Lifting the minimum wage directly impacts the available income of the lowest income classes, who in turn spend most of their income on consumption, increasing domestic demand and thus also helping the economy.

Only around 3.7% of German workers earn minimum wage. Increasing their wages a little won’t move the needle on the economy. I generally support a healthy minimum wage, but Germany’s economic issues are systemic, and require much broader solutions. Making the cost of doing business even higher right now in Germany - which is what raising the minimum wage does - is antithetical to fostering weak economic growth. Industrial production in particular continues to decline, which is a big problem for Germany. Merkel’s strategy of going all-in on Russian natural gas turned out to be catastrophic. The cost of energy is just too high now for a raft of different sectors. I’m sure you’ve heard all of this before in economic analysis, but these are some of the primary issues and tactical solutions Germany should tackle.

1. Cheaper energy. This is strangling industries which employ millions and have been the backbone of the economy for decades. Germany needs to build nuclear capacity ASAP, or begin importing massive amounts of Russian natural gas, or begin burning a lot more coal. For environmental, economic, and ethical reasons, I support nuclear. Renewables are about 4x more expensive than nuclear after imputing costs like storage and grid architecture [1].

2. Germany needs to embrace efficiency at a cultural level. In 2023, 51 % of all point-of-sale transactions were made using banknotes and coins. I cite this not because I think cash is a perfect analogue for efficiency, but to underscore the distrust so many Germans have in technology. Most government departments still use fax machines. Germany’s internet infrastructure is just terrible. There is an astounding lack of digitisation across both the public and private sectors. This aversion to efficiency becomes an increasingly heavy anchor around the neck of the nation as the rest of the world embraces new technologies to build and serve more products and services, faster.

3. Germany needs a new strategic focus in the economy. Even with cheap energy, industrial production can and will be done cheaper in developing nations. Their car industry is clearly unable to pivot to EVs, and it’s going to completely miss automated driving. Using VW software is like going back to a Nokia flip phone. They need to figure out how to invest in and excel at services and software. This is almost impossible to mandate at a governmental level in a democratic nation. This one will be the toughest to turn around and for this reason, my long term prognosis for Germany is poor relative to many other European nations.

4. Restructuring Germany’s immigration system to block low and no skilled immigrants, and greatly simplify immigration for high skilled immigrants. Research by the ifo Institute concludes that the 2015 immigration wave has widened the implicit long-term debt burden, i.e., including future pensions, by almost 10 percent of GDP. According to this, every admitted refugee costs the budget around 225 thousand euros over the course of her or his entire life. [2] This problem is getting worse every year. Germany’s immigration system is very difficult to navigate, and can be quite hostile for legal, qualified migrants.

5. Compounding all of the above is a declining fertility rate. Few countries have solved this issue, meaning [highly skilled and qualified[ immigration is more important than ever. I don’t think we can rely on improving native fertility rates.

When an economy is performing as poorly as Germany, economic stimulus is required. This means lower taxes and increased government spending. QE is not possible for those using the Euro so it might mean accepting higher levels of debt. This is a distinctly un-German proposition. The current government has secured the right to increase national debt but only in the context of Russian aggression. Debt by itself is bad, but if used prudently to stimulate the economy in the right direction, can be useful. I sadly do not trust the German government to invest it wisely. It’s much more likely to go towards manufacturing mortar rounds, and to pay for ever increasing social services.

No, rape is always bad, whether or not the media reports it.

Plexamp is mind blowingly good. Great UX. Perfect reliability. No discovery/ads up in your face. Just you listening to your music how you like it. Streaming is ROCK SOLID. Downloads work flawlessly. It just relies on proper metadata in Plex.

FYI you can definitely watch while your network is offline. You just net to tell it that you’re happy with that (it’s not activated by default for security reasons).

• In your Plex server settings, go to Network, enable “Show Advanced”.

• Near the bottom, find the textbox that says List of IP addresses and networks that are allowed without auth

• In this field, enter the local IP address of any Plex client(s) you want to keep using if your internet (or the Plex cloud) is down.

