.
The old gray lady has been dead for years, time to stick her in the ground.
I know people in Germany - happy healthy folks. FWIW
approaching Weimar Republic status and the beginning of whatever "Reich" spits up from it at this rate.
If you do not know how to make your money make money, it's not good.
If you don't know how to make money with your money you entrust it to someone like Bernie Madoff, etc.
If your daddy wasn't rich don't count on having anything.
Unless you know someone willing to help.
See - they are all self-made millionaires!
You must have a nice car and house, and new clothes, and everything that will make you comfortable and keep you entertained. It does not matter if you can afford it or not.
... because even thought their healthcare system covers all their citizens, they have low unemployment, have a relatively intact manufacturing base, universal free education, and have managed to weather the economic crisis. They have failed socially since their rich people are in favor of higher taxes on their income, apparently the rich Germans are well aware that their wealth and well being depends on the wealth and well being of the country they live in.
Clearly, that is an utmost failure to the American Randian brains @ the NYT. Because the American definition of success is not defined at a social level, but purely in an individual basis. And the poorer the other people are, the better one looks in comparison.
The most profound two lines I've read in a while - so sad and too spot on . . .
"Because the American definition of success is not defined at a social level, but purely in an individual basis. And the poorer the other people are, the better one looks in comparison."
The NYT suffers from the dreaded disease of American exceptionalism and supremacy. They deliberately fail to recognize that in many ways, Europe is far ahead of America. Chest thumpers like the authors of this NYT article refuse to rein in their supersize egos and arrogance and also refuse to give proper credit where it is due. In the meantime, our country pays the price for the promotion of this foolish egotism by falling farther and farther behind.
... I once had a friend from the old world put it in perspective to some of my jingoistic friends. He basically told him: "Sure, tell you what I will keep my free health care, my free education, my longer life expectancy, my safe neighbourhood, my month long paid vacation, having seen half of the world, my working mass transit system, a social network that takes care of the poor, my city streets where I don't have to worry about my kids running around unsupervised and being able to play with other kids, my quality food, nudity on the teli without raising a single eyebrow, etc, etc... and you get to keep to be Number 1 at whatever it is that you guys are number 1 at. If that makes you feel better, by all means."
We're an interesting country, we're always so proud of being the number 1 or the bestest... yet if you think about it, we always define those terms in individual basis not as our society as a whole. Which seems kind of an oxymoron.
Meanwhile, those Euros don't give a rat's ass if they are the number 1 or the bestest, because even though they have a much higher social conscience than we do... the ironic part is that they see success in how their society impacts positively THEIR OWN lives and interests. Meanwhile, Americans who are fairly selfish, can however endure all sorts of personal hardships and subsumption of their interests... so long as their perception that their society is superior remains intact. I think it is quite a curious phenomena.
... not them. This type of conventional wisdom is littered throughout the "respectable" print news sources ad nauseam. The Economist's lead news story two weeks ago was the same shit: the thesis of course is that Europe has so much unrealized growth and all they need to do is gut those damn social programs that seem to be hampering true capitalist euphoria. The irony is the Economist's lead news story just months ago was about how Western European countries are weathering the financial crisis better than the USA because their social programs back stop the people against the down turn.
I read articles like this and think about citizens in Germany, living longer than us with more healthy and satisfying lives on average, who probably wonder whether we are insane. They don't believe our nonsense.
This is just propaganda for "us" so that we don't mind when our politicians butcher more social programs in the name of progress.
is that heir MO is the same: sell a ton of magazines by making some bold claims following some randian wet dream. Then when their house of cards comes crashing down showing the extent of the insanity of their hubris... then they make a "special edition" analyzing "what went wrong" and then putting a double "special special edition" with a half assed mea culpa. This is they get to make money selling us their crackpot schemes, and then they also expect to make money telling us "ooops our bad."
In that context, we do that a lot of that in this country: We get to make money screwing whatever it is that we have decided to screw. And then when there is no more money to be made, we get to make the big Hollywood production of a movie telling "oooops our bad." So long as we get to make a movie with a half assed "we're sorry" Americans tend to think everything is A-OK. Notice how our approach involves making money with both the original misguided action and the apology.
