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Re:the US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the... by partiallypro on Monday July 17, 2023 @07:36PM (#36765639)
Germany is an economic lion held back by its inability to digitize (even when it does it's half measure still attached to the past) and its development of deep relationship with untrustworthy countries (Russia being the prime example.) Trying to buy the 49 Euro Ticket can be done online but still requires approval by a human and an IBAN. That's my current favorite recent example of Germany making absolutely no sense relative to its peers.
Re:the US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the... by RandomLensman on Monday July 17, 2023 @08:53PM (#36766342)
The Bahn app has a human approver in the loop when buying the 49 Euro ticket?
Re:the US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the... by nforgerit on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @05:39AM (#36769918)
I didn’t hear about this certain case but I’d not be too surprised here. Given Germany has been unsuccessfully trying to digitize their government services, there’s been many cases where people filled out PDFs online, which got printed on paper on the other side, sent by fax to another authority, there scanned and then worked on to finally send paper mail to the initial requesters.
Re:the US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the... by lispm on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @12:25AM (#36767791)
Strange, I bought mine via an app and paypal.
Re:the US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the... by partiallypro on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @06:02PM (#36779679)
The official Bahn and even the MVV require an IBAN. To get my ticket, I had to wait 3 days using the MVV app to get a person to approve it.
Re:the US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the... by lispm on Wednesday July 19, 2023 @05:17PM (#36793544)
I used also an official app of a public transport provider and I pay via paypal. The ticket is immediately active.

'IBAN' is a bank account number. So you had to have a bank account - most people have one. The 'ticket' is actually a subscription.

Re:the US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the... by anticodon on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @12:59AM (#36767981)
Yeah, this kind of article would never fail to mention Russia and Putin. But what is never mentioned:

1. Germany has no energy sources. USA had blown up the pipelines delivering cheap energy from Russia that German industry needs badly (so, German industry has been closing and has declining output since), also in just as brain-dead move Germany closed all its nuclear plants.

2. USA is deliberately suffocating German economy. First, dieselgate. Then, "fine" for Deutsche Bank for "provoking crisis of 2008". Then making Germany loose access to cheap energy and providing money to German industrial companies that want to move their plants from Germany (where they have no future due to lack of energy and other resources that were imported from Russia) to USA.

Re:the US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the... by nforgerit on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @05:35AM (#36769903)
German here.

> USA had blown up the pipelines delivering cheap energy from Russia

Well, did they? I know this theory but AFAIK they could trace it back to some people in Ukrainian military. Western secret services (afair from Netherlands) even warned them twice that this was being planned but they didn’t react.

> USA is deliberately suffocating German economy.

Sorry, but those are ALL mistakes made by Germans themselves. They have been cheating, they have been lobbying the German governments to ease transformation cost for short-sighted profit, the (conservative) German governments acted to slow down renewables while quitting nuclear power earlier than planned. I think it’s not a coincidence that Putin started the war on Ukraine just at the time, Germany phased out its last nuclear power plants. It’s all stupidity on the German side, esp. when Merkel is still claiming that “she always knew who Putin really was”.

Re:the US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the... by anticodon on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @08:48AM (#36771335)
> Well, did they? I know this theory but AFAIK they could trace it back to some people in Ukrainian military. Western secret services (afair from Netherlands) even warned them twice that this was being planned but they didn’t react.

Such operation can't be performed by amateurs from a rented yacht. It requires experience and resources available only to few countries on Earth.

Also, it was just a version published by Western media without any hard evidence.

> Sorry, but those are ALL mistakes made by Germans themselves.

It's not possible to tell if they are unless there's an investigation, but there would be never such an investigation because Germany is an occupied country for 78 years.

It's quite clear from the consequences, that Olaf Sholz, Annalena Baerbock, and other German politics do things that affect German industry and economics negatively at the same time improving US economy and making Germany more dependent on US.

Re:the US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the... by nforgerit on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @09:59AM (#36772348)
Well, that's too much in the realm of conspiracy theories told by right- and left wing extremists in Germany.

Let me just say one thing: It doesn't necessarily take the US for German leadership to shoot their feet.

Re:the US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the... by partiallypro on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @06:05PM (#36779711)
There is no evidence that the US blew up the pipeline other than a crackpot journalist (citing a single source he can't name) that did something 20 years ago and has come up with nothing since. "Germany has no energy sources," is just false, they were warned for decades on this topic. They had plenty of time to diversity, but they didn't.

"USA is deliberately suffocating German economy."

This is just patently false.