• A example: 192.168.0.50

• Save the setting, done.

#Important thing to be aware of:

What this setting does is tell your local Plex server to simply give any Plex client that connects from that specific IP full admin access to your Plex server, ignoring any account restrictions. This means that if you have things in place to restrict access to some libraries (kids blocked from 18+ movies etc) those restrictions will have no effect. Also if you have the option set to allow file deletion, then any client from that IP could also delete items. And they could of course change any settings in your Plex server. So your kids can watch anything on your server, if you have a guest in your network and they browse to the Plex web interface, they can mess with things.

Because of that I would recommend to limit the amount of IP’s you enter in that field to the absolute bare minimum. For example, only whitelist the “main living room device” plus one device you to admin the server, such as a laptop.

If you want to whitelist multiple devices, this is a example:

192.168.0.50,192.168.0.77,192.168.0.80

If you want to whitelist a entire network, these would be examples:

192.168.0.0/24 (this means 192.168.0.0 - 192.168.0.255)

192.168.0.0/16 (this means 192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255)

And of course those involved network devices should use static IPs in your home network.

Ditto. There is a crowd on Lemmy who seem to get angry whenever people are happy to pay for software and I do not understand it. Surely we want developers to be paid for their hard work? Don’t we want them to able to comfortably live?

You didn’t just “contextualize.” You minimised the number: “Yeah, that totally sounds like a lot in a country of 84m. /s” Those are your words, verbatim.

It was 3,000 officers. Germany has 333,000 full time officers. That’s 0.9% of the force. Hardly grossly disproportionate to the benefit. There are undoubtedly far less “efficient” endeavours they use police resources on. The clearance rate for burglary in Germany, for example, was 19.5% in 2001. If we extend your logic, police should just stop investigating burglaries. I might even agree. I consider catching smugglers and terrorists more important.

I see, so you believe it has low benefit for the cost? Surely you would need to know the cost (e.g. number of personnel deployed) to make that judgement?

I would also caution you against attempting to hide big numbers behind even bigger numbers. 35 arrests a day is 12,775 per year. That might not be a proportionally big number, but it is a big number. Especially when we remember that the majority of violent crime is committed by just 1% of the population. Detecting and arresting criminals is often even more effective than harsh sentences.

I think criminals of all levels should be appropriately punished. Otherwise the law should change to reflect what is and is not criminal.

It doesn’t look like any were turned away, but please correct me if you have another source. In this case it’s hard to imagine those smugglers and terrorists were about to turn their lives around and begin taking care of elderly people.

I don’t understand what you’re arguing. That because Germany has 84M people they should just let smugglers, people with open arrest warrants, terrorists, and extremists into the country as they please? Why? That seems crazy to me.

Bild reported that over two days, authorities also detained 14 smugglers, carried out 48 open arrest warrants, and apprehended nine individuals under extremism laws targeting hard-left, far-right, and Islamist ideologies, among others.

Holy shit. Two days. Imagine how many more criminals and terrorists they’re going to find if they retain this policy. Previously these people just came and went as they pleased.

Renewables correct prices downward from where a fossil-only system would price electricity …

They would, if they weren’t four times more expensive than nuclear, and 13 times more expensive than gas.

… so that’s the heart of the matter: Russia’s actions increasing the price of fossil fuels.

It’s certainly one of the issues, but not the only issue. The gas price is close to historical averages now, yet UK electricity prices remain very high.

And does that make any sense at all, given Russia’s domination of nuclear supply chains? France’s nuclear program is mortally dependent on Russian cooperation in a lot of ways too.

Russia controls approximately 22% of the world’s uranium conversion capacity and 44% of its enrichment capacity. This is hardly insurmountable. It should spur investment from other nations. China accounts for approximately 70–90% of the global market across all stages of the lithium-ion battery value chain. Does that mean the world should give up on EVs and battery storage? Surely not.

