How American Students Can Get a University Degree For Free In Germany

HughPickens.com writes: BBC reports that Germany has abandoned tuition fees altogether for German and international students alike and more than 4,600 US students are fully enrolled at Germany universities, an increase of 20% over three years. "When I found out that just like Germans I'm studying for free, it was sort of mind blowing," says Katherine Burlingame who decided to get her Master's degree at a university in the East German town of Cottbus. "I realized how easy the admission process was and how there was no tuition fee. This was a wow moment for me." When Katherine came to Germany in 2012 she spoke two words of German: 'hallo' and 'danke'. She arrived in an East German town which had, since the 1950s, taught the majority of its residents Russian rather than English. "At first I was just doing hand gestures and a lot of people had compassion because they saw that I was trying and that I cared." She did not need German, however, in her Master's program, which was filled with students from 50 different countries but taught entirely in English. In fact, German universities have drastically increased all-English classes to more than 1,150 programs across many fields.

So how can Germany afford to educate foreign students for free? Think about it this way: it's a global game of collecting talent. All of these students are the trading cards, and the collectors are countries. If a country collects more talent, they'll have an influx of new ideas, new businesses and a better economy. For a society with a demographic problem — a growing retired population and fewer young people entering college and the workforce — qualified immigration is seen as a resolution to the problem as research shows that 50% of foreign students stay in Germany. "Keeping international students who have studied in the country is the ideal way of immigration," says Sebastian Fohrbeck."They have the needed certificates, they don't have a language problem at the end of their stay and they know the culture."

Comments

and the beer is really good

[jfdavis668]

Just what college kids need, access to beer.

Re:and the beer is really good

[tehlinux]

Last I checked, college kids already have plenty of access to beer.

Re:and the beer is really good

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if you are going to blunt your brains on beer might as well make it good beer

Re:and the beer is really good

[seyyah]

I love Germany, but I don't know of any German beers that are all that good. They certainly have the reputation but the reality has always been disappointing.

Re:and the beer is really good

[Stephan Schulz]

I love Germany, but I don't know of any German beers that are all that good. They certainly have the reputation but the reality has always been disappointing.

The unusual quality that might irritate people used to Bud Light is called "taste", and is usually considered a good thing in beers.

Re:and the beer is really good

[Hognoxious]

If your reference point for a good beer is Bud, Heineken or Stella then I wouldn't be surprised.

Re:and the beer is really good

[antiperimetaparalogo]

I love Germany, but I don't know of any German beers that are all that good. They certainly have the reputation but the reality has always been disappointing.

I can accept your opinion IF you are from some of Germany's neighbor countries (e.g., Austria/Belgium/Czech - great beers!), or at least from Europe (e.g., i am from Greece, maybe the European country with the least "beer" tradition, but still we have a couple of decent large-scale production beers, plus, a dozen of good micro-brew beers), OR... you exclude from your good beer list any American (at least large-scale production - i can accept that some good micro-brew beers exist in USA... from German descendents!).

Re:and the beer is really good

[nedlohs]

Belgium is right next door. Who cares about the actual German beer...

Re:and the beer is really good

[angel'o'sphere]

Drinking beer and wine (unsupervised) is legal in most of Europe for kids aged 16 and above.

Supervised by parents AFAIK it is 14 (in germany). However no one really cares if the kids are younger in the presence of their parents.

Re:and the beer is really good

[angel'o'sphere]

Then describe what beer you like and you easy get hundreds of suggestions here.

The bandwidth of taste is so big if you had to taste with bound eyes you likely would many beers not even really recognize as a beer.

Re:and the beer is really good

[Anonymous Coward]

Augstiner Dunkle

Say no more. Beer with flavor, sent from heaven.

http://www.augustiner-braeu.de/augustiners/html/en/

They have been brewing since year 1328 !
By now they have achieved perfection !

Re:and the beer is really good

[bobbied]

I love Germany, but I don't know of any German beers that are all that good. They certainly have the reputation but the reality has always been disappointing.

They are not that good, they are just served in larger portions, which makes all the difference... (Well, that and they generally have more alcohol than what Americans are used to). Once you are buzzed, everything tastes good..... Well, at least to the college student.

BTW... I'm partially kidding. The Germans are generally better at brewing beer than the bulk of what's consumed on this side of the pond. Although with the micro-brewery thing here in the states, we have some really good stuff here too, it just doesn't usually come from the big nation wide commercial brewers..

Re:and the beer is really good

[Anonymous Coward]

He may be an American Craft IPA type. Although there is plenty of interesting beers from Germany besides Becks.

Re:and the beer is really good

[Anonymous Coward]

Belgium is right next door. Who cares about the actual German beer...

Me, 'cuz belgian beer tastes funny...they brag about the high alcohol content, but then it has to taste like that?

Re:and the beer is really good

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh... have you drank any German beers, at all?

Hefeweizen.

Drink that... you will put all other beers in a separate lower class.

Re:and the beer is really good

[swb]

America used to be the home of mass-produced watery beer, but I don't know about that anymore.

There are so many good beers brewed at American small brewers that it's hard to imagine. There are nearly a dozen microbreweries (nearly all of them canning & bottling for retail sales) within the city limits of Minneapolis alone, each with 3-4 regular production brews.

The shelf space at two of the better stores around here is like 50% small brewery, 30% imports and the remaining 20% pretty much everything else, including all the major brands. It's astonishing how fast the beer market has changed. There are even a few places that have opened up that sell nothing but microbrews with an inventory bigger than a lot of other entire liquor stores.

And all of this is compounded by the small brewers who aren't distributing across state lines. Half the great beer we don't even get access to because its stranded by ridiculous national tax rules.

Re:and the beer is really good

[Penguinisto]

He meant actual beer, not the mass-marketed barley-water that passes for 'beer' here in the US.

(then again, if you attend Portland State University, then kindly ignore what I just wrote, because you're pretty much good to go.)

Re:and the beer is really good

[antiperimetaparalogo]

Yes, that "mass-produced watery beer" (some brands of it imported in Europe (!)... for American tourists!) is my experience of American beer - i am glad that you mentioned good quality small brewery variety exist nowadays in the States, i am happy for you!
I was not trying to insult Yankees (i LOVE bourbon!), i just made a comparison (even our mass-produced -EVEN THE GREEK BRANDS, which is probably the worse in Europe- is decent beer).

Re:and the beer is really good

[Sique]

I don't like Hefeweizen at all. Never have, never will.

Re:and the beer is really good

[Opportunist]

You might want to keep that to yourself in Germany. Saying German beer isn't all that good is like saying you think Polish Vodka is the best ... and you're in Russia.

Re:and the beer is really good

[penguinoid]

Obligatory xkcd.

Re:and the beer is really good

[Anonymous Coward]

that is because your probally American and used to drinking frosty piss.

Re:and the beer is really good

[execthis]

OMG I remember fondly riding my rickety bicycle over the winding cobblestone streets into the Zentrum every week and getting the best pilsner in the world in some place that was like hundreds of years old and buzzing with all kinds of cool people. And riding back home over the cobblestones feeling giddy. Great memory.

As far as education in America - fuck America and its greed and appalling lack of vision. America is now quickly become a place that is only suitable for two types of people - retards and entitleds. It has a lot to offer the lobotomized, retarded masses. Great sports arenas. Tons of entertainment. And it has nice enclaves for the entitleds. But for normal, middle-class people it has become total shit.

Re:and the beer is really good

[Anonymous Coward]

IMHO they are not bad, but Belgian ones are significantly better. They do taste different compared to US beers so maybe people from the US experience this differently.

Re:and the beer is really good

[Anonymous Coward]

... certainly have the reputation ...

Two world wars destroyed the popularity of German beer, driving high society to (French) Champagne. Democratization caused champagne to be replaced by domestic sparkling wine but we still have Oktoberfest!

Re:and the beer is really good

[execthis]

One other thing America offers the retarded masses: Great aftermarket exhaust systems and boom stereo systems that are sure to vibrate the walls of buildings 1/4 mile away causing severe developmental disabilities thereby ensuring the creation of more masses of retards for the future. And if you can't afforded the aftermarket exhausts there's always the handy drill.

Re:and the beer is really good

[grahamsz]

I grew up in Scotland and now live in Boulder, CO.

The average standard and selection of beer in the US is so far head and shoulders above Scotland it's not even comparable. It's not unusual for restaurants to have dozens of beers on tap and larger liquor stores carry hundreds of different brews. If you like a good scots ale then you'll be ok in most of Scotland, and if you like a typical German beer then you'll be happy there, but if you like having a large selection of things to choose from then you'll be happier here.

Re:and the beer is really good

[grahamsz]

Plus if you exclude american breweries that aren't US-owned then you've suddenly lost Bud, Miller and Coors - that makes the average american beer a fuckton better

Re: and the beer is really good

[Anonymous Coward]

Franziscaner is a good brew.

