DerDestroyer posted:

The irony is that quality is taking a back seat to price these days which in the end means it's a lose lose scenario for the consumer. Yes you pay less but you also lose your job and you get a piece of poo poo product that turns out to be vastly inferior to the one you had before it.

Landsknecht posted:

Nobody under a certain age here really seems to give a drat about quality or place of origin anymore though. You see all the older people going out to local farmers markets and spending lots of money on local stuff, where as pretty much every working class middle aged and younger person buys everything at aldi so they can have more money for various luxuries. You can even see it with cars, a lot of people are willing to go for a Skoda because it costs a few thousand euro less than VW, never mind the fact that you aren't (theoretically) supporting the local (German) economy. Working class people have been bitten by the consumerist bug, and they'll sacrifice quality/local economy just so they can personally have more new poo poo.

DerDestroyer posted:

Banning the sale of said product within the country unless it's made in the country with workers hired from within the country. Or adding a levy for every profit made on a product built outside the country.

az posted:

My favorite planned economy story is the chandelier industry in <some town i forgot>. They got orders to increase their output, and their output was measured in kilos. One clever idea later they used extra lead they had lying around to put on more weight to meet their new quota.

The new chandeliers were so heavy they fell from the ceiling.

ArchangeI posted:

Welcome to the 17th century. You are proposing mercantilism in its purest form.

DerDestroyer posted:

I'm proposing governments worry about keeping their citizens employed because they're creating third world ghettos in 1st world paradise while funneling those jobs and the money somewhere else. If that's the 17th century then so be it. Globalization was a terrible idea to start with and it only makes sense if you're a CEO of some big name company and you want to maximize your margins. At the end of the day the only people who really benefit from it are rich people.

If you want to return to the 19t century, be my guest because that's what happening. We're recreating the problems the working class had in the 19th century bit by bit so it's not like what's currently happening is a solution either.

Perestroika posted:

Except you haven't unmasked anything. I've read back through all of your posts in this thread to be certain, and literally your only argument is that there is an unbroken line from the SED to die Linke. The entire rest of your posts on this topic consists of you harping on what you consider inherent evils of socialism (which you seem to equate with Stalinism). Oh, and also a bunch of stuff on the bad things Lenin did for the sole reason that one poster happens to use his name.

dreamin' posted:

You're a genius! Just a short question: How much of the sales of a German company happens inside Germany, what do you think? Let's take the good German cars from VW for example that have been quoted as patriotically superior to the cheaper Skoda cars?


"Die Marke Volkswagen Pkw hat ihre Auslieferungen in den ersten drei Quartalen dieses Jahres weiter gesteigert und 3,81 (Januar – September 2010: 3,39; +12,3 Prozent) Millionen Fahrzeuge ausgeliefert. [...] So verkaufte die Marke in der Region Asien / Pazifik von Januar bis September 1,44 (1,27; +13,9 Prozent) Millionen Fahrzeuge. [...] In Nordamerika übergab Volkswagen Pkw bis September 362.000 (296.200; +22,2 Prozent) Fahrzeuge an Kunden. Vor allem der Jetta und der neue Passat sorgten im September für deutliche Zuwächse. In der Region Südamerika wurden im gleichen Zeitraum 579.400 (546.400) Fahrzeuge ausgeliefert und damit ein Plus von 6,1 Prozent erreicht. [...] In Europa steigerte Volkswagen Pkw seine Fahrzeugauslieferungen und händigte in den ersten neun Monaten des Jahres 1,30 (1,18; +9,9 Prozent) Millionen Modelle an Kunden aus. [...] Im Heimatmarkt Deutschland wurden mit 449.600 (408.300) Fahrzeugen 10,1 Prozent mehr Volkswagen ausgeliefert."

https://www.volkswagen-media-servic...ntlichkeit.html

So, of 3.81 million sold units in the last quarter, 449600 have been sold in Germany. I am sure it would benefit the German working class immensely if we'd remove import of products whenever we have a German product competing with it. Because I am sure the other 99% of the globe would certainly not return the favour in any way and keep importing our fantastic German quality wares.

Germany is dependant on our export business. What you're recommending is either incredibly naive, or simply driven by fear of foreign devils taking R jobs and R money

DerDestroyer posted:

Volkswagen! Designed in Germany, built in Timbuktu. Meanwhile another ten thousand people find themselves on Hartz_IV and 1 Euro jobs.

elbkaida posted:

Uh I think you are going a bit far with your point, what you just said could basically be printed on a NPD poster.

Hungry Gerbil posted:

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_Einkommensteuer

Paul Pot posted:

I believe there's still a market for skilled 1st world factory labor, you just have to find the right niche. Infineon manufacturing chips in Germany doesn't make sense to me, luxury vehicles made in Germany does.

I don't think German luxury cars (I'm counting "Volkswagens" like the Passat as well) are getting outsourced more than they did 10 years ago simply because consumers noticed the quality going down and that started to hurt the brands (Mercedes being the worst offender). The exception are SUVs since the US are by far the largest market and Americans are notoriously dense consumers anyway.

