[mxfh]

Had a small twitter discussion with the editor of the article yesterday, that for example the data on trash is not comparable (different metrics in different municipalities, for example counting collected foliage or not), especially that it doesn't allow the conclusion for a national divide, based on some vague stereotypes. At least this fact got amended into the paragraph.

The bigger picture is that the eastern part of Germany got deindustrialized twice. The first time post-WW2 from both sides. In part by the US-forces who had seized the western parts, like Thuringia, but had to hand them over to the Soviets in time, so they seized anything they could easily move out to the western zones; We take the brain[1].

On the other hand the Soviets, who were way more strict in getting their reparations than their western counterparts, took apart a lot of factories and railways and shipped them eastwards. Every bigger company that could, moved their HQ and center of operations to the western zones — where they stay until today — on their own as well. With them went up to 3000 mostly well educated people per day, in total more than 3 million (of 17M total) in the 16 years before the wall was built in '61. The motivation of building the wall was therefore economic in nature, since the GDR couldn't survive this ongoing brain drain with the mythical Wirtschaftwunder going on next door.

30 years later in the early 1990s after the fall of the Wall and the reunification the Treuhand, a state owned-holding, who's sole purpose it was to sell-off the former GDR state owned businesses to potential investors, kind of more or less knowingly finished off the rest of what was left of the industry. Since not a few of the western investors were solely interested in buying up potential rival enterprises, so they could dismantle them shortly after. This left the east in a highly disadvantageous position with the west of Germany, since there were practically zero industry clusters left and since then state subsidies had could only do so much in creating the organic growth that was needed.[2 includes some good maps]

[1] http://www.pentaconsix.com/01gerhis.htm

[2] http://www.dw.de/mapping-differences-in-two-german-economies...

[growupkids]

Don't forget the crushing secret police state, the high cost of the soviet focus on war production that redeployed commerce across the soviet empire to make weapons, instead of consumer goods, centralized planning, failed communist economic policies, gulags, and the decades of communist education that wiped out generations of entrepreneurs.

[vegedor]

Wait a second, who was send to Gulags (in Siberia, I suppose)?

[venomsnake]

Little mentioned fact is that after WWII the soviets took almost 1M people laborers from Germany to USSR. I think some of them returned.

The allies also used a lot of them. Not their brightest hour.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labor_of_Germans_after_W...

[facepalm]

And where did all the Solidaritätszuschlag go? I think there has been heavy investment in the East, too. I'm too lazy to look it up, but it must be billions and billions and there is still more coming?

When I came to Leipzig for the first time I was surprised how new and clean everything looked. Much nicer than in rich Munich. Because in Leipzig everything WAS new. However, they also had some building scandal (one guy defrauding banks to do lots of expensive building), I am not sure if that also factored into it.

I heard back then (a couple of years after reunion) that for example universities also had better equipment in the East because everything was new.

[mjevans]

I believe that reflection upon these results is critical to any attempt at raising the economic productivity of a region. It seems clear that infrastructure, education, and business development incentives (even if only in making it easier to found and afford to fail at making a go of a small business) are critical ingredients to economic vitality.