Re:and the beer is really good

[Shadow of Eternity]

Masses of microbrewed hop-juice with asinine add-ins aren't much better.

Re:and the beer is really good

[Shadow of Eternity]

The problem is "microbrew" in america is pretty synonymous with an absolutely rip-snortingly insane amount of hops, you may as well just put a bunch in a blender and add ethanol.

Re:and the beer is really good

[Anonymous Coward]

Well fresh budweiser is a far cry from bud light that sat on a shelf for several weeks. I'd say it's a perfectly good mass-produced beer. Some other lesser-known brands are not too bad. The nondebatable part is that there IS a lot of horrible beer here in the states.

Re:and the beer is really good

[Anonymous Coward]

Now it's the home of overly hopped craft beer, that tastes even worse than crud lite.

If your a fan of bitter beer, instead of paying extra for the craft beer, you can just get some crud lite, let it sit in the can outside of refrigeration for a few months.

And you then have something that's almost as skunky/bitter/tasteful as the craft beer!

Re:and the beer is really good

[Golden_Rider]

Like with most things, it is a matter of taste and it also depends on what exactly you tried so far - if all you tried is the mass-produced stuff, it's of course not all that much better than the mass-produced stuff from the US (except maybe for sticking to the Reinheitsgebot). But here in Germany, we also have excellent small, local breweries (some of which even only offer their beer in the pub/restaurant at their brewery). German beer is not only Beck's, Paulaner, Löwenbräu, Warsteiner and so on. There's also stuff like http://www.bergbier.de/biersor... :-)

Re:and the beer is really good

[bickerdyke]

They are not that good, they are just served in larger portions, which makes all the difference..

Good luke with that opinion in Cologne or Düsseldorf.

Re:and the beer is really good

[Pinky's Brain]

It's consistently good enough to not mind the first half dozen ... after that all lagers are excellent to me.

Re:and the beer is really good

[mwehle]

Kölsch bitte.

Re:and the beer is really good

[MBGMorden]

There's no shortage of pretty good beer in the US (heck I make my own). The problem is that only a small percentage of people actually want it. Anything beyond Budweiser or Coors Light is considered "weird tasting". That's changing, but for the most part people are drinking that "mass marketed barley water" by choice, not out of lack of options.

Re:and the beer is really good

[ILongForDarkness]

German Pils are kind of middle of the road. I stick to wheat beers and the occasional Dunkle/Schwartz (darker beers). The problem is most people when they experience German imported beer it is usually Becks or Warsteiner neither of which are very good. The good thing in Germany is the prices too. You can get a decent Czech beer if you don't like German for around $1 a 0.5L ~pint (not a "bottle" like they call them over here), bottle of vodka for about $7, nice French wine for about 10 (pisses the French off their wine is cheaper in Germany) etc.

The article: food cost is being optimistic. It all depends on how much like a student you want to live. Meat is much more expensive as is fruit (when I was living there 7 years ago it was a euro for a grapefruit (~1.50 back then). Meat is about the same price in euros as it is in dollars over here (going by canadian prices which is expensive by US standards so probably more like 1.25X USD price in euros ~2X). Gas is about 2/3 the cost in euros per L as it is in the US per gallon. So if you are a student sure hope you don't want to drive.

Re:and the beer is really good

[ILongForDarkness]

IMO you need to step away from the german pils/lagers. Weisse both Heifen and Kristal are just magical. The problem is typically tourists come over and expect to order something that "looks like it does back home" and get Becks or a local equivalent and it is just okay. That said if you like to drink Bud or similar style piss you can get it in Germany for around 30 cents a pint.

Re:and the beer is really good

[blueg3]

The unusual quality that might irritate people used to Bud Light is called "taste", and is usually considered a good thing in beers.

It would be a tough call to choose between the so-called "flavor" of Beck's or Bitburger and the lack thereof of Bud Light.

Mercifully, in Germany and the US, you can get good beer. It accounts for a small fraction of nationwide sales (and a tiny fraction of exports) in either case, but it's there.

Germany is heavy on tradition, so most of the breweries that are good have been doing this a long time. The mass-market is newer and sucks. In the US, the closest thing to a worthwhile traditional beer is something like PBR or Narragansett. (The mass-market crap we got from a combination of German immigrants and industrialization.) So all of our good breweries are young and experimental. Either works, but sadly, neither makes a sizable dent in mass-market beer.

Re:and the beer is really good

[allcoolnameswheretak]

Rothaus 4 teh win!

Best beer in the world.

Re:and the beer is really good

[blueg3]

That's so 2000s.

Now it's Belgians. No, wait, sorry, that was two years ago. Saisons? "Farmhouse"? No, that was last year. Sours. I think it's sours now. Especially gose or barrel-aged. Though there's always been a level of support for anything barrel-aged, especially if the alcohol level makes you double check to make sure it's not wine you're buying.

The hoppiness is probably a byproduct of the fact that we have good hop breeding labs and a lot of brewers tired of beer with no bitterness. (Incidentally, Germany has good hop breeding labs, too, but they have a hard time selling their more aggressively-flavored products locally. Sad for a country that's fighting losing one of the world's finest hops to disease and that processes a ton of delicately-flavored hops into canned hop extract.)

Also, it's dextrose-heavy double IPAs that taste like an ethanol-water hop tea. (Or, if you prefer, triple-strength Bud Light with hops.) Even quite hoppy single IPAs still have a noticeable malt presence and yeast esters.

Re:and the beer is really good

[blueg3]

To be fair, if you go to any sizable store or gathering in Germany, it's quite clear that the vast majority of what anyone sells, buys, or drinks is crap like Beck's.

Weizenbier is probably the most widely-available good beer in Germany. (Though, IMO, a Jever will do in a pinch.) More regionally, helles, festbier, and dunkel from respected breweries are good. Same with rauchbier or schwartzbier, but those are an odder flavor and less common. Koelsch is excellent.

There are some good Pils also, but it's not a flavor everyone likes, and it's so popular in the mass market that you've got to be careful about what you're buying.

Re:and the beer is really good

[angel'o'sphere]

Don't be shy about greek beer,

Nor is Strella as someone mentioned above a bad beer either.

Beers ... and that counts for many drinks, like a good Sangria ... are made in a certain context.

E.g. San Miguell, a spanish beer, would not win a contest in Germany. Some pubs sell it here and honestly, it is not bad, but for german taste simply to simple. On the other hand: if you drink it in Spain, where/when it is really hot, and you get it served in a glass that was "frozen" in a freezer and gets icy hoarfrost on the outside: it tastes marvelous!

Then in Germany we have so many beers that are brewed for a special occasion. And: if you drink such a beer half a year later: it simply does not taste well.

It is interesting to look at beer bottle labels and figure the "served best at temperature X".

Like with wine, every beer has its special temperature where it tastes best, and for many beers we even have a special glass for the beer. Some beers taste best if drunk from the bottle.

So if you have a random beer in your hands which tastes not good, it simply might be circumstances.

No one will like a heavy, sweat, brown christmas/winter beer with 5.5% (or up to 7.5%) alcohol served at 10 to 12 degrees celsius (which could be the right temperature) in a hot summer with 35 degrees or 40 degrees. Nor would you like it if it is winter and it is cooled down to 8 degrees.

Those heavy beers where invented (Belgium is famous for them) by monks who had to faste during certain periods of the year. So they invented beers that are replacements for the meals. So the beers are heavy and full of nutritions.

Bottom line: if you drink a greek beer in Greece, according to local customs (temperature, time of day etc.) it very likely tastes very well.

Same with Retsina ... a cheap simple greek wine. The good ones are marvelous, but you can only drink them in Germany when it is really hot and the wine is really cold.

Re:and the beer is really good

[blueg3]

They are not that good, they are just served in larger portions, which makes all the difference... (Well, that and they generally have more alcohol than what Americans are used to).

That's a tough sell. Most of the popular German beers are only around 5%. That's more than Bud Light but not outside the range that any college student would be used to. But many of those are served at ~350 mL (12 oz). Weizenbier is often served by the half liter, but that's just a pint. The only German beer that's regularly served in a Mass (liter) is Munich beers. Those are often ~4%. So you're really down to just Munich festbier, which can be north of 5% and served in two-pint glasses.

The real devil is the undertrained American bartender who will pour you a pint of a Scotch ale, Russian Imperial Stout, Belgian quad, barleywine, or big double IPA. Oof.

Re:and the beer is really good

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of us think they're worse.

But i have things figured out, ask one of the hop addicts: "Which beer don't you like?" Then drink that one and more often I'm right than wrong.

Re:and the beer is really good

[angel'o'sphere]

You neither pay in grmany nor france 10 euros for an "ordinary" bottle of wine.

And rest assured: a frensh wine is rarely cheaper in germany than in france.

