Actually I agree that Germany manufactures high quality products and has solid economic output. The point that I am making is that the reason all of my in-laws never attended a four year university in Germany in the 1960s is because only 4% of their high school class went on to a four year college. Most high school students were steered to trade school - where upon graduation they worked in manufacturing (e.g. my father-in-law is a machinist). Even today there are many Germans that come over to the U.S. for a 4 year university education. I expect the current acceptance rate at German Universities now accounts for more than 4% of high school classes, but is still only a fraction of the U.S. students who go on to a four year college degree. But let me point out that having "free" university education is not meaningful if only a small fraction of students can attend. In the U.S. any student can pay and attend some type of four year university.
Best Countries to Raise Your Children http://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/family/best-countries-to-raise-your-kids/ss-BBaYmRX#image=1 United States is number 6. Only two European countries are on the list; the U.K. and Netherlands. Most European countries including Germany don't make the list.
1) High cost of Childcare: This is about labor costs. Hiring an employee in the US is extremely expensive because of Democratic policies. What they did was arrange for these taxes to be paid by the employer so that they do not appear on the employees paycheck. But the effect is the same. An employee in the US costs a lot more than the small amount the employee collects. And the new healthcare law has made this even worse. 2) Stagnant Wages Combined with Ever-Increasing Cost of Living: The real problem for low wages in the US is competition. The reason Europe has much higher wages for relatively unskilled labor (fast food worker for instance) is that they have a lot smaller population that is unskilled. Raising the number of unskilled workers in the US suppresses wages. The Democratic party is all about bringing in as many unskilled laborers as they can. This suppresses wages. 3) Public Education is Struggling and Private Schools are Unaffordable: The big problem with the cost of public education in the US are public sector unions. These prevent lousy teachers from being fired and they raise costs for all. In addition, their unions support bloated administration costs. They've make it illegal to run education cheaply. Of course the public sector unions are a pure Democratic machine. 4) Astronomical College Tuition: College tuition in the US used to be subsidized and quite cheap. Since then the usual (partisan democratic) public sector unions have driven up college costs by reducing the working load for professors. In addition, the government subsidizes tuition loans and the result is that colleges can charge whatever they like to students (who are too naive to realize how deep the hole they are digging is). But there is another facet to this; these college loans will be paid off in the fairly distant future. We've been getting along with very little inflation for a long time. My guess is that inflation is coming back and these loans will be easier to repay than they seem now. 5) The High Cost of Healthcare: The Democrats created Obamacare without a single Republican vote. The effect has been to explode the costs of healthcare for middle income Americans. And the public knows exactly where to blame these costs, hence the recent election difficulties for the Democrats. In addition to ruining a system that was working, the Democrats are in the back pocket of the trial lawyers and the trial lawyers support a system where huge amounts of money are extracted from doctors (and therefore from the consumers of health care through higher costs) and put into the pockets of lawyers. 6) The Decline of Organized Labor: This decline is largely due to organized labor over pricing labor. Jobs are moving to states where organized labor is less pervasive. The states that the Democratic party controls are sliding into economic ruin while the Republican run states are thriving and the decline of organized labor is a part of this. If organized labor had not been so greedy, they would not be in decline. And of course Organized Labor is largely (but not completely) an institution of the Democrat Party. 7) US Still Lags Behind in Paid Maternity Leave: Okay, on this, the Democrats are not responsible, but paid maternity leave is not a problem. What's a problem is when the bread winner for the family can't earn enough money to support a family. Instead, his pregnant wife has to work and that is a crime. Even now the Democrats are trying to push through legislation to require "equal pay for equal work" which sounds nice but which translates as "more money for women and less money for men". Instead of comparing the same jobs only, the objective here is to require that work which is primarily done by women be paid the same as work that is primarily done by men. For example, they will try to make Nursing wages (mostly women) equal to Engineering wages (mostly men). This is another give away program for one of their constituencies but the result is to make it even more difficult for a father to support a family. The net effect will be to give yet another method for the (very Democratic) trial lawyers to extort money from business and thereby make the US even less competitive. 8) Stagnant Minimum Wage: The Democrats are bringing in as much unskilled labor into the US as they can (in the expectation that they will be allowed to vote and that they will vote for Democrats). Of course the effect of this huge number of additional unskilled workers is that unskilled pay decreases. In this environment, raising the minimum wage is a non starter. If it were raised, it would simply force companies to get rid of the newly expensive employees in favor of machinery or other cost changes. 9) Outsourcing and the Loss of American Manufacturing Jobs: Part of this is due to the high costs of hiring US employees and that is largely due to Democratic efforts at making business pay high costs. But it is also partly due to the fact that the rest of the world is catching up with the US in manufacturing technology. In addition, the rest of the world is getting wealthier and as they do, they need proportionately larger amounts of reserve currencies. And since the US is the world's leading reserve currency, it sucks money out of the US. This sucking of money has to be balanced by a sucking in of manufactured goods and this makes manufactured goods very cheap in the US. And of course this makes it difficult to make a profit manufacturing goods in the US.
