European Politico-economics QA Mega-thread - Page 936

Berlin (Reuters) - Die Zahl der Amerikaner, die Deutsche werden wollen, ist seit der Wahl von US-Präsident Donald Trump erheblich gestiegen.

Im ersten Halbjahr 2017 wurden nach Zahlen des Auswärtigen Amtes bereits mehr Einbürgerungsanträge gestellt als im gesamten Jahr 2016. Seit November 2016 - dem Monat der Wahl Trumps zum US-Präsidenten - gehen die Zahlen nach oben. Hatten 2016 792 Amerikaner einen Einbürgerungsantrag gestellt, so waren es im ersten Halbjahr 2017 bereits 940. Im Juli und August kamen weitere 250 Anträge dazu.

On September 08 2017 00:36 Toadesstern wrote:
God damn it, first we have to deal with the refugees and now we have to deal with the Americans as well?


source: de.reuters.com

tl;dr ... or can't read: The number of applications for naturalization from US citizens wanting to become german citizens are apparently going up since Trump. It says that in all of 2016 they had 792 such applications while they already had 940 in the first half of 2017 alone. With another 250 from July and August not included in that number yet.

Don't take it too seriously. I'm having a laugh here more than anything else, thought it was funny and so I wanted to post it
Just be sure to not be this women when you leave the US:
+ Show Spoiler +

On September 07 2017 06:08 Ghostcom wrote:
It's the wrong people who have fewer children for your plan to work.

Similarly fairly obvious points of contention can be levied against most of the rest of your post which is overly simplistic in its description of rural vs sub-urban vs urban life.

(Take quality of life for example: It has pretty big geographic variations within Europe and things such as age and gender hugely impacts as well. Another point would be the higher life expectancy in rural areas compared to urban areas)

On September 08 2017 02:25 Nyxisto wrote:


If the first sentence is a soft attempt to say that stupid people outproduce smart people, that's actually a sort of myth. Birth rates converge between different demographics after a generation or two in most developed countries. In the West they've generally fallen to a point where we're close to /have already reached negative pop. growth.

I'd also question that rural life expectancy is higher than urban one. The only quick numbers I could find come from the US, where this is not the case. It would surprise me if this was different somewhere else. Rural life is generally more dangerous and can lack access to medical treatment and so forth.

https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2017/p0112-rural-death-risk.html

On September 08 2017 21:14 TheDwf wrote:
(a fairly obsessive topic for liberals; according to them, French bosses don't hire because “laying off people is too hard” and “workers are too protected”)

I've seen a lot of companies here get totally f'd when the 2010 crisis came because they simply couldn't readjust to the new reality.

On September 08 2017 23:39 r.Evo wrote:

The German approach to that for quite a few companies, at least to my knowledge, was trying to avoid firing people but massively cutting down hours short-term. Workers were fine with it because it beats being fired due to a crisis, companies were fine with it cause it allowed to cut costs short-term and it turned out pretty well in the long run because you could simply bump hours back up when the worst was over instead of having to re-hire sometimes qualified and well-trained personnel.

All in all, if I understand what Dwf provided correctly, the French reforms sound like measures that *will* bring unemployment down and push the economy forward but at the cost of higher inequality caused by weaker unions, weaker legal protections and companies getting bigger choices in who and when they hire and fire.

The main question is whether there are things that can combine both this and avoiding people getting stuck in temporary and low-paying jobs that end up causing more and more inequality.

Former Ukip leader Nigel Farage will appear at a rally held by Germany’s far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) inside a renaissance fortress in Berlin on Friday.

The South East England MEP will appear at the Spandau Citadel in the west of the German capital to talk about “developments in the European Union, Brexit, direct democracy” and “how to make the impossible possible”, according to AfD MEP Beatrix von Storch, who is hosting the event.

A granddaughter of Hitler’s finance minister, Lutz von Krosigk, von Storch is a leading member of the anti-immigrant party, which has realistic aspirations to enter Germany’s parliament for the first time in federal elections on 24 September.