Most people don't buy a luxury sedan solely to show off, they at least appreciate the fact that it was built by people whose dictionary contains a word like "Spaltmaß" as opposed to having it built by Bill & Bob or Jesus & Carlos who spent most of their careers sticking random oddly fitting pieces of plastic in a Chevy dashboard and calling it an interior.

Paul Pot posted:

Car derail:

They've always been outdated poo poo compared to the European model, but that's why I singled out American consumers as being particularly dense. An American will willingly choose a similarly powered 5 year old oversized V6/V8 engine over a high tech state of the art alternative that consumes 50% less petrol to avoid paying "premium" at the gas station. He also won't know how a quality interior is supposed to look like, not to mention buy a big rear end petrol-binging truck that offers less torque because diesel is "smelly".

BMW has gone from manufacturing the Z3 in the US to building their newer models like the 1-series, Z4 and X1 in Germany. I'm sure that would've been cheaper to do so in Romania.

DerDestroyer posted:

Things about Outsourcing

hankor posted:

The general problem you seem to have with outsourcing is that you seem to think it's a never-ending process, complete companies wander off and whenever a cheaper opportunity arises they migrate again.

That's not true, usually the only thing that get's outsourced is menial labour. Sure it sucks for the person that's loosing his job but it would not only be stupid by the company it would be completely irresponsible towards the stakeholders (stake, not share).

Minimizing costs always seems like a greedy thing but especially for smaller and medium sized companies it's the difference between make or break. Sure 100 people loose their jobs so 20 engineers and 30 secretaries can keep their job that sounds bad at first sight but the alternative would be that all 150 of them loose their job.

Also you seem to ignore public opinion, for every trend there is a contra trend. For every gently caress head that only looks for the cheapest product (that usually doesn't give you a good margin to begin with) there is an informed consumer that looks for quality/sustainability/origin. If a company only chases after the cheapest labour people will notice and at least some of them will react to that.

Take Siemens for example, they tried to outsource the assembly of their fancy high end protection devices (things that keep your generators and transformers from exploding) to China, turns out the quality took quite a hit (let's paint this circuit board in a thick coat of paint so we can market it as outdoor ready)) and competent troubleshooting (it's not working? gently caress if we know let's send it around the half globe) was nonexistent, currently they are in the process of finding easier things to do for their Chinese partners and reestablishing production lines in Germany.

I agree that too often outsourcing is seen as a thing you do just because everybody else does it, but quite a few companies got a bloody nose especially in Asia, not only because the market hosed them but because they overestimated the level of skill and care found in your average Chinese migrant worker. The big boom is over, companies are coming to their senses and realize that cheap labour often comes with a price.

Einbauschrank posted:

First you suggest that I equate the evils of Socialism with Stalinism, the next sentence you make nonsense of your claim by accusing me of pointing towards the evils done by Lenin. Don't you think that Lenin, the founder of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics might be considered a Socialist or do you think that he wasn't a criminal responsible for the death of thousands and the installation of a system even more repressive and deadly than the one he overthrew? I am just asking because either you've forgotten about Stalin the moment you wrote about Lenin or you somehow don't connect the inherent evils of Socialism to Lenin - which would be quite extraordinary.

And don't you consider it oxymoronic if somebody defends Socialism against my accusations of being evil and names himself after a ruthless Socialist dictator?
It is this kind of blindness that leaves me flabbergasted. And that I find quite demasking, by the way.

PaulPot posted:

I believe there's still a market for skilled 1st world factory labor, you just have to find the right niche. Infineon manufacturing chips in Germany doesn't make sense to me, luxury vehicles made in Germany does.

Perestroika posted:

I'm saying that the evils commited by someone in the name of an ideology do not inherently worsen that ideology. Be that as it may, I was originally pointing out that neither Lenin nor the crimes he commited have much to do with the subject that was originally discussed: Whether die Linke could be considered a danger to democracy. Whatever people name themselves after (on these forums of all places) is simply not pertinent to the discussion. The way you keep sticking to that is an ad hominem in its purest form.

DerDestroyer posted:

niethan posted:

Why are nationalities and national borders and nations so important to you?

niethan posted:

Why are nationalities and national borders and nations so important to you?

Enigma89 posted:

I don't want to derail the current discussion but I did have a question. What has the SPD been proposing since to do differently with the Euro-zone crisis.

xf86enodev posted:

And let's please not forget the years leading up to 1989. I would really like to know how you imagine that would have gone down if Czechoslovakia, Austria and the FRG had just closed their borders because all those stinking Ossis were just out to take their jerbs.

flavor posted:

Czechoslovakia was a Western country before 1989 now?

elwood posted:

Doesn't really help his argument though does it?

quote:

With Eurozone banks in the spotlight one of the large holes in the Euro Area has been shown to be the absence of institutions to tend to the recapitalisation and restructuring of banks, and of triage and an orderly resolution process. Three rounds of stress testing, in September 2009, July 2010, and July 2011, were seen as woeful. The difficulties of resolving the banking system’s weaknesses are underscored by the significance of the large role of banks in the European credit system, in contrast, say, to the US where capital markets figure more strongly, and by the close relations between banking systems and political elites in much of the Eurozone.