Re:and the beer is really good

[PrimaryConsult]

I'm guessing it's regional. In northeast cities a night out will typically start with craft beers like Sam Adams, Harpoon or Saranac and end with "the cheap stuff" to keep the party going (source: uhh... extensive self-funded research in various cities and towns in New York and New England).

Re:and the beer is really good

[rtb61]

Seriously that is all the morons in this thread get from this story, access to German beer. The United States promotes the American Dream to gain immigrants, becoming a success where the sole measure of success is wealth and thus strives to attract, well, hmm, the greedy. So how are all those get rich quick narcissists and psychopaths working out for America. Hows the corruption going at every level of government, private industry, news organisations, religious organisations and even charities (PS stop calling the American Red Cross the Red Cross, own your own corruption).

So Germany seeks to bring in those who want to learn and the US still purely seeks those who want just want to earn by any means possible. America answer to this waffle on about beer, now what does that remind me of, ohh, that's right typical America media censorship of important stories in favour of empty reality TV fabrications.

Re:and the beer is really good

[swb]

There was a moment (still avaialble if you want it) where the challenge was to see how close you could get to 100 IBU but it wasn't always true, either. Brooklyn Brewery's flagship is an amber Lager, and a lot of the local places here are doing great things with Pilsners, Lagers, Kolsch, several quite good Saisons, Blonde Ales, Helles. Indeed Brewing has a fabulous Imperial Lager. The list is endless and I don't even pay attention to the real dark beers like Stouts.

I think the key thing (and maybe it's local to Minnesota, but I don't think so) is that there's SO MUCH variety and most of it is really, really good. I could buy nearly 30 varieties of beer in cans and bottles brewed in the citiy limits. Not including seasonals or special releases and also not including a half-dozen or more places that are taproom/growler only, including one that has 5 different ciders.

I'm not kidding, I'd weigh 400 pounds and be a raging alcoholic if I even TRIED to keep up with just the good beer brewed in Minneapolis proper that was available retail. I'd be DEAD if I added in the craft breweries outstate. I'd be dead 3 times over if I included a fraction of the outstate stuff, and that's without even bothering with more generic IPAs.

But even some of the hoppy stuff can be good, especially so when it doesn't try to be a boiler plate IPA.

Re:and the beer is really good

[Bing Tsher E]

The whole purpose of beer is because the water was bad and dangerous to drink back when beer was actually a practical beverage. Now it's just a cultural thing, like lutefisk.

It's sort of like ketchup. I have an old cookbook, and it has all sorts of kinds of ketchup. The tomato variety is the only one that most people think of anymore, but there was ketchup made out of all sorts of things, for example walnut ketchup. In particular, things that people wanted to preserve out-of-season in the old days.

Re:and the beer is really good

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still waiting for the obsession with hops to finally fade. At least we are starting to see some good sour beers, along with the barrel aged stouts

Re:and the beer is really good

[AthanasiusKircher]

Now it's Belgians. No, wait, sorry, that was two years ago. Saisons? "Farmhouse"? No, that was last year. Sours. I think it's sours now. Especially gose or barrel-aged.

You're making the mistake of conflating current fashion among the beer equivalent of " foodies" (I'm sure there's a word for them) with actual current stocks found in bars and such around the U.S. I can assure you that it's VERY common in many cities in the U.S. to still see a trend toward very hoppy beers occupying large portions of the menu. Many bars realized they needed to start stocking some "craft" beers, so they jumped on the hops bandwagon, and it's still a major market for a lot of craft breweries. Yes, new fads will come, but the hoppiness is still pretty dominant in many places... I often go to bars with 20+ beers on tap, and I struggle to find something "interesting" and different from standard mass-production beers and isn't called "hoptastic" or "hops-my-goodness" or some stupid name... (FYI -- I love sours, for example, but I have only seen them actually on tap in a bar once or twice...)

Re:and the beer is really good

[Ozeroc]

I love pils! Having a slow drawn Bitburger in a Gasthaus is wonderful. Bottled or canned not so good. Bought in USA? I can't drink German beer in America because it dies somewhere along the way. A brown bottled Heinekin bought in NL tastes a lot better than the green bottled stuff wherever you get it...

Re:and the beer is really good

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah. Look at the microbrews from Wisconsin, a lot of them are pretty standard lagers.

Re:and the beer is really good

[drinkypoo]

Weisse both Heifen and Kristal are just magical

Yeah, if you don't like those styles, they're just horrible. I'm pretty solidly an ale man, but I like reds, browns, pales, india pales, nut browns... Do Germans drink ale? I've never seen one exported from there.

I can't stand sour beer. I don't like wine, either.

Re:and the beer is really good

[udippel]

Sorry, and not trying to patronize you, nor wanting to dictate 'taste' to you, but yours is awfully spoiled by US-American chemical industries.
I do agree with you that between 'Bier' and (American 'beer') is a huge difference, though not ordinarily to the favour of the latter.

Re:and the beer is really good

[udippel]

See, just impossible. Dozens of beers on tap, if they are anything but an artificial cocktail of chemicals, that wouldn't work. A tap beer that doesn't flow continuously tastes like p**. Or the hundreds of sorts on bottle. How long does a good beer take storage and transportation?

When I drink beer, I want some of the Deutsches Reinheitsgebot. This is an old regulation and stipulates that you may use 4 ingredients only to brew beer: water, hops, yeast and barley (for the malt). While this has been watered down during the last 20 years, there are still plenty of beers available in Germany brewed like that. Now ask a chemist, how long the 'living' product of this can last, despite filtering and pasteurization?

Re:and the beer is really good

[AK Marc]

Nope. Nobody like beer. They just get used to it, and associate good feelings with it. I don't know anyone that liked their first cup of coffee or their first cigarette, but I know plenty addicted to them. Beer sucks. You have to drink it multiple times to drink it without making a silly face (aside from the Bud Light varieties that are so flavorless that they are less offensive).

Re:and the beer is really good

[antiperimetaparalogo]

I agree - and if you just eliminate Bud... you saved the whole world!

Re:and the beer is really good

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea that America doesn't have anything besides the dregs is a little outdated.

As an American living in Germany I'm completely put off by the locals infatuation with lagers, especially the one from the biggest local brewery (which I will not name, lest I start some sort of holy war). I pine for something quite a bit hoppier, but while I'm here I'm happy to enjoy the weissbiers.

+1 to what the other guy said about Becks though. I was all excited when I saw that they were releasing a Pale Ale. Then I drank it.

Re:and the beer is really good

[antiperimetaparalogo]

Never had an American "microbrew" beer, but i am afraid that you may be right, because, if you don't have some tradition with microbrew, you end up doing what you describe.

Re:and the beer is really good

[16Chapel]

As a Brit who visits the US quite a lot, can I just point out that every liquor store I've visited in the States (from Texas to Maine) has a selection of craft beer that puts our selections to shame...

Re:and the beer is really good

[antiperimetaparalogo]

Yes, i agree - of course that is not a problem of German beer (you can find GREAT German pils/lagers plus others) but with the typical tourist (what the fuck is the need to have Bud in Germany?... IN GERMANY!? The same we have it in Greece: tourists!)

Re:and the beer is really good

[antiperimetaparalogo]

You're obviously a beer (and wine) aficionado.
I was shy with Greek beer out of modesty, but i had Germans/British (who drunk it in the right enviroment: very cold in our very hot Greek summer) that loved it. And yes, in winter i prefer some more complex, full body beers (mostly German/nothern/central European, but we have some Greek also for that cases!).
Same with our Greek Retsina (which i love personaly) - yes, served cold in our Greek summer is great, but trying to drink it in German winter...

Re:and the beer is really good

[Eunuchswear]

This is Germany we're talking about. By law beer contains water, barley and hops.

Funny story: my brother did his bachelors degree at the University of Sussex, with one year at Amherst. Just before they all went off to the US everybody was taken aside by the student union and provided with real fake student ID giving their ages as over 21 (he was 19 at the time) just so they could buy booze while in the states.

Re:and the beer is really good

[Anonymous Coward]

one of the worst American beers is old milwaukee. It tastes like the tin can its in.(terrible)
My neighbor couldn't afford anything else on his disability so he would buy this stuff by the case and drink half the case. Once you get past the first to cans, there is no taste anymore...even assuming your still standing. He was 340 lbs so he could drink alot before anything would affect him at 60+ years old.
One good tasting American beer from imgrant germans is Yuengling.

Re:and the beer is really good

[turp182]

At least in Missouri, USA, parents can give their kids alcohol below 21 as long as it doesn't qualify as neglect or abuse.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...

This does require supervision however.

Re:and the beer is really good

[sjames]

The palate shifts as we grow older, de-emphasizing bitter and making excessive sweetness less enjoyable. That's why children hate many vegetables and seem to have an endless appetite for the sickly sweet.

