Germany has no national idea, they have no reason why an average burger should work his/her ass off competing with Chinese/American/Indian scientists and working 80 hr/week on cutting edge research.
Germans are smart and capable, but the German lifestyle is not for "super high tech" industry
The people I know that do cutting-edge research mostly do it because it's fun. That might be hard to imagine, but if you have great (government-funded) local hackerspaces where you can meet others, talk to them and built stuff together, it becomes a viable free-time activity. For example, I can schedule a Prusa (FDM) / Form (SLA) / Fuse (SLS) print job remotely and then quickly walk there to pick it up. If I need custom sheet metal or wood, I'll bring a USB stick with the DXF and then walk. That kind of infrastructure massively cuts down on iteration times. Plus it's great to get feedback in-person by other tinkerers when you pick things up.
That's all good and well, but the very time you would try to start selling your tinkering, or, God forbid, hire somebody - that's where the hell begins.
Being a self-employed is a living hell in Germany, as well as receiving any money outside of employment. Esp. if money are small (but > than hobby money, 500 euro iirc) and don't justify the hurdle of dealing with Finanzamt, tax pre-payment, possible regulations with upfront Formulars etc.
you need an idea in order to mobilize the energy of the population.
German passionary patriotism has been artificially subverted and shut down, and the nation instead has been flooded with non-Germanic elements, thus completely destroying the very definition of German.
Ask any German on the street, and nobody will be able to answer: What defines being a German, who are the Germans, what is their history, and what awaits German people in the future.
Complete void of any ideology, national idea, any energy that could propel the nation in the great leap forward.
> German passionary patriotism has been artificially subverted and shut down, and the nation instead has been flooded with non-Germanic elements, thus completely destroying the very definition of German.
> Ask any German on the street, and nobody will be able to answer: What defines being a German, who are the Germans, what is their history, and what awaits German people in the future.
I don't think so, you will meet plently people that will be able to tell you about Germany's history, or at least recent history. And what defines being German, you might get different answers, but is that so bad, and where wouldn't you? Hasn't multiculturalism just become a big part of Germany's identity, and not destroyed it as you claim? Döner just as the simplest example.
If you ever visited America, it would immediately strike you that no Americans, rich or poor, black or white, are starving. Frankly, we could all use a little more starving.
In 2023...13.5 percent (18.0 million households) were food insecure. Food-insecure households (those with low and very low food security) had difficulty at some time during the year providing enough food for all their members because of a lack of resources...5.1 percent of U.S. households (6.8 million households) had very low food security...
Coincidentally, the collection of such detailed and useful data is at risk from the indiscriminate USDA firings.
So it's a totally subjective metric which measures whether anyone claims to have "had difficulty" buying food at least once during a calendar year. Not that they didn't get enough food--just that they had to exert effort to get it.
This is not evidence that people are going hungry, though it is clearly designed to give that impression.
Feeding America estimates more than 50 million people received charitable food assistance sometime in 2023
I'm guessing you'll respond that charities that feed people have a vested interest and are not to be trusted... (yes, I'm aware of cases of charities committing fraud; no there is no evidence that is the norm). Probably again without presenting data to support your assertion that there are no Americans who go hungry.
I'm curious what actually obtainable data you would accept as a counterfactual to your statement/belief?
Receiving charitable food assistance doesn't mean that you're starving, or even that you would be starving without that assistance. What sort of data would you accept to prove that americans are not starving?
Above I've already pointed to TWO types of data that bear on food insecurity in the US, and provided citations:
1. USDA data on food insecurity
2. Food bank usage data
If you wanted to understand the extremes of food insecurity, than data on malnutrition related deaths in the US would also apply:
• Mostafa, N., Sayed, A., Rashad, O. et al. Malnutrition-related mortality trends in older adults in the United States from 1999 to 2020. BMC Med 21, 421 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-023-03143-8
From the paper above -- "Despite some initial decrements in malnutrition mortality among older adults in the U.S., the uptrend from 2013 to 2020 nullified all established progress. The end result is that malnutrition mortality rates represent a historical high...Effective interventions are strongly needed. Such interventions should aim to ensure food security and early detection and remedy of malnutrition among older adults..."
If you wanted to explore malnutrition related deaths for other groups / time periods you could query the CDC Wonder data base using ICD-10 Codes E40 – E46 (as was done in the paper cited above; see also https://www.icd10data.com/ICD10CM/Codes/E00-E89/E40-E46).
I did the query for 2023 and found were >22,000 malnutrition related deaths recorded by the CDC.
If this number went down significantly I would see that as evidence of a decrease in malnutrition in the US. If this number was near zero I would accept your assertion that no/few Americans are starving.
Given the preponderance of data, the notion that one could argue with a straight face that food insecurity in the US is of no concern seems shocking to me.
