Re: what's wrong with eastern germans?

royls_at_telus.net
Date: 07/27/04 

Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 17:12:55 GMT

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 16:53:41 +0200, "Volker Hetzer"
<volker.hetzer@ieee.org> wrote:

><royls@telus.net> schrieb im Newsbeitrag news:41015de9.10586783@news.telus.net...
>> On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 12:11:57 +0200, Stephan Lahl <s.lahl@gmx.de>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >East germans didn't have any significant
>> >money savings left after the monetary union. The exchange rate from "Mark
>> >der DDR" to DM emptied their bank accounts and rendered all savings
>> >worthless.
>>
>> ?? IIRC, DDR marks were exchanged at par, an _extremely_ generous
>> rate.
>So what? As a western german guy you are expected to have a few tens
>of thousands of deutschmark to help yourself along during retirement.
>Or a house or so. As an east german you had a puny wage and a generous
>pension. So, however gernerous a 1:2 rate is perceived by you, a
>life's savings of US$ 3000 would be considered worthless in the larger
>schema of things.

Their savings were actually worth more in terms of the products they
could buy, though you are right in the sense that they were
impoverished by housing costs that rose dramatically as immense
quantities of publicly created land value were shoveled into the
pockets of private landowners for doing nothing.
 
>> >Short time later most east germans were fired.
>>
>> ?? Completely false.
>Oh, right? I know of *NO ONE* apart from government clerks
>and some teachers who wasn't unemployed at least once after
>the unification.

You just don't know enough people, then. The German government
arranged for many industrial concerns to be privatized with
undertakings by the new owners not to fire workers. While many East
Germans were fired or otherwise out of their jobs, most were not.

>> >Remember that literally all factories and
>> >industries in east germany were smashed in the first years after reunion.
>>
>> ?? False and ridiculous.
>Ok, it took three years. Other than that I've seen enough ruins.

That is just false. There are ruins, of course, but also many intact
and still operating industrial establishments that have been and are
gradually upgrading their capital equipment.

-- Roy L