@General Lighting 539263 wrote:
The Northern European countries had the sense to not destroy a great deal of their manufacturing industries and where required use the power of Government to keep work at home, and to drum into the heads of their citizens that you must pay a fair taxation rate for fair public services (and also make sure that such services are delivered efficiently). they also implemented proportional representation which forces even opposing political parties to work towards a consenus for the common good, whilst keeping their overall views and policies.
They did this in the 20th Century whilst we were chasing after short term profit, and it has paid off now. Although they too are affected by the economic depression the impact is less than in the UK and Southern Europe.
Also Thatcho (albeit begrudgingly) invested loads in the Police and surveillance to interfere in the lives of people who dared to dissent against anything other than profit making, especially if they took drugs at the same time. When some party people set up camps in the West of England they were stalked and followed and eventually broken with force, untill somewhat ironically all that was left was the hard drugs trade, and even when the young conservatives(!) briefly latched on to the acid house party scene they were all disowned by their party and some grassed up and sent to prison.
I think it was paying off even in the 20th century. West Germany’s recovery post-war was remarkable considering they had been completely decimated during the War.
It is rather ironic that during those times, Germans were quite fond of British engineering, and indeed, the good engineering and manufacturing of planes like the Spitfire are some of the reasons why Britain was able to survive the Luftwaffe’s onslaught in 1940-41. This tradition remains somewhat alive in motorsport, such as Formula 1 teams like McLaren and Red Bull but economically it is nowhere to be seen. I think this gets reflected during times of economic depression because the shift to Britain’s economy being so focused on the financial sector and non-tangibles trading in London has lead to the situation the country now faces where problems in other countries’ economies leave disproportionately large holes here.
It is also worth noting that this financial shift has also led to a rather huge lack of graduate students or workers who are versed in STEM fields. People with decent software development skills or knowledge in trades like electrical engineering can get jobs fairly easily even in the current climate (I know several software developers who haven’t spent more than a day out of work, and keep getting offers from other companies) but a lot of people who would perhaps otherwise go into those jobs (which can be very well renumerated) chase the big money in the I-banking or stock trading sectors.
In Germany on the other hand (where education is practically free, even at the University level) there is a good emphasis on trade schools and alternative routes to employment. They also have a very strong culture of family owned small businesses, some of which export a huge volume of product and make 2bn euro a year. Their strong automotive and electronics industry. A lot of what they do is build components for larger systems (which is what companies like Beckhoff do) and it has worked wonders for them.