Meanwhile over here in Germany, the designated chancellor and his “Christian Democrat” party quickly stowed away their pre-election rhetoric about building new nuclear plants/reviving existing plants, after an informal paper from their own party made the rounds, outlining that reviving nuclear in Germany would necessitate massive state aid or even having the state itself run the plants.

I don’t know what you mean by “stowed away,” but their policy shows they are still very much open to nuclear energy.

But realistically, I think they’d need 2 or 3 times that, right? Afaik, France is currently building just a single domestic plant and they’re not exactly executing there. Neither are they executing on the Hinkley Point project. And Olkiluoto was a massive shitshow where French taxpayers financed the 3/4 of the costs that constituted the cost overrun. There are basically two countries that still know how to build nuclear reactors, those are Russia and China, everyone else just incurs perverse cost and build-time overruns. And it does make sense: A centralized, dangerous, expensive technology that works best for centralized, authoritarian regimes that can afford to put all their state power behind these projects. (And yet, China is building out solar/wind much more aggressively than nuclear.)

France definitely doesn’t need 2-3 times that based on current implementation of renewables.

You won’t catch me defending the speed of large reactor roll-outs. Despite this, and the high costs, it’s still much cheaper than renewables. SMRs will be much faster to deploy, much more flexible, much cheaper, and require much less planning.

China is also building two “mega” coal lignite power plants per week. I don’t think we should use them as a role model.

New nuclear plants are also completely useless against climate change, given their decade/multi-decade build times, especially compared to renewables where plants can be rolled out in a matter of months. Meanwhile, existing French reactors need to be taken offline in summer because their water consumption is woefully ill-adjusted to climate change and they turn France’s rivers into bouillabaisse.

CO2 production is expected to continue to climb for 50-100 years, and we won’t reach CO2 neutrality for hundreds of years, if ever. A 7-10 year timespan is very little compared to the enormous environmental benefits.

Nuclear capacity has been flatlining (at best) for two decades, while renewables have exploded. Even if you assume just 10% utilization for the renewable plants, yesteryear’s addition of 6GW nuclear capacity pales in comparison to the 600GWp PV/wind capacity.

This is a political decision, not one based in science or finance. Despite renewables being far from ready to replace Germany’s nuclear generation, the public voted to switch to much more environmentally damaging gas generation. That gas was primarily coming from a hostile, authoritarian nation. The public voted to place the economic prosperity of Germany in the hands of Russia. It was one of the most tragic examples of democratic self immolation in all of history.

Even the author of that study admits to (latently pro-fashy shitrag) NZZ that cheaper batteries would solve the issue. Incidentally, what we’ve been seeing over the past decade is steadily decreasing battery prices, as scale goes up and cheaper materials substitute more expensive ones.

And I fully agree with the author. In 30-50 years when battery technology becomes cost effective at grid scale, we’ll be having a very different discussion.

I don’t really want to know what else is wrong with that study of his, given that the largest part of it is concerned with the near-pointless thought experiment of using 100%/95% exclusively solar+batteries. It seems massively more pertinent to worry about the final 10% renewables when the time has come. One major bit that I don’t see reflected in the study is flexibilization of demand e.g., which is a thing already. I recently saw a documentary that e.g. included a cold warehouse that could scale up/down its cooling in response to renewables availability. I visited a company producing electric componentry which is doing its electronic component testing on sunny days where they have a lot of solar. I know similar concepts exist for aluminum smelters.

That’s fair. It expands on the even more flawed LCOE metric which is widely (and incorrectly) used to compare wind/solar with nuclear/gas/coal.

Are there even SMR projects that haven’t been cancelled?

Rolls Royce isn’t due to deliver commercial SMRs until the early 2030s. Until then designs are either bespoke (and expensive, and untested), or using the GE Hitachi BWRX-300, which is also very expensive because it’s only licensed, and built on site to spec. It has many of the same issues as traditional large reactors. GE began licensing that design in 2020, and the most advanced project is I think in Canada, due to be completed in 2028. Once RR figures out their production lines, I think we see huge efficiencies of scale and much easier planning.