Naturally, that makes children and younger teens unlikely to enjoy coffee. Beer is flavored for the adult palate.

Re:and the beer is really good

[gnasher719]

Yes, i agree - of course that is not a problem of German beer (you can find GREAT German pils/lagers plus others) but with the typical tourist (what the fuck is the need to have Bud in Germany?... IN GERMANY!? The same we have it in Greece: tourists!)

Bud in Germany is Ok. It's close enough to the Czech republic, so you will only get genuine Czech Budvar and not the pissing-contest winner from the USA.

Re:and the beer is really good

[blueg3]

I only ever bought Bitburger in Berlin. That and Beck's were the dominant beers. A few times in the US, folks with a German-beer fetish have brought Bitburger or Warsteiner to a party. Not good.

Jever was better on tap, but I have not worked up the curiosity to buy it bottled in the US.

Re:and the beer is really good

[blueg3]

Sours are usually hard to find on tap. The popularity of Gose is helping with that -- it's acceptable for that to be kettle-soured, which makes it affordable to produce and sell on tap.

Re:and the beer is really good

[jjbenz]

IPA's aren't the only type of beer out there.

Re:and the beer is really good

[hvdh]

The real real devil is Danish "Faxe extra strong" beer. In Germany, most large supermarkets sell it. It has 10% alcohol and comes in 1 litre (34 oz) cans. Shouldn't drink two of them.

Re:and the beer is really good

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I really like the taste of both beer and coffee even though I'm addicted to neither. You are probably projecting your own taste on other people. Maybe you just don't like bitterness, as both are quite bitter.

Re:and the beer is really good

[Anonymous Coward]

No, unfortunately, tourism isn't big enough to sell lots of imported anything. In places that don't have good beer, maybe. No, I'm afraid that the reason that Bud exists in far too many places around the world is that you can find people with bad taste anywhere. It also probably has more to do with the distribution side, keep in mind that Anheuser Busch owns lots of other beverages; there may be some sort of package deal.

Re:and the beer is really good

[antiperimetaparalogo]

Ha... you are correct! I was talking for the "imported from USA" Bud (we have it in Greece for the tourists from the States)...

Re:and the beer is really good

[LordNelsonthe2nd]

Becks is a very bad example when talking about good german beer, at least I know noone drinking that one because of it's taste, seems more like one for the reason described in the xkcd comic ;)
Looking at larger ones try Augustiner (and their Edelstoff) and Hacker for example. In case you like Weizen give Erdinger a try, expecially their dark one :)
And if you happen to be around Cologne trying out a Kölsch won't hurt either ;)
But there are also some pretty good foreign beers. Guiness of course, but I've just been to sardinia/italy and their Ichnusa ain't bad either (Nothing compared to the great wine there of course :D). Would really like to try some of the microbreweries in the united states but didn't have the chance yet.

But yeah - for the sake of the reputation of the german breweries - please just forget cheap mass-produced crap like Becks /o\

Re:and the beer is really good

[ILongForDarkness]

I've never had a German pils that was anything better than ok. But I lived in east Germany so if you wanted a pils you got something Czech. At least in Dresden and admittedly a very international crowd I hung out with (worked with 300 people from 150 nations) Weissen was about even with pils for amount drunk. But Schwartz, or even Radler if driving was popular too.

Re:and the beer is really good

[Paradoks]

The "supervised by parents" rule is about the same in Wisconsin, except that there's evidently no pre-defined age minimum.

The drinking age is still 21, but only because the federal government threatened to take away highway funding if Wisconsin refused to raise the minimum.

Then again, over 40% of Wisconsinites claim German ancestry.

(disclosure: I live in Wisconsin and have German ancestry. And don't particularly like beer, aside from a strawberry-rhubarb seasonal one. But I also don't drink to get drunk.)

Re:and the beer is really good

[PPalmgren]

There tends to be a very large variety. In my city, there's about 3-4 local breweries that are so appealing they're sold at almost every restaurant in a 60 mile radius, and do quite well. On top of that, you have 50-100 eclectic small breweries and you'll find 3-10 on each restaurant menus. Then, if you go to a BWL store, there's almost as many beer options as there are varieties of wine.

I live in North Carolina, which you may have learned in history was a heavy Tobacco state during the colonial period. As tobacco has crashed over the past hundred years, it's been replaced with wineries and beer. There's a very large selection in my state, but I can't speak specifically for other states.

Re:and the beer is really good

[YouGotTobeKidding]

Not really. Beer was not meant to be a pastime enjoyment. It was survival. For millennia it was the only known safe and easy way to have potable water supply, and its 'liquid bread', so its packed with nutrients and calories. The idea of actually brewing beer for the alcohol content...was not even on the agenda until more modern times. IE people didnt drink beer for the taste, they drank it because they HAD to.

Re:and the beer is really good

[sjames]

At one time, sure but it's evolved a good bit since then. No modern brewer brews the beer for survival with no care for the taste and enjoyment.

Re:and the beer is really good

[palion]

Taste? Unamerican! USA! USA! USA!

Re:and the beer is really good

[antiperimetaparalogo]

I can't comment for the quality (i need samples send to Greece!), but this is a VERY large variety for just one state! By the way... right now (and i mean right now) i smoke some (North?) Carolina Burley mixed with (Zimbabwe) Virginia and Greek Basma anatolian type (sort leaf) tobacco!

Re:and the beer is really good

[grahamsz]

The keg itself will stay good for at least a month if it's handled properly. Im' not sure about the lines running to it, but I've sat at the bar at those places and while a few beers might make up half the sales, I don't obviously notice taps going completely unused.

The brewpub across the street from me has two locations side by side and (iirc) 31 taps in one and 15 taps in the other. They stopped selling kegs from the brewery because they struggle to produce fast enough to feed their own pubs, I've never noticed anything particularly stale.

Also the lesser used stuff often tends to be things that are in a more barleywine style and that has the added bonus that it should have a longer shelf life.

Re:and the beer is really good

[Shadow of Eternity]

Even non-IPAs in america are practically hop-juice.

Re:and the beer is really good

[blueg3]

Well yeah. It's the same way with American beer -- we've got lots of good beer, but most of what people buy is the crap, so it's the most visible. Similarly, brands like Beck's dominate sales in Germany, despite the fact that Germany has many perfectly good beers. (The subtleties of the different cultures and economies of beer are different, but the large-scale picture is similar in this way.)

Re:and the beer is really good

[vandamme]

The key to making Belgian-American beer is to take Coors Light and put a ton of cloves and hops in it, and color it with caramel so it's black. There you go.
Until you go to Flanders and sample one of the 300 brews there, you won't know the difference.

Re:and the beer is really good

[vandamme]

I was on the ferry to Scotland and a guy was bringing in a case of Budweiser. I decided I wasn't going to drink the beer in Scotland.

Re:and the beer is really good

[CmdrTamale]

Flavour, perhaps?

(Good) taste is what we who like it have.
--
and in the German sentence structure enjoy.

Re:and the beer is really good

[Stuarticus]

Scotland has changed, the craft beer thing is global. There are 5-6 beer shops near my house which stock hundreds of beers. I am in Edinburgh so obviously I am a bit spoiled for choice compared to the smaller towns and villages. I'm currently drinking Rochefort 10, whcih I'd highly recommend if you can get your hands on it.

Re:and the beer is really good

[blueg3]

They import quite a lot of Belgian beers here. The style category is popular, so of course there are plenty of terrible attempts, but there are a lot of American brewers making Belgian-style beers that do an excellent job.

You're free to go tell Ommegang, Allegash, Russian River, or Jester King they're doing things wrong.

Re:and the beer is really good

[Bob the Super Hamste]

It is similar in Wisconsin as well.

Re:and the beer is really good

[Anonymous Coward]

You say that like it's a bad thing..

Re: and the beer is really good

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're in America it's just Red Cross. Just like American football is *just* football.

As if there's no corruption outside of the U.S. Who uncovered FIFA? It certainly wasn't anyone in the EU "owning their own corruption."

Re: and the beer is really good

[Anonymous Coward]

Taste is subjective and changes person to person. People need to stop telling others what taste is, what good is. I hate beer, all beer. It doesn't taste good to me at all. Now give me some scotch.

Re:and the beer is really good

[vandamme]

Ommegang is why I moved to upstate NY.

Re:and the beer is really good

[jwhitener]

I love Germany, but I don't know of any German beers that are all that good. They certainly have the reputation but the reality has always been disappointing.

The unusual quality that might irritate people used to Bud Light is called "taste", and is usually considered a good thing in beers.

http://german.answers.com/culture/popular-german-beer-brands-found-in-america

Most stores don't carry a lot of German beers. At most, you'll be lucky to see Becks or St. Pauli Girl which are not good imo. Especially if you are used to real American craft beer, the big bold IPA flavors.

