Newsweek:

"As long as the government is more interested in shuffling the jobless between useless projects and playing with the numbers instead of tackling real labor market reform, it will be a long time before Germany is working again. Absurd laws such as those passed last week only feed the vicious cycle, in which ever higher taxes to finance ever more spending and ever more bureaucracy destroys more and more jobs. For Germany the choice is stark: cut this monstrosity down to size, or pay the price of stagflation. An underemployed and overtaxed Germany will only drag itself down—and the rest of Europe, too."

Germany seems intent on winning its contest for "best Socialist paradise", versus France, its main competitor in clueless economics (see this just-published a survey by Economist.) Both use variations of the same stupid methods. Considering the aging populations, and the 20+% of people under 30 who never had a real job, the two main economies in continental Europe are headed for disaster.

Update: [Eric Raymond] Demographics and the Dustbin of History (I would have written the same essay almost word for word).

02/10/03 update: [BusinessWeek] The Decline of Germany.