We killed and took over the natives in this place making their lives a living hell? No problem, we have a couple of movies for that.
We bomb the sh*t out of Vietnam for almost a decade for no apparent reason whatsoever? No problem, we have a bunch of movies about that too.
We treat our own people like shit? No problem... we're making a movie about that too. Look we may even get a big name actor playing your part, and he may get an oscar for it. Doesn't it make it all much better?
Meanwhile, the people in Vietnam are still reeling from our actions over three decades ago and they get to make cheap sh*t for us now. The native Americans are still screwed, and millions of Americans have been left out in the cold during decades of systematic economic apartheid. But hey, we already made the movie.... so out of sight out of minds, and thus the American psyche can tolerate stuff that would have brought another society down eons ago.
We're an interesting bunch if you think about it...
West Germany had to absorb East Germany, or what was left of it after the USSR fell. So I'd say Germany is a success story.
that cared about its people and workers what might be possible in this country. Instead, the decline and decay in this country continues unabated.
All sacrificed on the altar of the mythical free market.
I'm working my way through Galbraith's Predator State, a short and nontechnical book on the current US economy—slow going nevertheless. One of the examples he describes is Denmark's economy where they have an incredibly low unemployment rate (at the time of writing, anyway) and a fairly well-to-do country, too. The Galbraith suggests that much of this has to do with Denmark having an economy with very low income disparity. By making the bottom-end jobs better paying—Denmark has public healthcare—there are more people willing to not only work them, but to stay with these jobs. In the US these same jobs are not something you can live on so workers find that their time is better spent looking for a livable job or they only keep the job long enough to trade up to a better one. A society where everyone can work at a decent job and live off the benefits of that job seems a lot closer to an ideal world than one where you have way less than a lottery ticket's chance of becoming obscenely rich (e.g., Paul Allen's pair of $100M super-yachts)—and even the largest Powerball payout will only buy you one super-yacht.
Obama flew into New York City Tuesday to raise millions of dollars in campaign donations from America’s financial elite. (Under conditions of growing unemployment and deepening social misery for working people)
Daniel Fass, a wealthy oncologist from Greenwich, Connecticut, the hedge fund capital of America explained the financial oligarchy’s indifference to popular sentiments.
“The investment community feels very put-upon,” “They feel there is no reason why they shouldn’t earn $1 million to $200 million a year, and they don’t want to be held responsible for the global financial meltdown.”
designer accessories also.
http://cm1.theinsider.com/media/0/154/65/mone...
This is why work camps or CILFs (Civilian Inmate Labor Facilities) were expanded. Everybody in Washington realized, during the Bushonian Regime, that this country in this coming decade is going to have to have some sort of internal labor camps wherein the huge numbers of economically dispossessed can be housed but where they can make themselves economically productive.
get the fewest hits, eyeballs, and responses in this country?
Very revealing . .
Another country that has compassion for its citizens something the Murdering Corporations and MURDER INCORPORATED (insurance) does NOT want America to know about.
Remember if you you are not part of the Solution you are part of the problem and what we call MSM is part of the problem.
There is nothing more to say than that .......
is a complete lie.
Astounding that people just repeat this bullshit without even thinking, it's as if everyone is willfully ignorant of the way "unemployment" is counted - if you're unemployed too long in America, you are no longer considered unemployed.
Fantasy numbers for a country that loves to live in a fantasy.
The German unemployment statistic is fantasy.
We had some measures that helped to cushion the crisis and more people retire than leave school, yet the statistic is simply crap.
It would take pages to explain the many manipulations and deceptions, so I'll cut it short: Don't trust unemployment statistics from countries that you don't know well.
of course it's a success story-- but the majority of the staff at
NYT are malicious "pot stirrers" and are unable and unwilling to face
reality. These are the same folks who gave us "Judith Miller"and her
cohorts to spread outright distortions and lies about Iraq with no
supervision or control from the top--to this day without any dis-
cernible effort to make amends for creating THAT disaster and others.
NYT's hubris is laughable---
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