[kinnth]

Buffet reminded me a lot of Angela Merkel.

They stood clearly and simply for good moral judgment, fair systems and looked at the bigger picture to carry most people forward. They also based all their decision in facts, truth and science. They learn't their trades (economics & politics) over time and weren't afraid to adapt as times changed.

Their slow and steady presence did more for equality and fairness than many others. We will need to find these values again after the current times have played out.

[thi2]

That has to be about a different Angela Merkel, the one I know had one priority: preserving status quo.

[btilly]

She also was for making Germany economically dependent on gas pipelines to Russia, even though she knew that she was funding Russia's war in Ukraine.

I am not inclined to give her a free pass on that.

[FirmwareBurner]

Which recent German politician in power wasn't about preserving the status quo? The entire country and culture is all about the status quo.

[riffraff]

I'm. It sure of the "recent" definition but Schroeder's tenure brought a lot of changes (which one can argue against, but it was not conservative).

[Aeolun]

> slow and steady presence

> preserving status quo

That sounds like the same thing to me?

[newbie578]

I cannot believe that there are people praising Merkel with a straight face. She is literally a laughing stock in Europe, I put her as the poster boy for immigration crisis together with the energy crisis. The only thing she did was shove problems further in the future not caring about the consequences.

[riehwvfbk]

I think you have a strange definition of "laughingstock". Germany went from an economic powerhouse of Europe to factory shutdowns and a bunch of bumbling sniveling elites who are afraid of the people they are leading and want to ban them from having a say.

[sofixa]

Buffet was "carrying most people forward" how exactly? Squeezing companies he had shares in to be as efficient as possible, leading to poorer quality and outright dangerous working conditions isn't bettering anyone other than shareholders, which aren't most people.

[HeadsUpHigh]

>the bigger picture to carry most people forward

The bigger picture of getting germany dependent on russian gas while screwing eu allies.

[huijzer]

> They stood clearly and simply for good moral judgment

Merkel has severely underestimated Putin. She played a role in the continuous betting on Russian oil. Merkel has called the internet “neuland” and wasn’t her government also the one starting with hydrogen subsidies. I donno about you but to this day I only hear lots of talk about hydrogen but near zero results. So all the wrong bets.

Also I don’t know whether you noticed but Germany is expected to be in a recession for three years in a row now.

About equity and fairness okay I guess you are right. Everybody in Germany will be poor if things continue like this.

[ponector]

Silent approval of Putin's invasions to Georgia and Ukraine doesn't look like "good moral judgment, fair systems"

[bergheim]

> They also based all their decision in facts, truth and science

What? She shut down nuclear power plants to ramp up coal and Russian dependence.

Idolizing people is rarely helpful.

[JimmyBiscuit]

She shut down nuclear power because of extreme pressure from the population. Tens of thousands protested around her office. Nuclear is complicated (and mostly fear driven) in Germany. Oddly enough the first exit was done under Schröder who is a russian asset. Makes you think.

[AdamJacobMuller]

> Tens of thousands protested around her office

Germany has a population of 84 million people. 10,000 should not be able to dictate a policy decision of this magnitude, regardless of how loud they are.

> Nuclear is complicated (and mostly fear driven)

The politics of nuclear are complicated, the science (more engineering) of nuclear are complicated, the imperative is clear and simple. You are correct that it's mostly fear driven, but stoked by "green" advocacy organizations and/or manipulated by people with a stake in the continued use of fossil fuels (and largely the latter funding the former).

True leadership would stand up to both of these pressures, making people understand that the voice of 10,000 (or even 100,000) people can not dictate policy alone and educating people on the reality of nuclear power, while also fixing some of the real issues with nuclear power (an aging power plant fleet and an inability economically build better replacements).

Merkel totally flopped on energy policy.

[cjpearson]

The protestors were not a very vocal minority, but representative of the majority opinion. At the time well over 80% of Germans wanted an end to nuclear power. (Although now following the Ukraine invasion and rising energy costs the opposition has significantly softened.)

In a democratic system it is simply difficult to maintain such extremely unpopular positions. Governments which do so don't last long. Merkel flip-flopped and maintained her Chancellorship.

