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Hippiekinkster -> RE: Violence As Workers Protest Against Cuts (3/26/2011 8:31:15 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Edwynn
I know that ~7% unemployment even before the financial crisis was not exactly a good number, but it takes a long time to absorb a ~16 millionen einwohner former communist region all at once, no? Nach der Wiedervereinigung. I'm not sure if any other country could have accomplished that without even much further damage.
As for the "well trained" comment, I was going by the graduates of die Realschule oder Hauptschule as much as I was das Gymnasium und die Hochschule/Universität. Even at the lesser amount of schooling the people put into the work force are at least well trained, unlike in the US where the attitude is "well, you were supposed to go to college, and if you're not doing that, then we don't know what of anything good to help you out otherwise, sorry." I'm exaggerating slightly, there are a few decent tech programs at a few high schools, but the overall picture is quite dim for high school-only graduates, not just in terms of status of diploma, but in actual preparedness for much of anything. No wonder that one HAS to get a college degree here to get paid beyond poverty wages.
As for the university rankings, most consider them a joke, especially the US News and World Report rankings. The schools that flood the most prospective students with applications knowing they only have a limited number of openings get themselves a high grade for "selectivity." What a joke. Flooding the academic journals with a high number of papers also gets a high ranking for that school. And the US and UK private and even some few public universities pay a good bit more than any continental European universities. Another high grade for the world rankings!
But my actual point was that there are a number of different ways to operate a country, and Denmark, Switzerland, Germany, France, etc. all do OK for themselves, and are not sliding into the abyss that some here in the US think we would automatically be going into if we did something so responsible as to actually enforce taxes on the top .01% of earners here, or have usable health care, etc. They are not all just different than the US or UK, they are quite different from each other in their selection of priorities and policies, and the mode of implementation of all that.
That was/is an amazing achievement (the assimilation of the old DDR is still ongoing, in my somewhat uninformed opinion). That's the equivalent of the US assimilating 3 Canadas, population-wise).
IMO, the US would be much better off if those of us of German descent were in power, and not the English wannabe aristocrats and the Scots-Irish rednecks. Hell, the last "European" (non-Brit/Irish) president we had was Eisenhower. Hell, the ancestors of Bernis Sanders, the only Socialist in Congress, probably is descended from Tyroleans by way of England. [8D]
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