In an opinion piece for Euronews, Dr Nikolas Stihl, chairman of world-leading chainsaw maker STIHL, calls for reforms including a 40-hour working week without extra pay to safeguard Germany's prosperity and welfare state.View on euronews
But I don’t get it. Wealth doesn’t really increase by working more. For skilled jobs, working longer means you are producing the same output in more time and feel worse. If you want to increase production, you need to invest in research and technology.
Hundreds of years ago, one farmer could feed a hand full of people, today it’s probably thousands, thanks to modern technology. If the farmers back then would work twice as much, they could still only feed a hand full of people, but they would probably die a lot sooner.
Shush! You are not supposed to think about massively increasing productivity.
If you realize that one worker’s real economic output is now 10 times as high as a few decades ago, you won’t be properly scared about their screaming of demographics and how it’s totally unsustainable that now one worker has to “pay” for more than 3 times the amount of non-working people.
Wait? So real economic output per capita is up by ~ +250% and still we somehow don’t have any money to keep up with health care or social costs and can’t even afford to keep our infrastructure from crmbling away? I wonder were all that money is going…
I imagine the same thing which finished off heavy industry in the U.K. is hurting DE a lot also, high energy prices.
Less of a direct effect on assembly businesses, but for heavy production where your process is largely to convert energy to product its devestating. Then you lose those job while also having to pay another county for the product. It fucked us over here for sure
Yeah, that’s the fairy tale they try to tell us because it sounds logical if you don’t look closer.
In reality those high energy prices are just a narrative (at least for Germany). Heavy industry pays average amounts in European comparison. It’s the private end consumer who’s getting poor from all the taxes and fees to subsidize cheap energy for the industry. Those are the same people whose real wages increased by ~25% in the last few decades while their real economic output in the same time frame increased by ~250%. And all that money is funneled off to a few ultra rich while pensions, social benefits and health care are linked to the stagnating wages.
The actual problem of Germany’s economy is that they systematically fucked over Germans for decades to optimise their trade output. So now when global demand is shifting there is no domestic demand to compensate because they are all fucking poor (compare: average wealth with median wealth) and squeezed by constantly increasing costs that in many cases just increase the profit margins of the very same companies they already subsidize with their taxes.
Added some charts for comparison (data from 2024-2025):
The fairy tale German politicians and the media tell 24/7 of how high energy costs for the industry and much too high wages are the problem. And this is after all about a German CEO calling for lower wages “to safeguard Germany’s prosperity and welfare state”.
When in reality Germany, so the other 99,999999% but him, are struggling because of low wages that in no way represent their economic output, high and rising energy costs –exactly so the industry gets lower costs– and with the pension, social and health system not looking sustainable, but again not because of the delusions this guy and his other rich friends are spreading, but because they are linked to stagnating wages. Suggesting more less and lower pay so his profit margins go up and the country is more fucked is simply insane… or just shameless. Yeah, probably the latter.
Wasn’t meant personally in any way. As I said, it sounds logical without a closer look. So I told how it looks from the inside.
Both can be true at the same time, we have all those same issues too, the gov enabled the rich (and the elected officials themselves) to loot the country. But also uncontrolled rising costs destroyed a lot of businesses which the country needed to function
I’m sure the timing is very coincidental and has nothing to do with the recent AFD win
People like this will happily burn the world so that they can rule over the ashes
He said the same thing a month ago: https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmer-nicolas-stihl-35-stunden-woche-nicht-mehr-zeitgemaess-a-a69431e3-905a-4c8a-ba45-abdaa6dfceff
But I don’t get it. Wealth doesn’t really increase by working more. For skilled jobs, working longer means you are producing the same output in more time and feel worse. If you want to increase production, you need to invest in research and technology.
Hundreds of years ago, one farmer could feed a hand full of people, today it’s probably thousands, thanks to modern technology. If the farmers back then would work twice as much, they could still only feed a hand full of people, but they would probably die a lot sooner.
Shush! You are not supposed to think about massively increasing productivity.
If you realize that one worker’s real economic output is now 10 times as high as a few decades ago, you won’t be properly scared about their screaming of demographics and how it’s totally unsustainable that now one worker has to “pay” for more than 3 times the amount of non-working people.
Wait? So real economic output per capita is up by ~ +250% and still we somehow don’t have any money to keep up with health care or social costs and can’t even afford to keep our infrastructure from crmbling away? I wonder were all that money is going…
I imagine the same thing which finished off heavy industry in the U.K. is hurting DE a lot also, high energy prices.
Less of a direct effect on assembly businesses, but for heavy production where your process is largely to convert energy to product its devestating. Then you lose those job while also having to pay another county for the product. It fucked us over here for sure
Yeah, that’s the fairy tale they try to tell us because it sounds logical if you don’t look closer.
In reality those high energy prices are just a narrative (at least for Germany). Heavy industry pays average amounts in European comparison. It’s the private end consumer who’s getting poor from all the taxes and fees to subsidize cheap energy for the industry. Those are the same people whose real wages increased by ~25% in the last few decades while their real economic output in the same time frame increased by ~250%. And all that money is funneled off to a few ultra rich while pensions, social benefits and health care are linked to the stagnating wages.
The actual problem of Germany’s economy is that they systematically fucked over Germans for decades to optimise their trade output. So now when global demand is shifting there is no domestic demand to compensate because they are all fucking poor (compare: average wealth with median wealth) and squeezed by constantly increasing costs that in many cases just increase the profit margins of the very same companies they already subsidize with their taxes.
Added some charts for comparison (data from 2024-2025):
What fairy tale? I was making an assumption based on watching the industry die in the UK for the reasons backed up by your graph.
Looks like Germany is different from what I assumed
The fairy tale German politicians and the media tell 24/7 of how high energy costs for the industry and much too high wages are the problem. And this is after all about a German CEO calling for lower wages “to safeguard Germany’s prosperity and welfare state”.
When in reality Germany, so the other 99,999999% but him, are struggling because of low wages that in no way represent their economic output, high and rising energy costs –exactly so the industry gets lower costs– and with the pension, social and health system not looking sustainable, but again not because of the delusions this guy and his other rich friends are spreading, but because they are linked to stagnating wages. Suggesting more less and lower pay so his profit margins go up and the country is more fucked is simply insane… or just shameless. Yeah, probably the latter.
Wasn’t meant personally in any way. As I said, it sounds logical without a closer look. So I told how it looks from the inside.
Both can be true at the same time, we have all those same issues too, the gov enabled the rich (and the elected officials themselves) to loot the country. But also uncontrolled rising costs destroyed a lot of businesses which the country needed to function