Zaleukos
Bum
- Joined
- November 4, 2006
- Messages
- 2,013
Germany can sell things easier in Europe with a common currency. That's true,
but the average german tax-payer has nothing from this, if he has to subsidize other countries for years, so that Germany can sell goods to them.
Besides the biggest growing markets are not in Europe, they are in China and India.
Germany is NOT a strong economy because of the Euro, Germany is a strong economy because:
1) we produce high price quality products
2) we have very strong labor unions that cooperate with industry managers
3) since 1990 we exchange wage sacrifices for job security
4) we do everything to produce more efficiently than everybody else
5) we seek price stability, social and fiscal justice
Economic growth based on debts is often a short time party and at the same time a crime against our childeren.
I certainly give you that Germany has enjoyed a sound economic regime at least since Schröder's reforms (Harz?), but that isnt the whole picture.
As one of the worlds biggest exporters Germany benefitted greatly from
- the Euro being weaker visavi the rest of the world's currencies than the DM would have been.
- more sales to the European countries whose purchasing power went up due to the Euro (for instance Greece).
Until 2009 or so the very structural deficiencies of the Euro (that it was too weak for Germany and too strong for the PIIGS) helped the German economy a lot. In some ways the situation is similar to that of China, which also has been helped by an artificially weak currency. This goes for both the government and the tax payers (imagine how well Germany would do without it's export sector).
- Joined
- Nov 4, 2006
- Messages
- 2,013