Paul Krugman: Germany's Jobs, Unemployment Miracle Can Teach US

New York Times:

Germany's jobs miracle hasn't received much attention in this country -- but it's real, it's striking, and it raises serious questions about whether the U.S. government is doing the right things to fight unemployment.

Read the whole story: New York Times

Comments

[Hysterian68]

The Krugman and Reich articles featured here give us every reason to believe the recession is alive and well. Despite the constant stream of gushing optimisim from the Wall Streeters who want us to climb aboard their train heading for derailment or a collision with hard reality.

[Stop Wall Street]

Once again, Obama fails to make progress with anything. All this traveling is a waste of tax payer dollars and never brings any resolution. We need less free trade and more manufacturing in America.

hat tip to http://financeopinionss.blogspot.com
Meanwhile, wall street makes record revenues and profits while unemployment shows no signs of abating. What a joke.

[pltmcs]

The Germany jobs are mostly due to their stimulus paying people/companies to work less. It is more in the line of partial unemployment insurance so 10 people worked at 90% capacity instead of 9 people working at 100% and paying one person unemployment. So to look at straight unemployment numbers is not a fair comparison.

If you want to argue that Germany's method is better, then okay. Just don't use the unemployment numbers, use issues.

[SangZe]

The U.S. is a country of morons led by morons.

[FreedomCorpse]

They also have a VAT tax which protects their industries...but nobody is calling them 'protectionists' like the economics morons in this country.

[tbonehead]

American "EXCEPTIONALISM" makes us damned poor followers; no matter how good the idea is!!! Lone Ranger rides again.

[anti-fascist]

Germany and Japan and ohers can spend on helping unemployment because they do not have to fund a Pentagonian Grab-Bag

How much of or spending goes for the Pentagon!

Now what did Ike say about that????

A..F.

[cecebo]

So true. I was completely disheartened to hear Obama imply that he was not planning to leave Afghanistan this morning.

[gnomic]

but Paul, doing nothing over and over works so well!

[dianhow]

OBama should listen to Volcker- and Krugman- rather than Somers But I do not blame O for this mess- he took on 29 years of toxic leadership - policies-that led to global disaster
10 months is nothing -after 29 long years of legalized Fraud- and unethical dealings- and predatory lending .ALL this- ' courtesy ' of Reagan - 1981- Bush 2008 deregulation policy
Greenspan- Somers- Rubin - Paulson as well Titans of Wall St who were too arrogant
to listen to warnings of a coming crash. Prior to Reagan we had safe guards in place to prevent
this horrid abuse and fraud. .
ALL TRUE watch - read the facts online www.pbs.org

[Joe Caps]

LOL

Gee...when you make it illegal to fire people...the unemployment rate does not drop as much.

SOMEBODY GET THIS MAN ANOTHER NOBEL PRIZE!

Problem is... companies are less inclined to hire when they know it's illegal to fire them if things get tough down the road. That is why their unemployment rate has been higher for 10 out of the past 11 years.

He cherry picked one year and goes, LOOK HOW GREAT THEIR SYSTEM IS! Of course, without telling you that the US has a consistently lower unemployment rate, in part because we do not have laws restricting layoffs.

EPIC FAIL

Do you guys really take this man seriously?

[bluevase]

No longer does the US have a lower unemployment rate. My daughter's fiancee in Spain just got his "permanent contract." He can't be fired. Her health insurance, by the way, costs her 8 euros a month.

[GirlFriday123]

When I worked in Germany you could be fired, and you could leave your job, but the employer and the employee had to give each other ample notice. It was in your contract. You had a contract, and each party had to honor it.

AND, if you lose your job in Germany, there is a social safety net.

[Awake-and-Sing]

A lot more seriously than we now take Milton Friedman's discredited theories.

[Desmo]

Which one of Milton's theories can you specifically discredit?

[bereasonable0]

Where I work, offshoring is still the standard. The jobs are not disappearing because there is no work. It's just cheaper to hire someone overseas where they don't have to worry about health insurance and decent wages. You can't tell me that tax policy would not be effective at reversing that trend. I'm not talking about lowering the corp tax rate as we know trickle down is a fairy tale. I'm talking about raising the corp tax rate with offsets based on US workers. Hire overseas, look for credits overseas. Hire in the US and get your credits here. More US workers, more tax revenue and we are on the road to reducing the deficit.

[dianhow]

Yes- Reasonable- which most folks are not these days
We can eliminate the ' guest worker 'program - which gives thousands of I. T. jobs to India.
Take back Bush tax cuts.
Raise the social sec tax withholding.
Plan an exit in Afghan war- since Bush - Cheney WASTED- SCREWED UP- AND
FAILED there 7 1/2 long years already. ENOUGH
Make China live up to their trade agreements -that is NOT protectionism

thats my 2 cents

[MarionWatts]

I recently returned to the UK from visiting my family in the US for two weeks. Whilst there, I caught a clip on an NBC news broadcast about a small business in the Midwest, which had moved to a job-sharing scheme, and - as such - had avoided monumental lay-offs. Of course, the employees' hours had been reduced as well as their salaries, but, as they said, at the end of the day, they still had jobs.

http://emiliawahoo76.blogspot.com
http://myspace.com/virginiadem

[dianhow]

Watts Thanks for the input Makes sense

[Laws456]

Mr. Krugman always proposes ideas. And for that alone he should be applauded. The problem is that our gov't is only good at waging war and writing blank checks to sustain them. Outside of that, they seem to refuse to do anything that may help regular citizens.

[dianhow]

456 ' Our gov't ' from 1980-2008 has consisted of Presidents Reagan- Bush - W - with only 1
Dem Pres in 28 yrs.- who left ahuge surplus and millions of new jobs- but was not without fault.
So its safe to say the GOP led us- over many years - to global collapse- with toxic GOP made deregulation- trillions in cuts- lying us into Iraq War
Alan Greenspan was warned as were Somers- Rubin and congress about a coming crash.but crushed that fast -too arogant to admit they were fallible. They got NO fines- NO jail time NADA
Obama has had 10 months - he took on the horrid results of 29 years of GOP 's
' toxic leadership '

[markinaz]

All well and good except for one thing, Germanys' population is not growing. As a matter of fact, it may now be actually shrinking. That makes the German govts. job way easier. Americas' population is still exploding, making our govts. job all the more harder.

[MarionWatts]

Germany's indigenous population is not growing - indeed, most of Europe's indigenous populations are ageing populations; however, Germany, like much of the rest of Europe (and like the US) is experiencing a wave of immigration, both from the old Eastern Europe and from the Middle East and Turkey. It's the immigrant populations that are growing.

http://emiliawahoo76.blogspot.com
http://myspace.com/virginiadem

[bereasonable0]

Germany is virtually flat and US is growing at less than 1%. We are paying folks that are out of work so you might as well create govt jobs to get some work out of those willing to work. Do something. Making excuses to justify inaction is unacceptable.

[vinny]

lending in the united states tightens - bernanke

FED pays US banks interest to keep money, and loans all that money to european banks...

Eurozone bank lending falls for the first time on record
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4831286,00.html

falls for the first time? must be nice to have all those cheap dollars...

is this about right?

[dianhow]

vinny I think Wall St - big banks do this on purpose- Why ?
They are Repubs so they want to crush Obama - any way they can
so what better way than to NOT lend - to keep jobless rate way up ?
God knows-they have done lots worse than that with their greedy unethical dealings.
fact- Reagan- Bush deregulation policy ' legalized' fraud- illegal dealings-
and made predatory lending possible.