Re: and the beer is really good

[Anonymous Coward]

You've got a point. One might have thought that this article would inspire at least some discussion of the relatively insane costs of attending a university here, even an online one. I like beer too, but there are so many other things worth considering in this piece.

What's that you say?

[gstoddart]

The cost of the education pales in comparison to the benefit to society, and the profits isn't always a good metric?

I like your ideas, and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

US: Go to school and get buried in student loans only to have your job offshored and you're stuck with the loans until you die. Cannot get a job or underemployed where you have no chance of paying them off? Fuck you pay me - you entitled peon! You owe corporate America because of ... something!

Germany: Go for free because business and government understand that they are all in it with you and what's good for you is good for them.

Huh. How about that?

Re:What's that you say?

[Totenglocke]

"Free". You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. They pay out the ass in taxes for that "free" education and over the course of their career, they'll pay more money than if they just took out loans and paid for it themselves. But sure, keep using the word "free" for things paid for via taxes.

Re:What's that you say?

[LWATCDR]

Notice she was a Post Grad.
Your average c+ student from the US is not going to get a free education in Germany.

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

US: The vast majority of people have access to a decent university education based on many different assessment factors.

Germany: If you got poor grades in school, forget about going to a university. The state channels you into different areas of the economy, whether you like it or not, and whether you could have actually succeeded at university.

You can't really compare the two systems. Each has it's own rewards and costs. In Germany (and most of the world, for that matter) they don't value a humanities-based education as much as Americans do, where even engineering students must take basic courses in civics, literature, etc. In America, a large part of higher education is about crafting learned, "well-rounded" citizens. That ideal isn't nearly as strong in Germany. OTOH, because that ideal is so lofty, it's hard to justify the public expense of providing a free university education to a large segment of the population**. Whereas in Germany, fewer people pursue or even complete a university education, so the costs are much less.

** Witness the way that most Americans joke about "basket weaving" classes. I used to think it was a joke, too, until I was 35 and weaving the seats for reproduction Shaker chairs to use in my dining room and thinking to myself that weaving is helluva complex, actually quite interesting, and it was a shame I didn't take such a class in college, when I had more time to pick up such skills.

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you are saying someone in Germany that goes to college will owe more because of higher taxes vs someone in the US that goes to college and owes back student loans plus pays taxes? Yeah, I don't think so.

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your terrible argument assumes a simple "dollars out, dollars in" model.

In theory, it's possible that educating everyone increases the wealth of everyone involved by an amount greater than the taxes paid out to cover education over the course of their working lifetime.

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

In America, a large part of higher education is about crafting learned, "well-rounded" citizens.

Bullshiat! That's what it used to be...a long time ago. University was about learning for the sake of learning. Now it has become an extra piece of paper you need to have in order to get a job...practically any job. Students are just running to the humanities-based courses because STEM is hard.

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

90% of Germans have free healthcare too. And astounding infrastructure.

You see, if you directly compare taxes with cost of college, you're missing everything else the Germans get for free.

And it seems to be doing their economy no harm!

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

They pay out the ass in taxes for that "free" education and over the course of their career

So do you. The difference is that their neighbors who doesn't know what to do with their lives will get an education while yours will become white trash.
It's worth quite a lot of tax money to get a voter base that isn't retarded.

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Germany: If you got poor grades in school, forget about going to a university. The state channels you into different areas of the economy, whether you like it or not, and whether you could have actually succeeded at university.

If you think you can succeed in University, despite poor grades, than private schools are still an option. Even if there were no such thing in Germany, you could still apply to one in the US. If your check clears, congratulations! You too can be a Phoenix Online! So Germany is, at worst, no worse than the US for the bottom 39% or top 1% (who can go anywhere anyway), and is much better for the middle 60% students.

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe if you studied at university level you could do a simple calculation and see that both sides actually profit. Your thinking is for the uneducated masses who thinks 1:1 ratio without actually differing between the needs and musts of the individual and society, and that they actually can be in equilibrium. You know world isn't like U.S. where there always has to be a loser (usually the part that can't afford lawyers and bribes).

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have to be a post grad.

Re:What's that you say?

[angel'o'sphere]

Taxes in the US are quite similar to those in germany.

You are just an idiot with "knowledge" that is minimum outdated for 2 decades ...and hence your "opinion" is not worth a single cent.

Re:What's that you say?

[nbauman]

"Free". You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. They pay out the ass in taxes for that "free" education and over the course of their career, they'll pay more money than if they just took out loans and paid for it themselves. But sure, keep using the word "free" for things paid for via taxes.

Yes, it is free.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazi...

Research shows that the system is working, says Sebastian Fohrbeck of DAAD, and that 50% of foreign students stay in Germany.

"Even if people don't pay tuition fees, if only 40% stay for five years and pay taxes we recover the cost for the tuition and for the study places so that works out well."

It's free to the student because he didn't pay anything.

It's free to the government because they got paid back from it more than they put in.

It's free because when you invest money, and get more out of it than you put in, it's free.

City College in New York City used to be free. CCNY turned out Nobel laureates and creators of industry like Andy Grove, founder of Intel. You can read the biographies on the Nobel prize web site of people who say that they never could have afforded to go to college if CCNY weren't free.

CCNY was a meritocracy. You got in because you made the grade. That's different from a free market, where you get in because your father is rich (like George W. Bush).

I don't think you know what the word "free" means. Most native speakers of English know what the word "free" means, because they are familiar with "free" education and "free" libraries, which is where a lot of them spent their childhood.

I think there must be a script going around to search message boards for the text "free", and post a reply, "It's not free! They pay for it in taxes!"

People in functioning democracies realize that there are some services that the government can provide more cheaply than the "free" market. Education is one of them. The market is always more expensive. You can pay $10,000 in taxes or $20,000 in the marketplace for a year of school. There is no developed country in the world that doesn't provide free education for its population.

In the presidential election, Bernie Sanders is the one candidate who says that college should be free (as it is in Europe), and that students should be able to discharge their current loans. Sanders went to Brooklyn College, which was free at that time (and graduated a few Nobel laureates too).

So if you want free college for yourself and your children, and you want to get rid of your college debts, vote for Bernie. If like Mitch Romney your father's rich, then vote for Hillary or the Repugnicans.

It's also possible that your father is rich, but you want to see free college education for everyone because it's right, or because it's good for the country.

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

90% of Germans have free healthcare too.

Not really. It's a required-to-have public insurance (no way to quit, except when earning above a threshold, and proving to have a private insurance). Employer pays half, employee other half. It's "social", so cost covers the whole familiy. Cost depend on income, tops of at about 700 EUR/month.

And astounding infrastructure.

Comparison to the US wouldn't be fair: Germany is a much smaller country with much higher population density. This makes it both necessary and possible to have a durable infrastructure. Of course, for traffic with no speed limit it needs to be sized apprporiately, too.

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? What? If you job is going to be offshorted why would anyone pay for your educatio? So now we're stuck with having paid your education & someone who isn't working! See how that argument works?

The argument that 'business & government' are in it together with you is based on the premise that you will pay taxes to allow others to follow in your footsteps while you help foot the bill for them by paying taxes. But if you can't get a job then you'll pay no taxes & now you've just been a drain. The point is that whether you take out loans to pay for your education or pay via taxes for someone else's your are still making future payments for an education you received today.

Now, if you'd like to have a debate about how any given market can maximize education value while minimizing costs then have at it.

Make no mistake about it though, your expected to pay your way one way or the other. TANSTAAFL.

Re:What's that you say?

[jimbolauski]

I can see math was not your strong suit. The only way this would be feasible is if the people that didn't utilize this program are paying enough to make up for the people that utilize the program and don't pay German taxes.

Re:What's that you say?

[bobbied]

So you are saying someone in Germany that goes to college will owe more because of higher taxes vs someone in the US that goes to college and owes back student loans plus pays taxes? Yeah, I don't think so.

I've not run the numbers, but I believe you are not taking everything into account here. Yes, Germans pay much higher tax rates than we do in the USA and where paying back student loans my be onerous for the people who choose to take on more debt than they can expect to be able to repay, I believe that the extra tax burden for life in Germany far exceeds the costs or paying your own way. Of curse, it all depends on where you end up on the income scale, because Germany has a progressive taxation structure with nearly 19% VAT (think sales tax on every thing you buy, though it's sometime hidden from you), plus a top income tax rate of 45% with all the same property taxes and such you have in the USA. It's more, much more, for most upper middle class.

So, sacrificing say 15% of your earnings for life sure seems like a bad trade for any reasonable amount of student loans. Using a community college for 2 years then 2 years at a state school would run you under 20K in tuition, books and fees (more like 15K). If you are careful, work summers, you should get though your STEM degree and into the work force with say $25K in debt (or less if you try or manage to get some scholarships/grants etc.) $25K is a whole lot less than 15% of your lifetime earnings...

