Another of your urban myths. Joining the monetary union came free of choice for every individual European country. That is why some choose not to join and others did. Each country fairly and thoroughly evaluated the merits of joining. Nobody joined who thought they would lose out. 2 main facts speak against your assertion: One is that Germany has for decades been the largest net payer into the European pot. Suggesting Germany unfairly benefited from the monetary union and Euro fix is hilarious in light of the fact that Greek and Spanish, Portuguese citizen received huge "welfare transfer payments" from Germany. Secondly, if Germany fixed into an advantageous currency peg then domestic consumers would have been worse off paying more for imports, something no single statistic backs up. Furthermore, after the fix the German economy should have performed markedly better which it did not. All the above have been studied abundantly and countless papers have been released into the public that prove that Germany did not in fact benefit from an unfair exchange peg. In fact Germany has always paid in more than the benefits it extracted from a fix to the Euro. You are the top myth mongerer on this website. And may I point you to one specific statistic that calculated purchasing power before and after the fix? German cars cost more or less the exact same for British or Spanish consumers than before the fix. So did bread and butter for German consumers. Those were all expressed in purchasing power, essentially expressing how many hours one had to work to earn a car or other consumable items.
But you know what Tsing Tao? I rest tight in the knowledge that German is the world's best performing overall economy, when you score each and every aspect of society such as welfare system, health care, education, pension coverage, earnings power, efficiency, ecological advances, happiness, tax rates, economic growth, environmental cleanliness, amount of holidays for workers, safety, rule of law, enforceability of law, can you come up with another country that would score higher than Germany? Please point me to it if you might. I hope you do not include city states such as Monaco or Lichtenstein, cities where its citizens are so bored they only spend 1/4 of the year at their home. You can bicker as much about Germany as you like and you can come up with as many weird accusations of unfair currency fixes as you like, and you can pull out historical events as much as you like: Fact remains, the social market economic system (yes, left, liberal, social, you like those terms right?) works wonders for Germany and its citizens are happy and efficient and productive and look forward to their 4-5 weeks of annual holidays that they happily spend everywhere inside and outside of Germany while hosts consider German tourists some of the friendliest and respectful in the world. (and please do not make me vomit by bringing up a handful of sex tourists in Thailand or the Philippines, of which there are many more Americans and Aussies than Germans). You can try to beat your anti-German drums as much as you like, honestly, I only smirk because if we are honest we all have to admit that the US is a total mess right now in almost every aspect. But hey, Americans have a great sense of humor that is definitely a gene Germans were not born with. I love American stand up comedy, one of the most tragic losses to the comedian world was the passing of Robin Williams. P.S. Did I forget to mention that in one aspect the US is an awesome place to live? If you are a Jewish billionaire then truly the US is the land of honey and fruits bigger than America's biggest black balls. A country where you can bend the rules and dig all the loopholes you please with a little of green grease. It is an awesome place where all your same-race buddies are around that supply you with endless amounts of the best legal advice and doctors that care for your well-being for a substantial sum of money but hey, why would you give a shit, you are billionaire after all; billionaire on paper at that but who gives a damn, as long as the plebs and rednecks buy into the media hype that you asked your buddies to support you with in your "endeavor"; after all its practically all "family"!!! This is the only country where a chat app sells for 20 billion and a company that created a home blood test extraction kit is valued at 9 billion. No wonder Israel has to work so hard to get its children back into the promised land after so many decided to linger in the US. America is in a descent unless you are part of the top 1-2% and even those at some point will see their paper wealth cut in half or even less or simply move their wealth elsewhere. The same future awaits the US than the pain the UK had to go through when it had to accept that it was losing its grip on power and influence. The US will play not even a secondary role in Asia in a few years anymore. The panic of policy makers and regulators you can already sense now: Making a small time punter in London's middle class responsible for the flash crash? American regulators can be happy they face the UK. Every other country would have kicked their nuts so hard they would be singing soprano for the rest of their lives.
Depends on everyone's buy in, their stake in it. We have a very diverse workforce at my company, and it's succeeding quite admirably.
not to worry, he'll have another couple of drinks and smugly pontificate about some more Marxist horseshit...
I was saying to someone yesterday that we may be looking at the modern equivalent of the Slave Rebellion (e.g., 1811). Only this time, the "slaves" can purchase weapons without a license and they're entitled to open carry. Better than television.