• 33 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • Correct on a per capita bases Portugal has been growing much much faster then Germany. The simple truth it that Germany is not benefiting from austerity either. What should happen is that the German government massively increases spending. This would turn Germany from a net exporter, to a net importer. That allows the PIIGS to export products to Germany paying down the debt, but it also stimulates the economy. Germany profits from the increased spending as well.

    The simple truth is that German life expectancy is declining since a couple of years(being below Spain, Italy and Portugal btw). Median wealth of Italy, Spain and Portugal is higher then that of Germany, which is only slightly higher then that of Greece. Real wages in Germany have gone up by 3.8% over the last decade(not annually but the entire decade).

    The only ones who really profit from this austerity are the super rich. Other then that it is as bad a policy for Germany as it is for Italy, Portugal, Spain or Greece.




  • If only Germany would not be willing to recognice Palestine, then this might happen, but that is not the case. France and Italy the two next most powerfull countries do not recognice Palestine either.

    Germany is usually fairly happy with the current state of the EU. The things Germany wants to change are usually also supported by Spain and that means blackmail is harder. The only exaption to that is finance. However Spain is not going to let billions go to waste to have Palestine recogniced. That is just more of a symbol, rather then massivly important.

    Also Germany leaving the EU would cause some massive problems in other EU countries as well. They would hardly be cheering for it.




  • First of all EVs do not need that much power. We are talking something like 25% more electricity production for a country like Japan. Then Japan has rather a lot of onshore and even more offshore wind potential. Mountains are a problem, but hardly something which can not be overcome. Solar can easily be installed on roofs and mountains are even less of a problem.

    Also really important to say it. Combustion engines in cars are massivly inefficent. So an EV is still better for the climate, even if run with coal electricity. The other factor is that Japans population is falling. So they will need less power over the long term.





  • There are a few ways of going about it. One is third parties. If you vote for the Green Party for example, you get voting reform, anti genocide policies and a much better enviromental policy. At the same time Biden is still much better then Trump and being realistic about what you can get should also be part of voting strategy. Also it is incredibly important to say, that citizenship does not end at the ballot box. You got to and can do more to influence politics. So I would probably vote Biden in a swing state and Green Party in an state, which is not a swing state. This matters in two ways. Firstly the more people vote third party, the more likely they can get into some actual power, but also the Democrats see that they can gain potential votes, by improving policies.

    Also no lesser evil has to be distinguised from compromise and deals. If you get an actual improvement out of doing something, it can be worth doing even at a price. So if two countries face a powerfull invader, it can be worth making a deal that country A gets 40% of the invaders land and country B also 60%, if country B is already stronger for example. In that case both get something out of it. However without the alliance both would probably fail. In this case the question is, if Biden would actually net improve the US compared to today.



  • Just to say it the Lower Saxony example is not quite correct. The situation is that they started using Solaris a Unix system in the 90s in the tax department. When Solaris was no longer really developed, they opted to switch to Linux, as it was easier to migrate. However to unify German states tax departments, the previous state government opted to move to Windows. However the migration has so far failed. Mainyl due to the systems never having been designed for Windows in the first place. The other large user of Linux in Lower Saxony is the police and although they migrated from Windows to save some money, they too had problems migrating back as it was just too difficult.

    That is just the reality of it. Software is sticky and once you migrate it often stays. Even when politicans do not like that.