Lessons from the Germans.... (military, cost, school, education system)

[J746NEW]

Germany is focused on manufacturing and building high quality goods that other people want.

We don't even focus on building anything but having others build it for us as cheaply as possible so that Wall Street can get its cut through increased dividends per share.

Instead of focusing on production and saving, we focus on spending and creating financially toxic instruments to pawn off to others.

[ambient]

Originally Posted by Mircea

Hammer-time.





Germany has a lower Employment-to-Population Ratio

It's actually pretty darn close to USA. But it depends on whose stats you use and what their agenda is, which influences where they set the age for employment. You can also come up with tables like this one. Which is right? HMMMMM.

Originally Posted by Mircea

Germany 5.0%

Hawaii 4.3%
Iowa 4.9%
Nebraska 4.2%
New Hampshire 5.0%
North Dakota 3.0%
South Dakota 3.8%
Utah 4.7%
Vermont 4.6%
Wyoming 4.6%

Did you know that cherry-picking data points does not make you look clever? USA official U3 rate is 7.3%, and that is after coming down quite a bit. Also, the US rate also understates as it excludes a lot of people who are underemployed and gave up searching. You can find the layers at BLS.

Germany has also had the kind of a jobs recovery that America only dreams of. The irony is that they have done it to a significant degree by pushing anti-Keynesian policies and raising incentives to get off of the social net, which is something that a conservative should be cheering. Even the mostly-conservative Forbes is on board:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulrode...-jobs-miracle/

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/20...ny-vs-the-u-s/

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...ml?ref=economy

Originally Posted by Mircea

And Germany rations health care.

And the reason Germany rations health care, is because Germany does not pay the true cost of health care.

USA rations health care, too. Every nation on Earth does. It's just that different entities do the rationing here. For the 50M people who can't even get insurance in this nation, health care is rationed very drastically. And in general, all those first-world nations accused of "rationing health care" experience lower costs scaled against GDP and have better healthcare outcomes. USA spends by far the most for mediocre outcomes compared against this first-world nation set. You can do some searches and find that they poll with more satisfaction about their healthcare system than Americans do about theirs.

http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/20...e-like-german/

Originally Posted by Mircea

If higher education in Germany is "affordable" then why do only 4.6% of Germans ages 25-64 have college degrees?

many rations out health care.....Germany rations out higher education using a weeding process based on Standardized Testing.

Yes, and that is the intelligent way of doing it. Why the hell do you think our costs of education are so out of whack here? Sending everyone and their grandmother through college, whether they are fit for college degree jobs or not, with a guaranteed ballooning taxpayer-sponsored student loan debt is a system that only an idiot would design. And there is a student loan bubble in this nation that is going to burst, thanks to this system.

Originally Posted by Mircea

Wow.....every single thing you posted got debunked.....keep it up...the 6.6 Billion on the World Wide Web could use you for a good laugh.

Not really. You have some good points, but it's safe to say that ahead of your skis in your high estimation of yourself.

[Packard fan]

Originally Posted by J746NEW

Germany is focused on manufacturing and building high quality goods that other people want.

We don't even focus on building anything but having others build it for us as cheaply as possible so that Wall Street can get its cut through increased dividends per share.

Instead of focusing on production and saving, we focus on spending and creating financially toxic instruments to pawn off to others.

People THINK that German cars are good. They ain't; especially anything "less" than a Mercedes. New; not bad, when the get older they fall apart.

[TwinbrookNine]

You need to realize this:

Never mind the few Turks and others that went there 30 - 40 years ago (and not without some fist raising, by the way). Other then them, Germany is an ethnically homogenous country (like Norway which someone mentioned above). Taxing them to death does not equate with racially based redistribution of "wealth" - what will soon become a big problem and a source of great tumult in the US.

[remoddahouse]

Originally Posted by Packard fan

People THINK that German cars are good. They ain't; especially anything "less" than a Mercedes. New; not bad, when the get older they fall apart.

Ain't? Sorry, but even if you assume that's a valid word, you're using it incorrectly. As to the cars, the Germans drive the innovation in the industry both from an engineering and marketing point of view. As to how they do in the long run, you can feel free to dig up some data to back up your emotions.