Let's say you manage to average 100K/year for 25 years of work, if the increase in taxes is even 5%, you will pay $125,000 for that "free" education. Of course you will pay more than $25K back on your loans, but again, if you just pay the 5% of your income, with starting salaries starting above $60K and quickly rising to $80K, you are going to pay back that loan at 3-4K/year and be done with the debt in 10 years or less.

No, I'll pass on the "free" stuff..

Re:What's that you say?

[misexistentialist]

Germany has fewer college graduates. Is Sanders telling the less intelligent 2/3 that he is going to save them from student loans by refusing them admission to college, or is he just a bullshitter?

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

What does OP's comment have to do with the US and the unfortunate American situation of taxes and secret courts and other red herrings? Genuinely curious, please explain.

Re: What's that you say?

[luisdom]

Yeah, poor bastards, they don't know how to spend taxes. Education and health, no less. Waste of money. What do you do with them in the US?

Re:What's that you say?

[Opportunist]

Erh... no.

I know taxes in Germany and I know taxes in the US, I earned money in Germany and I earned money in the US. Taxes are minimally higher in Germany, but considering what you get for your buck, it's money well spent.

Re:What's that you say?

[bobbied]

Your terrible argument assumes a simple "dollars out, dollars in" model.

In theory, it's possible that educating everyone increases the wealth of everyone involved by an amount greater than the taxes paid out to cover education over the course of their working lifetime.

Ah yes, the "investment in the future" argument. This would be a fine thing if it actually worked out this way, but if there is one thing you can count on when the government starts dishing out money for things, nobody will be there to complain about the falling standards and rising costs of the program.

Where I agree that investing in education of your citizens is a worthy goal that can pay future dividends, one must be VERY careful with how the program works and you must be very careful about what sorts of education you fund. Having a country full of music majors and basket weavers might be interesting, it doesn't help much in the modern world. But if you say "free education for all" you are going to invite a bunch of young kids to get useless degrees from overpaid universities and end up adding to your debt load (not that Germany has all that much debt load at this point compared to the rest of the EU). What you really want to do is encourage the kinds of education that will reap you benefits. You want engineers, scientists, linguist and capable managers of businesses and finance, not basket weavers, musicians, artists in abundance.

Re:What's that you say?

[Opportunist]

Maybe you might want to add that the 45% income tax only applies to you if you already make more money than a sensible person can spend in a lifetime. But it's superficial little tidbits like these that you so conveniently forget to mention...

The main difference is maybe that anyone can start studying at a university, rich or poor, with your brains, not your pockets, dictating whether you get an education. But hey, why should those peons get that right? Down with competition from below!

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Germany does not have a privately owned central bank and a military industrial complex that owns the government. Germany also does not start wars at regular intervals their military is not in great shape and good on them for putting people first.

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are free to leave the country before you start making real money.
For the small job you need while studying to pay for your rent and food, you don't need to pay taxes unless it is more than 450 Euros/month.

Re:What's that you say?

[nbauman]

Germany has fewer college graduates. Is Sanders telling the less intelligent 2/3 that he is going to save them from student loans by refusing them admission to college, or is he just a bullshitter?

Germany invests in a student's education, and gets that money paid back in taxes after 5 years (just like CCNY did). With that return on investment, any business would keep expanding.

If Sanders got his way, anybody who was willing to put in the academic effort could go to college.

Even if a kid only goes for 1 year and drops out, you've still increased his lifetime earnings and tax contributions. It's free money.

Germany BTW has one of the best systems of trade schools in the world, so students can also choose vocational training if they prefer.

That's the kind of vocational education system the US used to have before the Reagan Revolution. We did it before, we can do it again.

Re:What's that you say?

[rkww]

No, I'll pass on the "free" stuff..

You seem to have missed the entire point of this story - 'how American students can get a University degree for free.'

Get a degree in Germany, move back to the USA (...if you still want to.)

Comprende ?

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's so funny when you say someone with a bachelor degree is a post grad.
When bachelor/master degrees were introduced here in Germany, the industry didn't know what to do with those bachelor students that knew only half of what the old Diplom students knew.

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

German here. Of course it's "free". If for some reason after university you keep flipping burgers till you die, you probably don't earn enough to pay taxes at all.
University is free in the sense that even if we stopped financing it via taxes, taxes wouldn't decrease, the money would just be spent in a worse way.

Re:What's that you say?

[cyn1c77]

"Free". You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. They pay out the ass in taxes for that "free" education and over the course of their career, they'll pay more money than if they just took out loans and paid for it themselves. But sure, keep using the word "free" for things paid for via taxes.

You know what else you get for all those taxes? A work/life balance, health care, retirement, and a lot of other benefits.

Seriously, this excuse that Americans "save" money by paying for everything individually is crap. You pay federal taxes, state taxes, sales taxes (you have now taxed me three times for each dollar spent, thanks). I have to work out my tax liability myself, unlike the Germans, who get a government estimate. Then I pay for half of my health care premiums on top of that. Since Obamacare, premiums have gone up for me and coverage has gone down, so I pay more money for each non-wellcare doctor's visit. (And then taxes on top of that.) I get two weeks of vacation a year (which I will be unofficially penalized at work if I actually use all of it) and no paternity leave.

Let's not forget the 401K that constitutes the entirety of my retirement savings, since pensions no longer exist for younger workers in the US. (They are even taking them away for older workers now!) I also have no paid retirement health care (a future financial concern for me), so that will be an out of pocket expense too. And, on top of all that, I have to pay for college out of pocket and save for my childrens' potential college costs (and who knows if they will even want to go).

So, explain to me again how paying a 50% tax rate instead of a 25% tax rate saves me money in the long run. I still have to pay for the same things, but they are future expenses with unknown costs that will definitely be higher than an additional 25% of my tax rate.

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Precisely!

Oh, wait, damn commie.

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

I come from a country where tuition in public universities is free (although its quite hard to pass the entry exams due to the competition). I never paid a penny for my undergrad studies. I then did my graduate studies in Japan with a scholarship from their government. Again, studying in a public university, I didn't pay a single yen. After Japan, I moved to Germany, where I now work and pay my taxes, and I have no objection at all that my taxes are used to fund higher education. So I don't care if it's free or not: in a way, it's my money, and I'm glad its put into good use. You're welcome.

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

its SOCALISM !!

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Germany may provide better outcomes for it's population, but would it extrapolate to the U.S.?

Authoritarian governments, such as in Singapore, can also provide much better outcomes by most metrics. And even for things like civil liberties they still comes out ahead of the vast majority of countries. But the model which worked for a city-state of 4 million is very unlikely to work for a large, diverse country like the U.S.

Anyhow, there are cultural factors. America's conception of "equality" seems to require substantially similar access to higher education. Only providing government assistance to the A+ students, and leaving everybody else to the free market, is untenable here. What about the poor kid who had "potential", but got poor grades because he spent most of his time watching his younger siblings?

Then there are practical factors. Germany has a very different approach to socialism in general. It's policies regarding education are part of a larger system. In order to adopt Germany's education model, you'd need to reform a ton of other government programs and policies in America. For example, strengthen workers rights. That's impractical for countless reasons.

Look at Obamacare. Burwell v. King might still cripple the program. And reforming healthcare is simple compared to reforming most of our other social policy programs. For one thing, Obamacare didn't _replace_ any pre-existing comprehensive system.

Re:What's that you say?

[bobbied]

How's that? In the USA the top marginal tax rate is like 39.6%. You pay this rate for every dollar over $413K you make. At $100K you are going to pay a marginal rate of 28%, at $250K it jumps to 33%. In Germany literally EVERYBODY pays 42% (from 50K Euros which if poverty on up) and that jumps to the top marginal rate of 45% once you reach 250K Euros.

If you assume that a euro is a dollar (not quite but close) then just about every upper middle class family is going to pay just about 15% more for the same income in Germany. Some less, some more.

I live in a state with no income tax, we pay 8.25% in sales tax. Germans pay 18% VAT which works out to 10% increase over what I spend... Property taxes, fuel taxes are all similar...

All this works out to AT LEAST 15% more tax liability for Germans over what I pay.... Sorry, but that's the truth.

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of buying books, you can try finding and sharing PDF file or photocopy one book for an entire class. It is all about team work.

Re:What's that you say?

[drinkypoo]

Germany has fewer college graduates.

Germany realizes that college isn't for everyone, and doesn't shit on people who go to a tech school instead.

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

... when the government starts dishing out money for things ...

Like when the US government becomes guarantor on some 18 year-old's debt burden: That's a blank cheque to the university and the student. It's disgusting that so many 'private enterprise' (or, to put the wolf in different clothing, 'small government') policies are thinly-disguised corporate welfare. Then morons like you bleat it's wrong to do in-house what the US government does via private enterprise at a premium price.

