If Germany’s economic model is the future of Europe, we should all be quite troubled. But that is where we seem to be going. The apparently successful re-election campaign of Angela Merkel, the Christian Democrat chancellor, promises “Germany’s future in good hands”. More, in other words, of the same. The policy response to the eurozone crisis is likely to remain a programme to induce member states to follow Germany’s path to competitiveness: cutting the cost of labour. Make no mistake; that has been the basis of the nation’s export success in the past dozen years; and exports have been its sole consistent source of growth in that period. But low wages are not the basis on which a rich nation should compete.
Since 2003 a falling unemployment rate has been the consequence of the creation of a large number of low-wage and part-time or flexitime jobs, without the benefits and protections afforded earlier postwar generations. Germany now has the highest proportion of low-wage workers relative to the national median income in western Europe. Average wages increased by more than inflation and productivity growth in the past year for the first time after more than a decade of stagnation.
Ideally, a wealthy country should stay competitive through research and development, and capital investment. Instead, total gross fixed investment has fallen steadily in Germany, from 24 per cent to less than 18 per cent of gross domestic product, since 1991. The recent OECD Economic Survey of Germany states that German investment has been persistently well below the rate of the rest of the Group of Seven leading economies since 2001 (and not just because of the bubbles of the mid-2000s in the US and UK). Even the employment mini-miracle and export boom since 2003 were not enough to induce German businesses to increase investment – and public infrastructure investment has been even more lacking.