[Packard fan]

Originally Posted by remoddahouse

Ain't? Sorry, but even if you assume that's a valid word, you're using it incorrectly. As to the cars, the Germans drive the innovation in the industry both from an engineering and marketing point of view. As to how they do in the long run, you can feel free to dig up some data to back up your emotions.

Are German Cars Reliable? The Myth of “German Engineering” | AutoGuide.com News

It’s clear then that there are plenty of reasons to buy a car from automakers like BMW, Mercedes, Audi and Volkswagen, but if reliability is your top concern, don’t be fooled by the myth of “German engineering”.

[Mircea]

Originally Posted by J746NEW

Germany is focused on manufacturing and building high quality goods that other people want.

That's about 99% right. To 100% correct add the word "specialty" before goods.

Germany is into niche manufacturing. In essence, they make for the world what the giant corporations either cannot make or do not wish to make.

Originally Posted by HiFi

good points but youre misreading that education pie chart. that is a country's share in the world population of degree holders, not the percentage of degree holders in that country's population. i.e all those numbers add up to 100%

Christ-on-his-freaking-throne do you people ever go to the links and examine the data yourselves?

I'm not reading the "pie chart."

See this link.....?

http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/888932459888

That is an MSExcel Spreadsheet.

When you open the spreadsheet, you'll see this.....



...recognize it?

You should....it's the chart in dirty form.

Next, you'll see the raw data here.....



I direct your attention specifically to spreadsheet Cell B16 which states....

"Table A1.3a. Population with tertiary education (2009)"

Next, I direct your attention to spreadsheet Cell B17 which states....

'Percentage of the population that has attained tertiary-type B education or tertiary-type A and advanced research programmes, by age group Column 16 refers to absolute numbers

Here you can see the data for the US specifically....



And what's this......



...that's just where the OECD organized the data for their chart.

Next, I direct your attention to Cell T71.....



...and read that number aloud 1,000 times.

Next, I direct your attention to spreadsheet Cell S55.....



...what does that say?

It says 66,148 and the legend tells us these numbers are reported in thousands, so it is 66,148,000.

So.....the US population = ~315 Million people total and 66,148,000 have college edcuation....

66,148,000 / 315,000,000 = 20.99%

Very obviously, that shows 20% instead of 24%, but then we are taking the entire population age New-born Infant to age 100+ instead of only the 24-65 Age Group.

Who does not understand this very simple 6th Grade Math?

From the same graphic we can see that 11.9 Million people in the United Kingdom ages 25-64 have a college education.

And this graphic shows us that...



....11.7 Million Germans ages 25-64 gave a college degree.

And finally....




...I just wanted to show that to prove the point.

College education is "free" in other countries, yet so few people are college educated.

90% of the people on this forum who have college degrees would not have degrees if they lived in Germany or the United Kingdom or Romania.

About 1/3rd of the people on this forum wouldn't even qualify for high school. They would have tested out into a work school to learn how to re-tread tires or something, and then at age 16, they'd have been kicked out of school forever.

Some on this forum would have made it into "high school" but got kicked out of the school system when they didn't score high enough on the test to make it into vocational training or college preparatory school for ages 16-18.

If you wanted to employ the system used by Euro-States in America, it'd be very simple and I'm all for it.....

...."Everyone who scored less than 2300 on their SAT take one step forward.....thank you for attending your high school, have a nice life...don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out...For everyone else, let's get you registered for classes."

Educating...

Mircea

[Slithytoves]

Originally Posted by Hoonose

I have never bought into job guarantee programs as espoused by MMT'ers.

SOME CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISMS OF THE MMT JOB GUARANTEE | PRAGMATIC CAPITALISM

I agree with the article. Not suggesting a guarantee, particularly if it means government hire.

I just advocate training a more marketable populace. I think it's a good investment. Can't hurt, might help.

Good article, by the way. Informative.

[InformedConsent]

Originally Posted by EmeraldCityWanderer

We could be a lot more like them if we eject the crazy portions of the GOP and get people interested in actually governing.