Most governments of the world are tasked with reducing corporate power, which is why this headlong rush to the TPP is terrifying. Governments use the single-buyer model to control corporations but the Obama-care debacle revealed the single-buyer model is forbidden in the USA, unless the market has a monopoly.

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are no "basket-weaving" courses at the universities here in Germany, they don't exist because there's no-one who'd pay for them (and no university sports teams also, should you have wondered;-). Many of the people from foreign countries coming to study here are going for engeneering degrees. And if they don't stay (thus helping the German econmy directly) many become part of the elite of their countries - where they then tend to be in positions that allow them to make decisions where to buy stuff. And since they know German goods and their qualities from direct experience they may tend to buy them, even if they might be slightly more expensive than other offerings.

Don't under-estimate this effect. I knew a technical glassblower in Berlin quite well who did work for all the universities here. And so lots of students from countries all over the world got to know him. One result (not the only one) was that he got asked by someone in Saudi-Arabia to supply everything for a new chemistry department to be founded there (an offer he had to decline because it was just a one-man specialist shop). Have something like that happen with just one percent of all the foreign students (or less) and all the tuititon fees are well covered. Of course, if you're penny-wise but pound- (or dollar- or Euro-) stupid, that won't make sense;-)

Re:What's that you say?

[grahamsz]

But you are also suggesting that's just for education which is clearly untrue.

I've never lived in Germany, but in Scotland you get a lot more for your income tax dollars than you do in the US. Of course if you happen to never get sick or never need welfare then the US is probably going to win overall, but it's hard to make that bet.

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

In Finland, I've seen Chinese exchange students take that to a whole new level. Printing in computer classes was free at least in the university I went to and the Chinese seemed more than happy to team up to first scan in all books and then print copies all night long (some computer classes were open 24/7 with key cards). And not only that, they even helped out their countrymen since I at least once I saw a pile of Chinese restaurant menus printed. I also know that in Sweden there is a torrent site explicitly for textbooks at Swedish universities (some non-English textbooks are hard to find on TPB).

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not understand the problem though. US state universities are actually pretty affordable (as long as you are a resident) and they are great schools. In addition, there are so many options to get funding. For instance, you can always join the military and they will help you pay for college. Why do people keep complaining about the cost of education in the US?

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

gudentag

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Taxes are minimally higher in Germany, but considering what you get for your buck, it's money well spent.

That's probably, because Germany doesn't have over 200 military bases around the world to maintain; money that could be spent on the welfare of the population instead of protecting the status quo of the elite few.

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't understand Europeans. If you have a degree and are 30-something and haven't lived in at least 2-3 countries, people think you've left yourself behind. And you seem narrow-minded, if you don't have kids but have already decided where to settle. Europeans relocate a lot - not just within Europe but of course also to other continents because there's a big world to explore and you only have one life. As a side note: Don't think the US is that special just because a lot of us come there to work and study - we go everywhere. When there is a certain correlation between higher (progressive) taxes and living standards, Europeans happily pay taxes as "rent" for staying in a nice country. That said, I do see some merit to your typical, American view which emphasizes personal responsibility and so on. On that side of the pond you also work a lot harder and save for retirement - the earlier the better because you need it since you work so hard :) Here we rely on "the system" instead of even thinking about it.

What you also seem to have missed is that in your scenario, there's a lot less of a safety net. If you get an illness or something else unexpected substantially disrupts your studies or work, what do you do? Even if you get your illness treated without the treatment costing you an arm and a leg (I assume Obamacare should nowadays ensure that), a couple of years out of work can harm your career and budget substantially for a long, long time.

Re:What's that you say?

[grahamsz]

I was actually pretty surprised to see a similar track in italy. I worked with a guy at a supplier there who "only" had a high school education but was working in software.

Few US employers would touch someone like that (especially fresh out of high school) but there seems to be a different mentality over there where you can transition into jobs like that starting as an intern.

Re:What's that you say?

[KGIII]

What does the German University Sports Federation do? A quick search indicates that there are sports at the universities. I did not dig deeper than a couple of clicks. I guess I do not understand and none of the search results looked interested in explaining how university sports were not university sports. One was helpful enough to exclude fencing. Maybe fencing is not a sport. Others mentioned rugby and the results of the GUSF at the 2012 Olympics. Is it just not included as a university activity? Is it still a de-facto university activity but not funded by the university?

Re:What's that you say?

[bobbied]

Oh I got that, go to Germany and get free college at the expense of the German people... I was rejecting the idea that this somehow was a good idea for Germany, or any other country for that matter.. I'm arguing that it would be stupid for any other countries to do the same thing, including the USA.

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Germany also does not start wars at regular intervals anymore

FTFY

Re:What's that you say?

[jrumney]

For a full comparison, remember that US has both state and federal taxes, and that education, health, retirement and employment insurance are separate expenses that you need to account for over your life time (not just in your twenties when you are young and healthy and your parents have provided for you so far in life).

Re:What's that you say?

[bobbied]

Which do you prefer? Freedom, Higher risks and higher reward? No risk, less freedom, but a lower standard of living?

Socialism has made many promises it cannot keep. Capitalism promises nothing, but can generate much more wealth.

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. And to in my experience end up giving up liberty AND security.

Re:What's that you say?

[allcoolnameswheretak]

That's ok. I gladly pay that 15% extra tax liability if it means getting more youngsters into universities, into well-paying jobs, into functional lives and families. It all gets reinvested into society, providing a positive feedback cycle.

If on the other hand, we didn't get them into universities because they are too expensive, or we create indebted individuals, it leads to unemployment, alcoholism, drugs, homelessness, crime, dysfunctional families... a negative feedback cycle.

Re:What's that you say?

[blueg3]

It's free because when you invest money, and get more out of it than you put in, it's free.

No, it's not free at all. It's an investment. That is, it ties up your money and subjects you to risk. Not free.

Apparently it's a profitable investment, which, if you're a government that can afford to take that risk, is a better deal than free.

"Free" is a decent approximation for casual conversation, then. But it's not free. Call it what it is. A profitable investment!

Re:What's that you say?

[bobbied]

There are safety nets here, they are just lower than the other side of the pond.

BTW, ObamaCare is anything but universal heath care, despite how it was sold. What it really does is mandate a minimum and maximum set of acceptable health insurance policy coverage, then force employers to provide that level of insurance to all their "full time" employees or pay a fine. Individuals who don't get insurance from working now MUST buy coverage, or they too pay a fine.

What it has really done is to incentivize employers to hire only "Part time" (less than 30 hours/week) employees and cut the bulk of their work force down to less than 30 hours. Now these lower skilled workers are working multiple jobs to make ends meet, then they get forced into buying health insurance with HUGE deductibles. Many times there total out of pocket costs for premiums alone exceed half their income, then when they have to see the doctor, they are basically paying out of pocket because of the large deductibles.

We still have millions of people who are uninsured, and millions more who cannot afford to see the doctor.... Many of whom are now trying to hold down multiple jobs because their hours got cut...

Re:What's that you say?

[bobbied]

There are better ways of making positive loops which are cheaper and more effective for the resources used. A blanket - hey kids, keep going to school, learn what you want - starts a cycle of dependency. You don't want that.... To quote Ben Franklin..."I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer. "

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah. "Freedom". Gotcha. Now I understand your argument.

Yes. A person in the US is more free than a German, because he cannot be slapped in a cell by armed morons, he gets to control his own money, he can vote for anyone he wants, and he has the same rights as anyone else.

Except he can be, the finance system is rigged, he can't, and he absolutely has less rights than someone with more money.

Go bet on another cock-fight.

Re: What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

We do what God tells us to: We buy bullets. Well, we contract a few corporations to buy bullets. The take a cut, then give us the bullets. Then we shoot each other. But that's OK, because we have the best healthcare system in the world. Except that people getting that amazing care die more often here than in the rest of the wealthy world. But that's OK, because it's all paid for by insurance. Which is a way that gets us the best medical care in the world -- we pay a few companies to pay for it for us. They get a cut.

Re:What's that you say?

[angel'o'sphere]

I've not run the numbers
Perhaps you should, then your post would perhaps really be worth an +1 insightful?

because Germany has a progressive taxation structure with nearly 19% VAT
Most countries have a progressive taxation, e.g. the US. And VAT has noting to do with that. ... though it's sometime hidden from you
No it is not. It is described on every bill and recipe.
And for food it is 7% ... not 19%.

It's more, much more, for most upper middle class.
No it is not. Unless you have a very strange idea what upper middle class is. Tax above 45% is considered freaking rich in Germany, not "middle class" and also not "upper middle class".

The math in your final paragraph makes no sense to me. Perhaps you like to reword it more clearly?

Re:What's that you say?

[angel'o'sphere]

In Germany literally EVERYBODY pays 42% (from 50K Euros which if poverty on up) and that jumps to the top marginal rate of 45% once you reach 250K Euros.

Sorry that is simply plain wrong.
No idea where you got that from.

