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racerx said:
The two things that are hurting the most will only get worse unfortunately. Rising energy prices and cheap 3rd world labor (mainly india and china). These 2 forces will put extreme pressure on "western" standards of living until a solution is found.
Dependable alternate energy sources and a leveling of playing field between wages. Neither is likely anytime soon.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4287300/site/newsweek/
Tom
I don't worry as much about India and China as I worry about the future members of the European Community like Romania, Bulgaria, etc. Look at Hungary: Audi already produces the whole TT line in Hungary, not to speak about many many different engines and a lot more is planned for the future. Even look at Porsche: why is Boxster production in Finland. Why is Cayenne part production (Leipzig is actually more of an "assembly factory" in Bratislava?
I don't blame Porsche for their clever marketing but this is how things are now. Look at Seat and Opel, a lot of cars are produced in Poland, although Seat plans to return production back to Spain. There are even more examples.
We have a problem in Germany: we have highly qualified specialists on one side who do a great job and we have highly PAID workers on the other side who do a great job too but a job which could be done as great as they do for less money in other countries.
I see the following scenario to happen in Germany over the next 20 years: engineering, development, etc. will stay here because of highly educated and trained employees. Production and assembly processes however will be moved to cheaper countries to reduce cost.
I don't see anything good coming for the next few years but I still hope I'm wrong.
Another problem is also german mentality: instead of looking at ourselves and trying to improve our work and our skills, we're always looking at the others and how much THEY earn and what THEY do and of course this results in envy and "bad blood" as we say here.
A friend of mine who is coming from a wealthy family but he doesn't get too much money from his parents, he has to earn it himself, just opened a company for office tools.
During the opening celebration, another "friend" approached him and asked him pretty blunt: "what do you do with so much money, you already have so much and now you even get more?". And this guy was pretty serious. My friend is driving a 4 years old Audi A4 1.8 and he lives in an appartment with 3 rooms. He really isn't rich.
So if his own "friends" think that way, you can imagine what strangers think. This is very sad.
And the worst part: instead of making opening your own business much easier, the german state does everything possible to introduce more and more bureaucracy.
And as the "gap" between the strong middle class and the rich is getting bigger and bigger, problems arise which didn't exist before.
And the worst thing: there is no hope of things getting better. The political opposition doesn't offer any alternatives, at least not now. And the current government doesn't want to get involved in massive changes, not only because of the population but also because of their coalition partner, the Greens.
And last but not least, there is another major problem: the EC stability pact which doesn't allow Germany to make more debts than a certain percentage calculated on a specific formula. Now let me see: the german state can't lower taxes because they can't take more debt and a lot of money would be missing for other things like the health system, social system, state, police, army, etc. And they can't radically cut back on state expenses because this means to reduce a lot of benefits for the population and state workers.
Of course this is only a very simple explenation of what is happening but you get the point.
The future will surely be interesting over here but it won't be easy for many people. I just hope me and my wife can survive, I'm very used to my Porsches and I would hate it to have to sell them or not being able to buy one anymore. And of course I want a good life for the kids...
Well, maybe we should have moved to the US a few years ago as we have planned a long time ago. Now it is too late I guess.