[tiatia]

> If these were 2 people, then who is the 'problem': * US with heavy debts?

If I may quote Greenspan: "That all of these claims on government are readily accepted reflects the fact that a government cannot become insolvent with respect to obligations in its own currency. A fiat money system, like the ones we have today, can produce such claims without limit.

* Germany with savings? >Germany is in a position to fix its infrastructure,

Nope German infrastructure is in ruins. She does not have any savings. She has Lehman debt obligations, Greek government debt and billions of unpaid retirement obligations. She gives its products away for free.

> Germany isn't the US, and for this reason, it is rich.

The average American is richer than the average German.

Neither too much export, not too much import is good. BOTH is a sign of weakness. The best country is one that exports a tremendous amount but has an close to zero account deficit.

[lispm]

> Nope German infrastructure is in ruins.

Yeah, sure. I happen to live in Germany and I don't see to many ruins. Actually the city where I live invests a billion $ into a concert hall and 1.5 billion $ into a new X-ray research laser facility.

[tiatia]

Sure, Bozo, I am German _AND_ American and live in Asia. I know a few places.

German universities? Third class.

Transport system? Bad. Don't even think about how slow the ICE trains in Bavaria run.

Bridges? Many are overdue for reconstruction.

I would have to look up in how many years (hint: very few) Germany expects a doubling of cargo freight traffic. Impossible without massive investments in infrastructure. Look at many train stations. Offenbach, Heidelberg, Wuerzburg. OMG!

Internet? Slow because bad infrastructure. (China is different there. Regarding the internet they like shooting them-self in the balls)

Energy? Stupid investments in solar infrastructure instead of research. They subsidize Chinese manufacturing and take the money from the poor (high costs for electricity). Wind energy? Produced there, where it is not needed.

Last but not least, the 1 BILLION into a concert hall for rich people that was supposed to costs 35 or 70 MILLION is a sign of stupidity and corruption but not a sign of a "healthy infrastructure investment"

[omnibrain]

I live in germany and the infrastructure is rotting away. The bridge Schiersteiner Brücke is only the latest and biggest example. You only have to look into your local newspaper to find other examples.

Since 2003 the invest into infrastructure is net-negative: https://www.kfw.de/PDF/Download-Center/Konzernthemen/Researc...

[lispm]

Surprise: Germany could not build up East Germany and keep the West German infrastructure at the usual levels.

Next surprise: we have a lot infrastructure and it is expensive to maintain. Look how many airports we have nobody needs.

Next surprise: in places we need more infrastructure. We are for example investing a lot of money into the energy system. Or transport.

[vnglst]

It's not in ruins, but Germany's highways are definitely not as good as they used to be. Especially if you compare them to the roads in France or The Netherlands, for instance. The internet infrastructure in Germany needs work as well: It currently ranks below Russia and Hungary, far below countries like Sweden, Netherlands and the US.

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

[rbehrends]

> It's not in ruins, but Germany's highways are definitely not as good as they used to be.

It's not the highways themselves. It's primarily bridges and side roads that are affected. Schierstein Bridge, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schierstein_Bridge

> The internet infrastructure in Germany needs work as well: It currently ranks below Russia and Hungary, far below countries like Sweden, Netherlands and the US.

That's extremely misleading. Average download speed not only is a very poor metric for infrastructure, but depending on which chart you look at, you may be getting pretty much the opposite results. For example, check out Netflix's internet speed report [1].

In practice, the internet infrastructure in German is generally excellent in cities and metropolitan areas. The primary problem (same as in many other countries) is coverage in rural areas. The issue here is not lack of government investment, however, but forcing ISPs to invest money in these not very profitable markets. Despite subsidies and incentives, this is still facing obstacles. That said, the situation has improved considerably over the past years [2]:

"Germany remains above the European average in all technology combinations, with noteworthy improvements in overall NGA coverage recorded in 2013. Near-100% coverage of overall broadband and 97.5% coverage with fixed technologies were reported in 2013 as well. NGA access rose through the year, ending the period on 74.8% of households (21.3% in rural areas) – nearly 9 percentage points higher than the previous year."

[1] http://ispspeedindex.netflix.com/

[2] https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/news/study-broadband-...

[lispm]

> It's not in ruins, but Germany's highways are definitely not as good as they used to be.

Go to East Germany. They got the new roads. Brand new autobahns.

I live in West Germany and an Autobahn is not far away. First class. The surface has just been renewed with a more silent asphalt.

[Luc]

You're right of course, though I'm not sure you can call it investing when they pay four times as much as planned for a concert hall :)

[lispm]

Why not? The money gets spend and we get a very luxurious concert hall - more than originally planned.

[tiatia]

It is factor 10.

[smcl]

You're gonna have a tough time defending that "ruins" statement. I know that anecdote != data, but I've been quite a few times what was East Germany (not just Berlin, but places in Märkisch oderland and in/around Dresden) and even though these are the poorer parts of Germany they're still ridiculously modern and well served in terms of infrastructure (Chemnitz is a little brutal, mind).