Have met a few Germans in my time in London and Europe, Often at work when I worked for a UK subsidiary of a German company and on holiday in Europe. They were doing similar jobs however had totally different and superior lifestyles. For eg one couple we met while in Greece, He, Mid Level It person, same as me, his wage was less than me, his wife had a more junior IT role, My wife had a much higher paid IT job, together My wife and I earned around 30% more than German couple.
We owned a 2 bed flat in outer north west London with little prospect of moving up due to prices, had a second hand car and could take 2 decent holidays a year as well as save a fair bit for our future redundancies (just as well we did) They owned a decent 4 bed house outside of Munich, had a Merc and BMW between them, fully owned and to top it off they owned a 32' yacht which they kept in Greece (which is how we met them, we of course with a group of 6 on a hired yacht and never a prospect of owning it) They also had 6 weeks hols a year which of course was on their Yacht. They also had more secure jobs with big German manufacturing firms, we had insecure jobs with the usual British 'city of London' rubbish companies where you are employed one day and as soon as the technology or the project changes you are out with the proverbial baby and bathwater (or more like a turd down the toilet).
They also had proper pension provisions and could retire well before 60 if they wanted to, due to our reaching the age of 50 we were both for different reasons made redundant and have never worked again in IT and survive on one crappy part time job between us. Both UK pension funds and Ausie super add up to bugger all, most certainly not a civilised retirement before we are too old to enjoy it.
When we talked about money issues, they cacked their britches when they learned the reality of the cost of housing and living in London and the unstable employment opportunities. Our flat at the time was worth 200kGDP, their house was worth around 70k GDP and as they said, was never a subject of conversation, fear, panic or loathing amongst their friends, family or across the generations. Over the years we have met a few more Germans on yachts in the Greek Islands and the conversation confirms these differences over and over.
Germany has politicians that interfere with keeping the market stable, we have politicians that are morally corrupt and are working hard to destabilise the entire economy in order to get rich via their own property portfolio's.. The Germans would laugh at them and perhaps put them in prison if they were unlucky enough to have them as their own politicians.
OF course not everything is right in Germany and not everything wrong in UK and Aus but they at least know that to have a proper economy you cannot have a runaway speculative housing market with does nothing other than destabilise everything that is real and make the bankers and politicians rich.
They have scammed the rest of Europe. They sell their vehicles and equipment to their neighbours and lend them the money to buy them. The Euro means, for Germany their currency is undervalued while for everyone else it's overvalued. Quite brilliant but totally false market and giving themselves the spoils while their neighbours suffer.
They have scammed the rest of Europe. They sell their vehicles and equipment to their neighbours and lend them the money to buy them. The Euro means, for Germany their currency is undervalued while for everyone else it's overvalued. Quite brilliant but totally false market and giving themselves the spoils while their neighbours suffer.
Was it by design or accident?
Common sense is a curse - those who have it need to suffer dealing with those who don't have it.
Countries that joined the euro did so because they thought they would benefit but currency unions without fiscal unions well....
And then there were the property bubbles.
That cant happen here of course due to replacement cost theory. or something.
Property acquisition as a topic was almost a national obsession. You couldn't even call it speculation as the buyers all presumed the price of property could only go up. That’s why we use the word obsession. Ordinary people were buying properties for their young children who had not even left school assuming they would not be able to afford property of their own when they left college- Klaus Regling on Ireland. Sound familiar?
The evidence of nearly 40 cycles in house prices for 17 OECD economies since 1970 shows that real house prices typically give up about 70 per cent of their rise in the subsequent fall, and that these falls occur slowly. Morgan Kelly:On the Likely Extent of Falls in Irish House Prices, 2007
They have scammed the rest of Europe. They sell their vehicles and equipment to their neighbours and lend them the money to buy them. The Euro means, for Germany their currency is undervalued while for everyone else it's overvalued. Quite brilliant but totally false market and giving themselves the spoils while their neighbours suffer.
+10
Veritas
1 Oct 2014, 01:13 AM
Accident of course.
Countries that joined the euro did so because they thought they would benefit but currency unions without fiscal unions well....
And then there were the property bubbles.
That cant happen here of course due to replacement cost theory. or something.