[neom]

We've been running nuclear here in Canada for over 80 years now. CANDU is very safe and not very complicated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor

[willhslade]

Did you know about this? https://thewalrus.ca/nuclear-accidents/

[neom]

Sure, NRX and NRU were research rigs running experiments far outside normal reactor envelopes. And I think it's amusing that it's considered INES-5 when very little actually happened and there was...no..wider...events... literally. If the worst we can cite is a 70 year old research accident that killed no one and ultimately produced design fixes we still use, you have a the strong case for nuclear safety...Anyway: The Walrus needs to find some new civic interest story around Barrie to write about or something, it's an awful rag. We could decarbonize our grid completely with 15 new reactors, if I was PM we'd be popping them up like it was CANDU Christmas.

[netsharc]

She finally agreed to shut down nuclear because Fukushima happened just a few days before the state elections of Baden-Württemberg. She was afraid of a rout so she agreed to do the above, and her party lost to the Greens anyway.

[codethief]

> Oddly enough the first exit was done under Schröder who is a russian asset. Makes you think.

Oddly enough? Schröder was in a coalition with the green party that had emerged from the anti-nuclear movement two decades before.

[neom]

Measured governance. I feel the same, although I'm sure the Europeans and Germans not at all, but they also talked Angela out of nuclear, so one might argue the Germans are a bit too measured compared to their Chancellor.

[fifilura]

It is ok, I understand how you are thinking.

But unfortunately I think Merkels legacy will be "Wandel durch handel".

Trying to pacify Russia and Putin through increasing trade. Did not work.

[jnwatson]

Don't forget the climate-change-decision-accelerating decision to mothball all their nuclear reactors. This was a monumentally poor strategic decision from multiple angles.

[impossiblefork]

It doesn't have to have been totally wrong always, but it's certainly been wrong at least since the invasion of Georgia in 2008.

[Aeolun]

Yes. But that wasn’t a rational outcome. By any measure Russia is momumentally worse off after basically anything it’s done in the past three years.

[FiniteField]

"The current times" are a direct result of decisions like that of Merkel to throw open the borders of Germany to a million unchecked foreign men. If there's one reason that the AfD is the largest party in Germany today, it's because of that decision Merkel made a whole decade ago. How was that "based in facts, truth and science", or "slow and steady"?

[Aeolun]

The million unchecked foreign men (and women) are presumably propping up the German economy as we speak.

There will always be people that dislike change, but it may ultimately be better to start integrating them earlier rather than later. If you make it through the bad times (e.g. now), at the other end is the outcome you desire.

[alephnerd]

> The million unchecked foreign men (and women) are presumably propping up the German economy as we speak.

The refugee crisis didn't appear to have a significant impact (positive or negative) on the labor market based on a recent study by the IZA and ZEW [0] - "Our estimates suggest that those migrants have not displaced native workers but have themselves struggled to find gainful employment. We find moderate increases in crime, and our analysis further indicates that while at the macro level increased migration was accompanied by increased support for anti-immigrant parties, exposure to asylum seekers at the micro level had a small negative effect." [0]

There are systemic issues with the German economy that aren't related to immigration. A lot of the current malaise can be attributed to the economic slowdowns in Russia (with the Russian Invasion of Ukraine) [1] and China (due to Zero COVID and the subsequent indigenization) [2], due to how tied German industry was with both markets [3].

[0] - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ecca.12420

[1] - https://dgap.org/en/research/publications/no-more-illusions-...

[2] - https://ecfr.eu/article/the-end-of-germanys-china-illusion/?...

[3] - https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/001/2024/130/arti...

[FirmwareBurner]

>The million unchecked foreign men (and women) are presumably propping up the German economy as we speak.

How many of those unchecked are women? What's the point of having borders then? Or law enforcement putting criminals in jails, when they could be out there propping up the economy. As long as your illegal activities are putting money into the state coffers, you should be allowed to continue unchecked, screw the laws.

Yeah sure, they might cause some trouble for the lower and middle class living amongst them, but think of the economic gains for the top 1%! Their real estate and stock portfolios have never looked so good. And if people vocally disagree with this you call them fascist and put them in jail for threatening your "democracy".

How does Poland's economy manage to grow faster than Germany's without illegal immigration? Maybe they can send some researchers there to find out.

[Aeolun]

> How does Poland's economy manage to grow faster than Germany's without illegal immigration?

They are having babies.

[FirmwareBurner]

>They are having babies.

Do you research things before you say them? A quick google search shows Polish fertility rate (1,26) is lower than Germany(1,46).