News From George Soros' Berlin Conference - Economists Discover Human Beings

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Could economists be leaving behind their mechanistic paradise for the messy, unpredictable human world?

April 18, 2012

Economists are peculiar creatures. Last week a large posse of them descended on Berlin for the third annual conference of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), a think-tank co-founded by investor and philanthropist George Soros in 2009 in the wake of the global financial crisis.

As I roamed through the various sessions and gatherings, pointy-headed folk squinted at me and rattled off facts and figures that gave them the sort of thrill I get from seeing spring flowers in bloom. The field of economics is known for attracting Asperger’s-spectrum wonks better at formulating financial models than the flow of human interaction. But if the Berlin forum is any indication, the field is now fitfully reorienting itself: it wants to understand those fascinating and often irrational beings known as “people.”  READ MORE

Here Is Germany: World War 2 Propaganda Documentary Film

This maybe a propaganda film but there are plenty of "takeaways" for Americans who are familiar with how we were misled into war etc.,  ponder those informative takeaways about unquestioned authority.  allowing the same people who ruined things to remain in control among other tings.  Watch it and think.

How Germany Builds Twice as Many Cars as the U.S. While Paying Its Workers Twice as Much

A BMW assembly plant in Leipzig, Germany

In 2010, Germany produced more than 5.5 million automobiles; the U.S produced 2.7 million. At the same time, the average auto worker in Germany made $67.14 per hour in salary in benefits; the average one in the U.S. made $33.77 per hour. Yet Germany’s big three car companies—BMW, Daimler (Mercedes-Benz), and Volkswagen—are very profitable.

How can that be? The question is explored in a new article from Remapping Debate, a public policy e-journal. Its author, Kevin C. Brown, writes that “the salient difference is that, in Germany, the automakers operate within an environment that precludes a race to the bottom; in the U.S., they operate within an environment that encourages such a race.” READ MORE