You seem to have lost the thread of the argument. The original comment was
> no Americans, rich or poor, black or white, are starving. Frankly, we could all use a little more starving.
You responding by providing evidence that some people had difficulty, at least once per year, in putting food on the table. This in no way contradicts the original claim, as having difficulty doing a thing is not synonymous with being unable to do a thing.
> Here's collaborating trends for the same calendar year
This shows that people are getting food. As presented, this is not evidence that people are going hungry.
> I'm curious what actually obtainable data you would accept as a counterfactual to your statement/belief?
If you want to contradict the claim that Americans aren't starving, you would want to provide evidence that Americans are starving.
I take it you missed / didn't read the response immediately above yours where I cited data on malnutrition related deaths in the US?
• Mostafa, N., Sayed, A., Rashad, O. et al. Malnutrition-related mortality trends in older adults in the United States from 1999 to 2020. BMC Med 21, 421 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-023-03143-8
The article about elderly people who struggle to absorb nutrition?
> Of these deaths, 34.3% took place inside medical facilities, 30.2% inside nursing homes/long-term care facilities, and 25.6% inside the descendant’s home.
Is America is so broke that we can't feed people in hospitals and nursing homes? Obviously not. These are people whose bodies are shutting down due to told age, not people who are being neglected by society.
In an attempt to show that people are starving due to poverty, you've instead shown that we're expending many, many times the cost of feeding them in an attempt to keep them alive. No doubt you're incapable of admitting that this is directly contradictory to the spirit of your thesis.
But for the record here's the breakdown of malnutrition related mortality (ICD codes E40-E46) by 5 year age blocks as reported by the CDC for 2023. First field is age range, 2nd field is total number of deaths attributed to ICD codes related to malnutrition:
25-29 years, 17
30-34 years, 22
35-39 years, 40
40-44 years, 71
45-49 years, 119
50-54 years, 197
55-59 years, 323
60-64 years, 651
65-69 years, 1112
70-74 years, 1722
75-79 years, 2507
80-84 years, 3321
85-89 years, 4147
90-94 years, 4362
95-99 years, 2821
100+ years, 824
Total 22284
ICD classifications aren't perfect but they are standardized. Here's the CDCs description of where this data comes from:
The Underlying Cause of Death database contains mortality and population counts for all U.S. counties. Data are based on death certificates for U.S. residents. Each death certificate identifies a single underlying cause of death and demographic data....
I would say Germany needs to redefine what patriotism is.
It currently has too many dual passport holders, and people with dual loyalties who do not put the long-term interests of Germany first, but rather consider Germany only as a source of welfare to extract and transfer elsewhere
The erosion of a shared German culture for decades leaves us with the result of having no national identity. Make no mistake, I'm not alluding to purism of the natives one bit. On the contrary, I would love for immigrants to be proud to be part of Germany.
In the US, immigrants make a point of showing their patriotism by immersing themselves into American culture. We don't have a similar cultural phenomenon in Germany.
> consider Germany only as a source of welfare to extract and transfer elsewhere
You would be surprised how many natives share this viewpoint. This can only work for so long before something collapses...
Sounds like you kinda just want an excuse to vote AfD without pointing to an element of their policy platform you think the rest of us should support too.
(Just for the record I don't vote AfD. I do like being German and I like what little culture we have left. You can be patriotic and at the same time left leaning.)
Gruß aus Frankfurt, you really couldn't have proven his point any better if you tried.
Some countries are approximately 50% national flag by surface area, fist pumping and chanting the country's name at every opportunity despite being run by people making Nazi salutes, but "it's okay to like your country's culture" is instantly equated with Nazism? Come on man...
I agree with your comment. It's also funny and sad to see the political and mental disconnect in this topic. Now that we need more military, people are surprised that there is no one who wants to defend a country that's just an arbitrary collection of people with no shared identity.
Germany is actively killing innovation. I propose to stop for starters.
Tho when the median voter is 55 and national motto is "that's how it was always done" and "Pensions are secure" - I don't put much hope. I still remember the outcry when the digital health cards were introduced.
Not sure how Germany is actively killing innovation to be honest.
Your other points are more or less true, I just like to think that people complain a lot and media obviously makes it worse.
Digital health cards, online tax declaration, etc. These things did happen. People complained, but these decisions were not reverted. That's the most important.
> Not sure how Germany is actively killing innovation to be honest
By many things at once: Datenschutz, (over- and premature) regulations, bureaucracy, laws favoring old ways (e.g. broadcasting licenses for streamers), active sabotage from workers who don't want to learn things (and can't be fired) etc.
But all stems from risk averseness and active unwillingness to learn new ways.
As you say, (some) things did happened, but way too slow and way too little. Compared to its peers or especially developing countries German Digitalisierung is a joke, a not so funny one.
Germans are smart and capable, but the German lifestyle is not for "super high tech" industry