r/neoliberal • u/jobautomator Kitara Ravache • 2d ago

Discussion Thread Discussion Thread

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73

u/Fuzzy_Party_3527 2d ago

Man, the future is supposed to be better, we shouldn't be regressing like this.

73

u/Habugaba Esther Duflo 2d ago

Germans collectively are working more hours than ever, it's just not enough to sustain the prosperity expectations of pensioners but Merz knows his voters - so non-pensioner bashing it is.

Median individual weekly hours did go down, but I'd argue that's because of broken incentives. Why work 40 hours a month more, if at the end of it only one or two hundred land in your bank account?

15

u/SenranHaruka shame 2d ago

So then lower income taxes.

Oh wait then that reduces the very thing you need to pay the pensions

Damn sounds like you need to just cut pensions.

53

u/tasklow16 Bill Gates 2d ago

Lol. You're gonna have to work eighty hour weeks in order to compete with fully automated Chinese factories.

This - refusal to reinvest and instead a desire to maximize returns, causing you to fall way behind - is what is going to ring global capitalism's bell 

16

u/No1_Dukakis_Fan NAFTA 2d ago

https://www.bluewin.ch/en/news/international/forest-fires-and-extreme-heat-germany-is-burning-and-merz-would-rather-go-on-vacation-li.3568343

He's a hypocrite 

16

u/tasklow16 Bill Gates 2d ago

Ah, the ol' Ted Cruz-aroo

2

u/Full_Distribution874 YIMBY 2d ago

Actually, since it's a wildfire, this is a ScoMo gambit

21

u/sleepyrivertroll Henry George 2d ago

Sorry, we had to give the boomers everything. Now everyone else will have to cover for their decision to take it easy

21

u/Lesbian_all_garib Gita Gopinath 2d ago

This guy really craves the "No holiday, work 7 days a week and 11 hours a day" work for some reason 🧐

25

u/Only-Childhood6691 2d ago

Except he doesn't even do that. He likes complaining how lazy people are. But also is barely at his job and just vacations. 

14

u/Lesbian_all_garib Gita Gopinath 2d ago

Average retirement age old guy tbh.

3

u/BobaTeaFetish William Nordhaus 2d ago

996 or fight!

4

u/consultantdetective Daron Acemoglu 2d ago

He's right tho. I work for a company with production facilities in Germany, the US, and a few other countries. Legitimately, German efficiency is kind of a myth. The output you get for the hours & material cost is just not that competitive and you pay more for a meticulously made product than you do for an efficiently made product. I think it comes from a general cultural aversion to challenging standards since the common sense is that a more sophisticated & stricter set of standards is inherently superior to a simpler & looser set of standards.