Sorry but you are full of shit. Your 4% is ridiculous and German university education in most majors is considered world class And attracts many foreign students despite the steep language requirements. Admittedly some majors such as economics and finance sucks which is why I went on to study in the US. But most other core majors such as medicine or engineering or architecture are of much higher quality in Germany than an average American education. And hardly any Germans study in college in the US. It is extremely rare. And in the US not everyone can "just" pay and go to a 4 year university, which has been a core point of this thread. Idiot. On ignore.
Oh God there we go again. "A democratic polar bear has been sighted: let's snipe him and restore order." I will hold my breath for 2 more pages hoping we can start thinking about solutions. Your aiming at Democrats unfortunately means nothing whatsoever.
The above is a good example of a post consisting of empty rhetoric only. If you don't have any logic on your side, maybe you'll make an impression by banging on the table with your shoe! So let's move on to "solutions". Coming from Germany, we know what kind of solutions you guys are famous for. And yes, the Democratic party thinks northern Europe is the pinnacle of good government. Look at what's going on in Germany. Raising children is so cheap in Germany that their fertility rate has dropped to 1.43 (of the 2.1 needed to maintain a population). Want to know what happens to countries with really low fertility rates? Take a look at what's been going on in Japan. The difference is that Germany is importing workers. And how much of that fertility rate is from your imported workers? You're slowly going the same was as the Austro-Hungarian Empire and for roughly the same reasons. The problem with trying to run a multi-ethnic welfare state is that the political parties end up aligned along racial / ethnic lines. So long as the economy is good that's not so bad. It's when the economy goes in the tank that the National Socialists take over. Sure it's happening in the US also, but you guys go down the toilet a generation before we do. All that crap about police racism in the US isn't about police brutality. It's about getting more blacks hired as police officers. Now the European economy is not so good and nationalistic socialism is again growing powerful in Europe. Hey, this is nothing, wait until the next big economic downturn maybe 30 or 50 years from now! Look at the Greek example, that's where you're going. It should remind you of what happened in Germany during the last big depression. Your economic utopias are unstable. And what's more, this is not something that was discovered recently. Democracies have always imploded due to welfare state excesses. This has been going on for something like 2500 years.
Let's get to exact figures... This is the answer to the percentage of German 4-year university students in the 1960s and today. "Participation rates have increased dramatically, resulting in the massification of German higher education. In 1960’s, 8.7 percent of college-age individuals participated in higher education in West Germany, with students attending universities outnumbering those attending Fachhochschulen by more than 3 to 1. By the time of unification, the participation rate had more than tripled to more than 30 percent, with a slightly higher growth rate in the Fachhochschulen. German higher education is overwhelmingly public, consisting in 2007 of 103 universities (traditional, technical, comprehensive and special), 206 universities of applied sciences, or Fachhochschulen, 53 academies/colleges of art and music, 15 theological seminaries, and 6 teachers colleges. The overall growth and changes in sector composition is shown in Table 1. Private higher education, mainly universities of applied science and theological colleges, in 2007 totaled 70 institutions and enrolls approximately 20,000 students (Kaulisch and Huisman 2007)." http://gse.buffalo.edu/org/inthigheredfinance/files/Country_Profiles/Europe/Germany.pdf I have never been impolite to you and have only stated the facts but you can feel free to put me on ignore if you please. I have worked in Germany for Alcatel SEL in Stuttgart and at banks in Frankfurt for extensive periods of time. I also have spent quite a bit of time in Germany visiting the wife's extended family. I also was in East Germany after the wall fell during the week that the East Germans converted their Deutsche marks to West German marks. I also chopped out my own pieces of the Berlin Wall which I still have. So I am very familiar with your country. Let me politely correct you again about there being hardly any Germans who study college in the U.S. - we have a fairly large contingent of Germans at local universities in the Triangle area of North Carolina. A number are active in the "Little German Band" out of Raleigh - most of the leaders of this organization are local university professors. Some of the students have gone on to found start-ups that are based in Durham NC. The draw of the entrepreneurial environment brings many foreign students to the U.S. including Germans. Most major in Engineering, Medical, or Business. U.S. Universities offer loans, grants, work-studies, and scholarships that make most schools affordable for students of all economic backgrounds. In the U.S. 65.9 percent of 2013 high school graduates were enrolled in colleges or universities, a much higher percentage than Germany. I will admit that the rapidly rising cost of tuition and fees is a issue at U.S. universities, as well as the large amount of debt many students have taken on. I welcome suggestions for improving the situation, but recognize providing free university education for every student will bankrupt the U.S. quickly (I will also note that most European countries now charge University students tuition which is rapidly going up).
You again resort to country comparisons which nobody ever made a point about. You missed the thread topic, fail grade and on ignore.