We could be a lot more like them if we had a very regressive tax system. Think the Dems will go for that?



Other countries' taxes are highly regressive - Washington Post

[Mircea]

Originally Posted by ambient

It's actually pretty darn close to USA.

No it isn't.

You fail to understand that all of Germany's social welfare programs are the cause of their lower E-Pop Ratio.

And because you don't understand, you, like most of the others, don't understand that you cannot pay for the social welfare programs you have now, like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and now you just started another social welfare program that you cannot fund.

Nothing is free.....funding those programs will cost you job losses....which only exasperates the problem.

Originally Posted by ambient

But it depends on whose stats you use and what their agenda is, which influences where they set the age for employment.

The Federal Reserve has an agenda?

Have you had your tin-foil hat adjusted lately?

Originally Posted by ambient

. You can also come up with tables like this one. Which is right? HMMMMM.

They are both correct.

Intelligent people understand the meaning of the word "metrics."

Metrics are the standards by which data are reported. Due to the fact that States use different metrics, data can be misleading if you don't know what you're doing.

I so much as said that. I even proved it.

The US Civilian Labor Force as reported in LNU01000000 uses the metric Age 16 and up.

The German government uses the metric Age 24 to 65 seeking work.

Why don't you re-calculate the Employment-to-Population Ratio in the US using the same metrics as Germany?

I couldn't help but notice you cited Eurostat as a source.......

Last update 25.10.11
Extracted on 06.01.13
Source of Data Eurostat
UNIT Euro per inhabitant
ICHA_HC Health care expenditure
ICHA_HP All providers of health care

Romania.......310.39
Germany....... 3,398.50
Switzerland....... 5,215.64
Norway....... 5,343.49
Luxembourg....... 5,438.46
United States....... 5,684.68


UNIT Euro per inhabitant
ICHA_HF General government

Romania....... 241.10
Germany .......2,537.44
United States....... 2,657.86
Switzerland .......3,114.60
Netherlands .......3,271.16
Denmark .......3,775.17
Luxembourg .......4,105.86
Norway .......4,195.13

UNIT Euro per inhabitant
ICHA_HF Private household out-of-pocket expenditure

Romania .......63.95
Germany....... 403.33
United States....... 697.13
Norway .......805.54
Switzerland....... 1,590.18


Source: Database EuroStat: The European Commission of the European Union.


Hahahaha......now what?



Each and every post you make where you say health care costs more in America.....I'm gonna throw the Eurostat data right in your face.

Originally Posted by ambient

Did you know that cherry-picking data points does not make you look clever? USA official U3 rate is 7.3%, and that is after coming down quite a bit. Also, the US rate also understates as it excludes a lot of people who are underemployed and gave up searching. You can find the layers at BLS.

No data was cherry-picked, and the cited source was BLS.

Is there some part of "united States" that you don't understand?

I suckered you into proving my point....smaller populations perform better on average.

Increase the population of Germany by 4 times so that it matches that of the US, and this conversation wouldn't even be taking place, since Germany would be worse off.

Originally Posted by ambient

Germany has also had the kind of a jobs recovery that America only dreams of.

Germany ≠ America

When you grow up and get your degrees and have one of them in Economics, maybe you'll understand why recessions occur, and that all recessions are not created equal.....so the paths to "recovery" would not be equal either.

And for the record, you had a jobs recovery.

I'm still waiting for someone, anyone, to prove that there is a correlation between GDP and jobs, but then that would impossible, since there is no correlation.

I told you when you would have a recession, why you have a recession, and why those jobs were never coming back and why you should all get used to terms like "house-husband"..... and that you all need to start learning how to do "less with less," because families with two full-time wage-earners are not it any more.....and when you start raising taxes to pay for Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and Obamacare and all of the crap you have, you'll see even more jobs disappear.

Originally Posted by ambient

The irony is that they have done it to a significant degree by pushing anti-Keynesian policies....

