What makes the Germans so successful?

[LibertyHarkness]

germany dont tolarate immigration shit like the UK does ... Germany actually has a plan and a structure in place to further their country and economic growth unlike the UK which seems to be the blind leading the blind ...

[Stavros]

Immigration policy was different in Germany before or after 1990, and was based on the Gastarbeiter system which meant that agreements with specific countries, Turkey, Greece, Portugal, Yugoslavia, Morocco and Tunisia enabled West Germany to import cheap labour on the premise that they would 'return' at some future point; their children however were allowed to claim German citizenship. In Britain, the Empire/Commonwealth has always complicated the rights of immigrants and anyway, numerically, the UK has the third highest volume of non-EU immigrants after Germany and France. In addition, there was a time when some South Asians realised that if you could get on a plane to West Berlin, an immediate claim for political asylum would normally be met. This lasted until 400,000 claimed political asylum in 1992 and the law was then changed. One faction of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria has been based in Aachen and the Ruhr since the 1960s. East Germany also imported cheap labour, mostly from the Communist bloc such as Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba, and the so-called Marxist regimes in Africa, Angola and Mozambique. These days it is easier for immigrants to become German citizens, as long as they have lived in the country for8 years, speak German, dont claim welfare (a significant difference from the UK) and also sign a pledge of loyalty.

The UK has been receptive to immigration, with obvious examples of the Caribbean and the Indian sub-continent; the largest foreign nationals living in the UK are French, London is I think the sixth largest French city in the world. But they are EU immigrants. The scale of immigration in the UK is low and relatively unimportant, whereas your comment on economic growth is apt, I don't think anyone in the UK in politics can see a way ahead that leads to the 'sunlit uplands'...

[Prospero]

Liberty - it is sad that the nations from which the bulk of the UK's immigrants come had to tolerate the "shit" of British imperial occupation.

[Stavros]

Liberty - it is sad that the nations from which the bulk of the UK's immigrants come had to tolerate the "shit" of British imperial occupation.

I think that is too broad a brush to use. There has been not so much a fierce debate, but a long-drawn out and currently inconclusive debate amongst imperial histroians about the benefits of Empire, for either the Uk or the colonies. It isn't an easy topic to pursue because not all of the Empire was treated in the same way, and the response to Empire within was also different. The indicators are where the problems lie -do you measure standards of education and literacy before and after Empire, and how on earth does this work in India where there had been a literate civilisation for several thousand years before the British even set foot in it? Missionary education in some parts of the Empire was the only education, it therefore became a priceless benefit of Empire, and as many of the missions also imported allopathic medicine, which included measures to clean water supplies and with it deal with malaria and other diseases, it was medically beneficial. There was a delightful old school communist at SOAS in the 1960s and 1970s, Bill Warren, whose book Imperialism: Pioneer of Capitalism, though ridiculed by many (because of Warren himself) argues for a more positive view of Empire in terms of structural change. But as I say, the jury is still out and probably will be long after I have gone to that multicultural empire in the sky.

PS, Try talking about Cricket to an Indian -benefit of empire?

[Prospero]

Stavros I was using a broad brush in response to crude generalisation. The effect was intentional.

[LibertyHarkness]

mehh deleted before i go off on one .. i have some harsh views on society and what i feel would benefit us a species .

[Femboyurge]

Indeed! But if there is something in the argument about northern and southern Europeans, I wonder if it is the way that people have responded to the modern state. The unification of Germany did not take place so long after Italian 'unification' in 1861, yet the experience of the modern state was so different for both, more heavily contested in Italy for example, and some have argued that the defeat of the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily is the foundation of the instability that has undermined economic and political progress in the Mezzogiorno. It can't be about some inability to create, because Italian motor cars have been in the top quartile since the industry began, and Italy is famous for its design culture. So I am thinking there must be issues at the level of tax collection, regional and national identity, and maybe even the lack of immigration that explain why in some respects the Italian state and the performance of its economy has been weaker than Germany.

Italy has a different mentality than Germany, Austria, Switzerland etc. There is actually a part of northern Italy, South Tyrol, that was an Austrian province until 1919. The northern part of that territory, Trentino-Alto-Adige, is still inhabitated by Germans to 70% or so. That province is the richest in all of Italy. You do the maths.

[Prospero]

The maths maybe - but are suggesting there is an ethnic element to financial achievement femboyurge?

[broncofan]

Italy has a different mentality than Germany, Austria, Switzerland etc. There is actually a part of northern Italy, South Tyrol, that was an Austrian province until 1919. The northern part of that territory, Trentino-Alto-Adige, is still inhabitated by Germans to 70% or so. That province is the richest in all of Italy. You do the maths.

If it's ethnicity then there's nothing to be learned from Germany's success except that it must be nice to come from that stock.

[Stavros]

Italy has a different mentality than Germany, Austria, Switzerland etc. There is actually a part of northern Italy, South Tyrol, that was an Austrian province until 1919. The northern part of that territory, Trentino-Alto-Adige, is still inhabitated by Germans to 70% or so. That province is the richest in all of Italy. You do the maths.

Lombardy is the richst province in Italy; Trentino-Alto Adige-Sud-Tirol has been an autonomous region since 1947-48; the majority are Italian, except in Sud-Tirol where German speakers are dominant, but overall account for about 33% of the population of the region.

I wonder how one decides who is responsible for economic growth in western Europe after 1945 when so much of industry and the service sector was populated by low-paid workers from Turkey, Greece, Italy, Yugoslavia, Morocco and Tunisia in the case of West Germany; consider the fact that when de Gaulle became President of France in 1958 he was told that if France wanted to industrialise on the scale of Germany, Britain, Italy and the Netherlands, it would need 100,000 immigrants a year (who duly arrived mostly from North Africa). The UK's road and rail networks relied heavily on immigrants from the Caribbean, and so on and so on. Rather like trying to work out how successful the economy of the USA would have been ante-bellum without Slavery....