To reach gluemaker Delo Industrie Klebstoffe GmbH, you drive an hour from Munich, past villages with onion-domed churches and the Ammersee, a cobalt-blue lake with views of the Alps, before turning into offices nestled between a cornfield and a grove of beech treeshardly the kind of place youd expect to find a global leader in its industry. Yet one of Delos adhesives is used in 80 percent of the worlds smart cards, and its customers are spread across Europe, the U.S., and Asia. That success is testament to Germanys commitment to globalismnow a dirty word in some countriesand helps explain a political puzzle: How, in 2017, can Europes biggest economy have a normal, even boring, election while crusading populists have upended the political order elsewhere? “Other countries havent had the stability weve enjoyed,” says Delo Managing Partner Sabine Herold. “Its a mistake to believe that you can save your castle by building more walls.” When Germans vote on Sept. 24, theyre likely to back the same pair of centrist parties that have run the country since World War II, selling pretty much the same policies and messages theyve advocated for decades. Neither side has made Trump-style appeals to restrict trade or pare back globalization. They havent even bashed the European Union. Chancellor Angela Merkel, the sensible shoes of global politics, is all but certain to win a fourth term by pledging to, well, keep things more or less the way they are. When Germans look at countries that have elected populists, they get scared back toward the political center, says Christina Tillmann, a political analyst at the Bertelsmann Institute, a think tank. And then theres the countrys history: “The whole appeal of a nationalist ideal,” Tillmann says, “just doesnt resonate very well here.” Merkels longevity is doubtless due to her skills as a politician, but its also because most Germans recognize theyre globalizations winners. Germany has thousands of midsize, family-owned enterprises like Delowhat they call the spread across the country, distributing wealth rather than concentrating it in a few cities. And employees typically feel they have a share in a companys success. Delo, for instance, doesnt use any temporary staff, so everyone from janitors to research scientists is a full employee. Delos adhesives, which can top €3,000 ($3,600) for a container the size of a soda can, are all made at the companys factory outside Munich. And as a private company, Delo can prioritize long-term growthits sales have more than tripled in the past decadeover short-term profits. That glue for credit cards? It took seven years to develop. “A big company would have axed the project long ago,” says Herold, an engineer who in 1997 took over the company with her husband. Successive German governments have nurtured the Mittelstand, which supplies the world with everything from tiny screws that penetrate concrete, to automated ovens for grilling 400 chickens at a time, to tunnel-boring machines as long as oil tankers. The sectors strength helped bring unemployment down to 5.7 percent in July, from almost 12 percent in 2005. Industry still accounts for more than a quarter of German jobs, a level not seen in the U.S. since 1984, the World Bank says. About 1,500 Mittelstand companies are leaders in their niches, vs. only about 300 in the U.S., says Carsten Linnemann, a lawmaker with Merkels Christian Democratic Union and head of the partys group that coordinates relations with the Mittelstand. “Most Germans know that they profit from trade,” he says. Although the U.S. has also been a winner from globalization, the wealth has flowed mostly to the top, fostering resentment and the rise of figures such as Donald Trump. In Germany, where exports account for 46 percent of the economy, quadruple the U.S. level, stressing the benefits of globalization plays well with the electorate. A recent study by the Bertelsmann Institute found that calls to overthrow the political elite or erect trade barriers alienate German voters. Merkel isnt shy about her fondness for free trade, and she frequently praises the Mittelstand in campaign stops. On Sept. 1 she dropped in at the annual meeting of a lobbying group for the sector in Nuremberg. “The backbone of the economy is the Mittelstand, so thank you very much,” Merkel tells hundreds of delegates packed into the citys convention hall. “We must fight to ensure we keep our status as a great exporter, and that Made in Germany continues to mean something.” Germany, of course, isnt immune to populism and has an active neo-Nazi movement: Last year the interior ministry recorded more than 22,000 right-wing extremist crimes, the highest number on record. But no hard-right party has made it into the Bundestag since the 1950s. Thats likely to change this time around, with polls showing the populist Alternative for Germanyknown by the acronym AfDwill get about 10 percent of the vote in this months elections. The party is strongest in the formerly communist East, where the Mittelstand has shallower roots. Jobs are more scarce and salaries are about 30 percent below those in the West. Across Germany, income inequality is an increasingly hot topic, and long-suppressed nationalism is slowly rising. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, a rural state on the Baltic Sea in the former German Democratic Republic, theres a sense of having been left behind after two decades of brain drain to the West. The AfD really took off after the 2015 refugee crisis, and last year it won 21 percent of the vote in the states elections, trailing only the Social Democrats (31 percent) and pushing Merkels CDU into third place, with 19 percent. Over a tankard of beer before a campaign event in Friedland, a two hours drive north of Berlin on an EU-funded autobahn, AfD candidate Enrico Komning insists his party is neither far right nor xenophobic, despite racist remarks from some leaders and a platform that dismisses Islam as un-German. Komning says that while the German economy is thriving, the benefits dont reach many of his supporters. For people who feel traditional parties dont represent them, “along comes the AfD, and we say: Well look after you,” he says. The party taps into national pride that Komning says has been wrongly stifled in the decades since the Nazi era. For most Germans, the memory of Hitlers rule still acts as an antidote to nationalist appeals. But Komning argues that “its wrong to focus on just these 12 years of National Socialism and ignore the good in the rest of German history.” Komning defends a key AfD strategy: cranking up the heat on the current government in whatever way the party canan approach that came into sharp focus at a Merkel rally an hour further north, in the Hanseatic port of Greifswald. As Merkel makes her way to the podium in Fishmarket square, a plane flies low overhead trailing a blue banner that reads “Vote AfD.” When whistling AfD demonstrators interrupt her, Muttior “mother,” as the chancellor is often calledbreaks from her speech to mock the hecklers. “I dont think whistling will build Germanys future,” she says before returning to her speech. She promises to boost security and avoid a repeat of 2015, when a million-plus migrants crossed into Germanyher biggest point of vulnerability with voters. But mostly she talks about maintaining the countrys economic edge: improving technology in schools, shoring up infrastructure, and helping automakers develop new, cleaner engines. The message resonates with Hans-Christian Schwieker, a 79-year-old vacationer from Cologne. Tucking into a bowl of hearty pea soup with bockwurst, he says hes not a big Merkel fan but nonetheless plans to vote for her. Sure, the campaign is boring. But thats as it should be, says Schwieker, who as a child in 1945 fled whats now Poland with his family. “Germany has experience with extremism,” he says. “We dont want change.” Source: http://allofbeer.com/2017/10/26/thank-economic-growth-for-germanys-boring-elections/ from https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2017/10/26/thank-economic-growth-for-germanys-boring-elections/
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AuthorHi my name is Samantha Roberts I am 23 years old and I just graduated with my BSN degree I love to enjoy going out with friends on my spare time and enjoying the Bachelor life. Archives
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