Keynes was wrong...and will always be wrong. Keynes and his idiot supporters never understood why the Great Depression happened.....and even that wouldn't be so bad, except they are too damn stupid to understand that "lack of demand" is a symptom or a result stemming from a different causal factor.

Originally Posted by ambient

USA rations health care, too.

The US does not ration health care.

Rationing exists when...

1] Scarcity of physical resources and a perceived need for their allocation
2] Waiting lists and long waiting times
3] Denial of treatment
4] Discrimination between patients regardless of need

Those definitions stem from....

Allocating resources when their supply is limited (EIU Healthcare International)

The displacement of the interests of one group of patients by another (Spiers, J., The Realities of Rationing: ‘Priority Setting’ in the NHS, London)

How many of a given intervention will be provided, to whom, at what cost, and under what circumstances (Rationing Health Care, Brit. Medical Bull. 51)

Die kuenstliche Verknappung eines durchaus vorhandenen Angebots --- The artificial curtailment of supply when it is actually available (Cueni, T., Rationalisieren oder Rationieren?)

I'm sure you and others will seize upon "Denial of Treatment."

Before you do, understand, that is a flat out denial --- not cutting someone off, and that denial is not based directly on money.

Obamacare prohibits limits, but in the past, if someone consumed $750,000 in health care within a year, the health plan provider might cut them off......Germany and the other States would never have spent the $750,000 in the first place.

Originally Posted by ambient

It's just that different entities do the rationing here.

There is no rationing. How did you put it? Moving the goal-posts by redefining rationing to suit your agenda does make you look clever.

Originally Posted by ambient

For the 50M people who can't even get insurance in this nation, health care is rationed very drastically.

That is not rationing. Not having health insurance is not the same thing as not having health care and not the same thing as not having access to health care.

First, the 50 Million is myth.....go to the US Census Bureau and read their retraction on their claims.

Also......Obamacare does not exempt you from math:

On that thread, you will see that the questionnaire used by the NHIS never directly asks if someone is insured or not.

You can all download the questionnaire and see for yourself (that's why I post links)

Originally Posted by ambient

And in general, all those first-world nations accused of "rationing health care" experience lower costs scaled against GDP and have better healthcare outcomes. USA spends by far the most for mediocre outcomes compared against this first-world nation set. You can do some searches and find that they poll with more satisfaction about their healthcare system than Americans do about theirs.

Polls are irrelevant.

The Germans have never experienced anything other than their system, so they are hardly qualified to judge whether it is a good system or not.

I will let the United States Government debunk the GDP Myth...

"As personal income increases, people demand more and better goods and services, including health care. This means that holding other factors constant, as higher personal income increases the quantity and quality of care demanded, overall health care spending increases as well. GDP is a good indicator of the effect of increasing income on health care spending."

Source: United States Government General Accounting Office GAO-13-281 PPACA and the Long-Term Fiscal Outlook

Germany's GDP is about $3.4 TRILLION
Increase Germany's GDP to $15 TRILLION and the Germans will be spending the same, if not more than the US.

Why do you think I included Romania?

Romania's GDP is like $165 Billion.

No kidding.

Wealth creates Affluence which drives the cost of health care. Affluence includes things like silicone Butt Implants, Breast Implants, Botox treatments, tummy tucks, nose jobs, face lifts, butt lifts, and lap bands and other crap.... and yes, Virginia, that's all part of "health care."

Health care expenditures in the US include elective cosmetic surgeries.

Subtract the cost of elective cosmetic procedures and then compare US health care expenditures to other less affluent States and get back to us.


One other thing.....



....if Euro-States are spending more money on Social Services related to health care than the US, then how is health care in Euro-States cheaper or more affordable?

Let's go back to the EuroStat data from the European Commission of the European Union....

UNIT Euro per inhabitant
ICHA_HF General government

Germany .......2,537.44
United States....... 2,657.86

So, if Germany is spending $2 on social services related to health care for every $1 spent on health care, while the US spends $0.55..........

....then the total amount spent by

...Germany........is 7,611 per person
...US................is 4,068 per person


Ooops.

So, tell us all again how Germany spends less than the US?


Rebutting...

Mircea