The former emphasises the need for some sort of federal structure to supervise and implement financial stability policies. The latter reminds us that this can only be done by taking supervisory, deposit protection, and resolution authority power away from sovereigns, and sovereignty from national banking policies.

Further, the Eurozone, as it is, can’t really endure without some form of fiscal union. Put another way, the Eurozone has to integrate much more deeply, or disintegrate. The rudiments of a governance system are of course already present in the form of the Commission, the ECB, the European Investment Bank, andthe EFSF (soon to become the European Stability Mechanism) - and the crisis has increased the drift towards more sovereign guarantees, stronger mutual provision of liquidity, and larger NCB settlement balances.

But real fiscal integration means the Eurozone will have to abandon the no bail-out rule, and adopt jointly and severally issued E-Bonds, cross-guaranteeing all member states debt issuance, in order to wrap any debate about national sovereign debt. It means as Jean Claude Trichet has argued, a European Treasury and Finance Minister. The European Council might have to be given veto power, or at least much stronger authority over national Treasuries, and budget planning and execution

This logical outcome of the Euro crisis, as discussed above, has rolled off the keyboard with greatest of ease. But the battle between fiscal and banking integration on the one hand, and the handing over of significant sovereign power to third-party institutions on the other, is altogether different. It will require changes to the European Treaties, which will have to be approved by all members, and in some, by referendum. Quite how this battle will go is anyone’s guess, but in current circumstances, the popular support needed for radicalc hanges to the Treaties appears to be slim, even as leaders, not least in Germany, profess the importance. The German Constitutional Court has already decreed this year that no authority can usurp the fiscal sovereignty of the Bundestag. In other words, Germany will write cheques, even under duress, to other sovereigns, but will not surrender any such obligation on a continuing basis to a third party

Ardennes posted:

Yeah, I don't think it is going to blow over, someone is going to have to pay that all the accumulating debt.

In addition, "fiscal union" is just a weaselly way of saying "forced austerity measures", basically the EU is going to force governments to gut their societies in order to pay down loans they will never pay off.

It is a real loving mess.

unixbeard posted:

This still leaves the underlying problem that Greece is broke and there is nothing anyone else can do about it. Why is greece broke? Cause it spent too much and didn't collect its taxes. It needs to be reformed.

Reform doesn't have to be about austerity (which imo is the completely wrong way to approach it). Say Italy has its own "oops" moment. No-one wants to give a guy like Berlusconi a blank cheque without the power to actually enforce real reforms. Giving an EU wide authority power to intervene in a sovereign nations fiscal policy is a big, big step, and likely unconstitutional in German at least. I wouldn't say public sentiment within the eurozone is particularly warm.

I don't personally see how a fiscal union could happen but I don't personally see how anyone thought the euro could work without it. This leads me to believe this is all part of the plan, they just needed some crisis to force the issue, and a crisis was pretty much inevitable. I tend to be a bit paranoid though.

unixbeard posted:

Well this is what they are hoping to see. Greece writes down it's debt 50% (i.e. saying the bonds you have now are only worth 50% of what we said they were), which will cause a confidence crisis in the EU banking system, cause that's where a lot of the Greek debt is. You add in EU banks lending to one another and yeah it gets messy.

Enter some EU fiscal authority that says "We will prop up any bank that fails, so dont worry about that Greece thing its really business as usual". And there is a good chance that would solve the immediate crisis, if such an authority existed (it doesn't, yet). Greece wouldn't have its huge crippling debts, the banking system wouldn't collapse, and everything would almost be a-ok.

This still leaves the underlying problem that Greece is broke and there is nothing anyone else can do about it. Why is greece broke? Cause it spent too much and didn't collect its taxes. It needs to be reformed.

Reform doesn't have to be about austerity (which imo is the completely wrong way to approach it). Say Italy has its own "oops" moment. No-one wants to give a guy like Berlusconi a blank cheque without the power to actually enforce real reforms. Giving an EU wide authority power to intervene in a sovereign nations fiscal policy is a big, big step, and likely unconstitutional in German at least. I wouldn't say public sentiment within the eurozone is particularly warm.

I don't personally see how a fiscal union could happen but I don't personally see how anyone thought the euro could work without it. This leads me to believe this is all part of the plan, they just needed some crisis to force the issue, and a crisis was pretty much inevitable. I tend to be a bit paranoid though.

Ardennes posted:

People blame the "little people" in Greece cheating on their taxes, when Greece already has a High VAT and limited wages, how much money do you expect average Greek people to be able to pay?

The real reason Greece is hosed up isn't because of "the little people" cheating, it is the big guys cheating, and pissing away money on monuments to themselves like the Olympics or Greek's ridiculously large military for a country of its size.

The same is going to happen all across Europe, and eventually probably even to Germany at some point.