Quote:
That’s because Germany has one of the world’s oldest populations and Europe’s second-lowest birthrate, after Monaco. The country needs immigrants to replace retiring workers, Mr. Koppel said, adding that there are about 1 million unfilled jobs in Germany, and one-quarter of them require university degrees.
“This gap poses a threat to German economy, because companies may choose to relocate if they cannot fill their vacancies,” he said. “I know of several businesses that moved to Austria in the past years in search of more workers.”
Analysts estimate that worker shortages already cost Germany as much as $40 billion a year. Yet demographers warn that Germany’s working population will drop by 6.5 million over the next two decades — a decrease equivalent to losing every worker in Bavaria, one of Germany’s richest states.
Germany is battling a baby drought that has caused its population to plummet, leaving a rash of vacant homes, dry sewers and fears the economy may crumble, experts have warned. In its most recent census, Germany discovered it had lost 1.5 million inhabitants and, by 2060, experts say the population could dwindle by an extra 19 per cent, to about 66 million. Between 2000 and 2013, Germany's birth rate dropped by 11 per cent compared to rises in the UK (4.3 per cent), France (3.6 per cent), Spain (12.8 per cent) and Ireland (8.9 per cent). Now panic is beginning to spread through Europe's economic powerhouse as the financial crisis continues to stretch its tentacles into all aspects of society, especially the country's labour market.
Plenty of jobs and a cheap house as all the oldies pop their clogs and there are not enough young ones to buy the houses. Maybe you should live there instead of this young growing country where you have to watch prices rise even when you have thoroughly made up your mind that they are not going to rise again ever.
Or you could live in Ireland for a while it might change your perspective on the utopia you predict when house prices fall in economies.
Definition of a doom and gloomer from 1993 The last camp is made up of the doom-and-gloomers. Their slogan is "it's the end of the world as we know it". Right now they are convinced that debt is the evil responsible for all our economic woes and must be eliminated at all cost. Many doom-and-gloomers believe that unprecedented debt levels mean that we are on the precipice of a worse crisis than the Great Depression. The doom-and-gloomers hang on the latest series of negative economic data.
Plenty of jobs and a cheap house as all the oldies pop their clogs and there are not enough young ones to buy the houses. Maybe you should live there instead of this young growing country where you have to watch prices rise even when you have thoroughly made up your mind that they are not going to rise again ever.
Or you could live in Ireland for a while it might change your perspective on the utopia you predict when house prices fall in economies.
OR perhaps we should have had a run of sensible governments that did not see house price mega inflation as being some sort of magic GDP growth? they are the ones that have set us up for a possible financial catastrophe (as per Ireland) or have reverted us back to a more landlord/master-servant era which will persist for decades or more. Our polies of either side have not served us well in this issue, turning shelter into a financial ponzi scheme is not good economics or politics in the long run no matter what the final outcome, as all the possible outcomes are bad. The current government is particularly bad as it sees shitting on generations of people to come as being some sort of righteousness and closer to godliness than any government we have ever had.
OR perhaps we should have had a run of sensible governments that did not see house price mega inflation as being some sort of magic GDP growth? they are the ones that have set us up for a possible financial catastrophe (as per Ireland) or have reverted us back to a more landlord/master-servant era which will persist for decades or more. Our polies of either side have not served us well in this issue, turning shelter into a financial ponzi scheme is not good economics or politics in the long run no matter what the final outcome, as all the possible outcomes are bad. The current government is particularly bad as it sees shitting on generations of people to come as being some sort of righteousness and closer to godliness than any government we have ever had.
Steve both the UK and Australia have growing populations which puts pressure on prices, but Germany hasn't had that issue for many decades. That plus the fact that the government encourages renting over ownership. Germany can only get away with that policy because they don't need a high investment in new housing stock.
We couldn't possibly adopt the German system. It would completely fail here. It would fail in the UK as well.
Any expressed market opinion is my own and is not to be taken as financial advice
Germany has full CGT on all property, inc the PPOR, sold under 10 years and very high land taxes. Nothing to do with population growth at all.
So my question, then, is if Germany is so great why is their population shrinking? It's obviously not a country of choice for immigration, and the locals don't seem to be reproducing at a sustainable rate.
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