I’m much more optimistic about nuclear power in Europe. Given the high pricing volatility induced by renewables and the gas supply shock after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, nine European countries are now intending to build new reactors. Even Denmark is softening its stance on nuclear power, with the entire right wing bloc proposing lifting the ban. France intends to build 14 new reactors by 2050. While conventional reactors are expensive, they’re four times cheaper than solar and wind with all costs imputed. Further, we are about to enter a new age of SMRs, and all preliminary data suggesting a per unit capex cost of almost half, and the ability to extend networks as needed far more flexibly to better align with modern grids comprised of more renewables.

Ironically, I think Fediverse suffers from a high amount of tech expertise and not enough project managers, lol.

I 1,000% agree. FOSS projects are dominated by skilled developers who have to work under the direction of managers in their day jobs and FUCKING HATE IT. They dream about breaking the shackles of idiotic managers who are suppressing their talent and creativity, so they work on FOSS projects. Only to learn that developers without clear direction is like herding angry cats at a Metallica concert. The end result is a patchwork of features each developer would personally like, but normal people hate.

I am probably biased here because I am one of those managers. The reason we don’t work on FOSS projects is because 1) they don’t want us working on them, and 2) we fucking hate our jobs as-is, and don’t want to spend one more minute than necessary herding angry cats.

Well spotted. The difference between the UK and the rest of the EU is that the latter relies more heavily on contracts for difference. Renewable projects and installations negotiate a strike price up front (and often on an ongoing or scheduled basis). If the highest bid price (e.g. gas) exceeds the strike price, the renewable installation repays or foregoes the difference. The UK is very slowly moving in this direction, but has been criticised for its lack of action on older installations (which retain their direct pricing mechanisms), and slow pace of change for newer installations.

This is compounded by the UK’s comparative lack of EU interconnections which help these other countries smooth out volatility. By, for example, relying more on France’s nuclear power generation. This means the UK more frequently sees high clearing prices.

This one is pretty good.

Lots of people have opinions, not many people want to organize their thoughts into, eg. an effective advertising campaign, a github pull request, or basically anything other than meaningless musing.

This is the nature of free work. Any donation of time is sparse and intermittent. People have bills to pay. The best and brightest want to be paid well for their time. This requires a business model of some kind, and monetising that work. This is antithetical to FOSS projects, and is the reason they will almost always be inferior to projects with large budgets with teams of UX designers. /obligatory COME AT ME BRO

While I agree that energy-intensive business should always be pushed onto flexible-pricinv contracts, as a private consumer, uniform pricing is an advantage imo. You don’t need to think about whether running the washing machine will cost you 0.2¤ or 0.6¤ or whether there’s a price surge, and it’s even more expensive.

Fixed pricing happens in Europe too. The retailer prices the volatility into a fixed pricing plan. It still ends up much cheaper than how the UK has structured their grid, which ensures electricity companies are making massive piles of money.

UK’s uniform pricing is intended to ensure renewables are artificially profitable, incentivising more production. In most other countries, suppliers charge competitive rates, and brokers buy on an open market. This allows demand-based generators (like gas) to charge more during high demand periods (when wind isn’t blowing and sun isn’t shining). The flip side of this is that prices crater during high wind and sun periods. This leads to volatility which can be smoothed with futures contracts. The net effect is that renewables become less profitable, but consumers pay a lot less for electricity.

The UK needs to restructure their energy market to better align with the rest of Europe. It would significantly reduce prices for everyone.

I’ve had exactly the same experience. Lemmy has been far more hostile than I ever experienced on Reddit. Any opinions which aren’t far left are called “Nazi,” and users are very quick to justify violence against “Nazis.”

That’s coherent. Unfortunately most people who use it today literally mean “someone who disagrees with me.” It really muddies the water because it’s often accompanied by threats of violence. The net effect is raising the temperature in the room on both sides, because it’s effectively dehumanising others who have perfectly valid political disagreements, and calling for their death.