Von Storch has been a member of Farage’s group in the European parliament since being expelled from the more mainstream European Conservatives and Reformists Group in April last year, following comments in which she called on European border guards to use firearms to deter illegal immigrants, including women and children. She later described the comments as a “tactical mistake”.

In her Facebook post, von Storch said that Farage had been so impressed with the AfD’s campaign that he had accepted “without hesitation” her invitation to appear at a campaign rally.

Protesters are planning to organise a counter-rally outside the Spandau Citadel while Farage is giving his speech, though by Thursday afternoon no official demonstration had yet been registered with Berlin police.

Farage has frequently criticised German dominance of decision-making in the European Union, while the AfD complains that the European Union dominates decision-making in Germany. In its manifesto, the party, which is currently polling between 8 and 11%, calls for a referendum on leaving the eurozone and for a British-style referendum on EU membership, unless the bloc returns to being “a federation of sovereign states”.

On the AfD’s social media channels a majority of users welcomed the announcement of Farage’s appearance, praising the former leader as a “straight-down-the-line” and “fiery” speaker. But some party members worried the event could backfire.

“Mr Farage was also the guy who bowed out after the referendum and left others to go through with Brexit,” said one user. “I will definitely vote for the AfD, because it’s the only alternative to our ‘government’. But is Nigel Farage really that helpful for our campaign given that the coverage is already so negative?”

In the run-up to Britain’s EU membership vote in June 2016, Farage said the then-US president, Barack Obama, had behaved “disgracefully” by warning on the economic consequences of a leave vote, and praised the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, who, he said, “maintained his silence throughout the whole campaign”.

Two months later Farage appeared at a rally with Donald Trump, where he stated: “I wouldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton if you paid me.”

On September 09 2017 00:15 warding wrote:

IMO the ideal is very flexible labour conditions and a very strong social state. What is really really bad for those at the bottom is long-term unemployment and a lack of employment opportunities, which are both strongly exacerbated by rigid labor market conditions. You want companies in your country to be as competitive and efficient as possible in order to maximize employment and tax revenue. The role of redistribution and social equity is for the government.

In her Facebook post, von Storch said that Farage had been so impressed with the AfD’s campaign that he had accepted “without hesitation” her invitation to appear at a campaign rally.

On September 09 2017 03:26 r.Evo wrote:

Agreed, that'd be the ideal. Let's hope the French manage such a reform without axing the social state like the Germans did. We kinda need an example to learn from at this point.

On September 09 2017 03:43 Nyxisto wrote:

That literally is what we did. Social expenditure is up by about 20% compared to the 80s/90s and at the level of ~2000.

https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=SOCX_AGG

We didn't "axe the welfare state", we simply reduced regulation of the labour market.

On September 09 2017 08:19 sc-darkness wrote:
Is Macron still losing support?

On September 09 2017 05:21 r.Evo wrote:

Meanwhile overall inequality is up and 20% of German youth live under the poverty line, also a record high. The percentage of people living in poverty also increased twofold since the early 2000s.

Another amusing indicator comes up when you compare international unemployment rates (here working even 1h per month counts as employed) with German national unemployment rates. Germany right now gets 3.9% in international comparisons compared to the current official German number of 5.7%. In practice that means that for every 2 people who are completely unemployed there is 1 person who has so little work that they're effectively unemployed - they just don't show up in international comparisons. This type of thing literally only looks good in one specific way of interpreting the stats available.

Then there's another number: 7.7% as of today. That's the number of everyone who is unemployed in some form plus those who are considered "underemployed". This includes long-term sicknesses, people who are getting various different qualifications, short-term workers and similar things.

Notice how close we're suddenly to the 9.5% unemployment rate e.g. France has, presuming their international number isn't as screwed up as the German one when compared to reality?


In a nutshell what Germany did was reduce regulation and force people into short-term employments which in return caused massive spikes in inequality across the board. Sure, the nation as a whole got wealthier - but that gain in wealth was distributed way more top-heavy than usual.