Re:What's that you say?

[Jumunquo]

If the return on investment was really that good, then the graduates should have no problem repaying their student loans. You're undermining your own argument against student loans. The usual argument for covering education is many students do not get their return on investment and therefore cannot pay off the loans, but there's some non-monetary benefit to society as a whole, thus society should foot part or all of the cost via taxes. Clearly, we believe in partial, and that's why we do have financial aid, federal loans, etc., but what's the best balance is hard to say.

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Having a country full of music majors and basket weavers might be interesting, it doesn't help much in the modern world. But if you say "free education for all" you are going to invite a bunch of young kids to get useless degrees from overpaid universities and end up adding to your debt load (not that Germany has all that much debt load at this point compared to the rest of the EU). What you really want to do is encourage the kinds of education that will reap you benefits. You want engineers, scientists, linguist and capable managers of businesses and finance, not basket weavers, musicians, artists in abundance.

So let's get rid of culture and arts and philosophy. What are all those engineers and scientists, linguists and capable managers of businesses and finances going to live for? Using their financial handiwork to trick poorer people out of their lands and properties and starve in order to amass lots of money in order to afford buying a $100mil Picasso painting for their living room. Picasso being a dead artist.

Apparently an artist, like a deer, is not valuable until he's dead and pieces of him are suspended from your wall.

Tell you what: those pieces have had a lot more nuanced meaning to him than they will ever have to you. Never mind that you are the one who levied towns for them. You don't possess them. They possess you. If you don't like how a part of them turned out, you can't just try again. You would not even know where to start.

You are an engineer, scientist, linguist and capable manager of businesses and finances, not a basket weaver, musician, or artist.

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's free because when you invest money, and get more out of it than you put in, it's free.

You're neglecting opportunity costs.

People in functioning democracies realize that there are some services that the government can provide more cheaply than the "free" market.

Government can provide any and all services cheaper than the free market; the services just suck.

It's also possible that your father is rich, but you want to see free college education for everyone because it's right, or because it's good for the country.

My father was not rich. I went to European public schools until college, then attended a US private university and worked my way through. Trust me: you don't want the European "free" system because it sucks.

European public education has a long history of being a tool by which countries parked their out-of-work intellectuals to keep them from causing trouble, and a way by which the rich and powerful indoctrinated their youth to comply with the oppressive political system du-jour. And that's what it still is today.

In the presidential election, Bernie Sanders is the one candidate who says that college should be free (as it is in Europe)

Bernie Sanders is a f*cking idiot.

Re:What's that you say?

[MoaDweeb]

Hey, Ben F.!
Citations please!

The personal views of a rich white man from the 18th Century are not necessarily germane to a discussion of 21st Century taxation policy.

Re:What's that you say?

[grahamsz]

I prefer the US. Though I'm young, in good health and am very well paid. Though I have the ultimate fallback and can potentially retire to the UK when thats a better fit for my needs.

Selfish certainly, but it's nice to have that option.

If i wasn't on a six figure income I'd probably go back though, the US is horribly stacked against the lower middle class.

Re:What's that you say?

[TranquilVoid]

Which do you prefer? Freedom, Higher risks and higher reward? No risk, less freedom, but a lower standard of living?

It's a valid question and different societies prefer a different balance. Germany prefers the latter compared to the U.S., and in fact the U.S. has been steadily moving toward the same for decades.

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

This quote has always struck me as asinine. "Essential liberty" is just begging the question - essential anything is essential and by definition should not be given up (those who give up essential safety to purchase temporary freedom...). Aside from that, the entire thing is an assertion and contains no logic or reasoning.

Liberty and safety are somewhat in conflict and a compromise needs to be found. Trumpeting only one of them is unbalanced, and why should someone lose their rights to both because they strike the balance at a different place to someone else? Is that really how rights work?

Re:What's that you say?

[ultranova]

They pay out the ass in taxes for that "free" education and over the course of their career, they'll pay more money than if they just took out loans and paid for it themselves.

That is entirely possible - not certain or even likely, since you didn't offer any evidence for your assertion, but possible. But what of it? Life is not business, it's purpose is not turning a profit. It's the quality of life that matters. And security, including financial security, is part of that.

Re:What's that you say?

[ultranova]

Which do you prefer? Freedom, Higher risks and higher reward? No risk, less freedom, but a lower standard of living?

And by "less freedom" you mean "higher taxes", which is not the common meaning of the word or concept.

Socialism has made many promises it cannot keep. Capitalism promises nothing, but can generate much more wealth.

Capitalists, however, demand the entire society be ordered for the sake of making that wealth, which they then pocket. Socialism rose as a counter-reaction to this abuse, and will continue existing as long as Capitalism will.

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

Not having to pay your share for the upkeep of the very society you live in is not essential liberty. But then again, the way things are going, I suppose we'll have another revolution before soon. I guess that will hammer the lesson home once again, until the generation that experienced it fades away and the cycle starts again. Just as happened after the World Wars and the rise of Communism.

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, and if they leave Germany and go somewhere else they pay in German taxes, oh, nothing! That's free, pardner, by any meaningful definition of the word.

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure WTF you're talking about. Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending#As_a_percentage_of_GDP

Government spending in the USA is 41.6% of GDP. Germany is 45.4%. (the best measure since government spending is just deferred taxation).

It just seems like the USA spends significantly less because the money is not spent efficiently.

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think that Germany is socialist, you're retarded. Or American. Or both.

Re:What's that you say?

[shutdown -p now]

The obvious thing that you're missing is that you'll pay that $125,000 only if you're actually earning all that money in the first place. If you're not (because, say, economy crashed, or you're just that unlucky when it comes to finding a well-paying job), then you're not on the hook. Whereas in the American system you have to take the loan first, and then hope and pray that you'll actually have a job to pay it off. And if not, have your wages garnished (even if you're earning pennies in the first place), and possibly have to declare bankruptcy.

Re:What's that you say?

[shutdown -p now]

Tax rates in US can absolutely be lower. But it depends on which state (remember, some of them don't have income tax), and on what kind of job you have. I very much doubt that I'd be taking home more (PPP-wise) in Germany than what I earn here in US doing the same job, even considering all the public welfare benefits that I would get there. But it's WA (so no state income tax), and I'm somewhere in the top 1% bracket by income. Someone who's earning close to median, or even average, wage, would almost certainly fare better in Germany.

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

> "Free" [...] They pay out the ass in taxes for that "free" education [...]

You're a fucking idiot. I'm one of those "they" (fairly well paid job, and taxed accordingly), and I think it's worth *every one of my tax euros*. This (and possibly welfare) are the things which make me a proud taxpayer.

On the other hand, paying for all those retarded politicians pushing for TTIP, or for the moronic secret service BND (the lapdog of the lapdog of the NSA: why doesn't the NSA pay for them?) -- that's quite another story.

If I only could say where my tax euros went...

Re: What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for sharing this. Now we'll make sure to exclude from responsability seats anyone who studied in Germany. We can't have foreign agents in the war room. :)

Re:What's that you say?

[drinkypoo]

How's that? In the USA the top marginal tax rate is like 39.6%. You pay this rate for every dollar over $413K you make.

And that's why millionaires, billionaires etc. don't pay themselves that much salary. Their car, home, jet, etc. are financed through a corporation, and they work it out so that the corporation doesn't show much of a profit either, so that they don't have to pay taxes. But the middle class joe doesn't have access to that kind of crap, so he has to face the full burden of taxation.

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

actually it's 42% income tax from 52.882 onwards (45% over 250.731). Gross income, BUT in germany every employee (except some few high-level ones) only pays 50% of health insurance, retirement fonds and nursing care insurance(? Pflegeversicherung, for when you can't live for yourself anymore), the other half is for the employer to pay - so 50k per year is more like 60k or so "really". PLUS you don't pay taxes for the money you pay for (reasonable) insurances (including health, car, ...) and "income-related expenses" (for most people a flat tax-free grand) AND you pay less when married, have children etc.

50k for a single without children comes down to 29k net with health care, etc. already paid, but for a married person (single income household) with two children you have 34k net. btw: children, spouses etc. are *free* in the usual health care, so singles pay for the health of the next generation, too.

Re:What's that you say?

[Ramze]

You're conflating freedom with capitalism as well as conflating a social program with socialism.

In the USA, the people have long held that providing an education is so essential to the public good that it's mandatory for everyone to attend school up to a certain age - and usually tax-payer funded. Every public elementary, middle, and high school is a social program. Germany has simply included college as an essential social program - which makes sense given that today's economy requires higher education (given that robots and machines have taken over manual labor.)

Since most decent paying jobs today require a college degree, most every argument made for supporting the public social schooling programs of K-12 in the past can be made for supporting college today as well. Even those that do not have children still pay the taxes for K-12 because it's widely understood that the more educated the populace, the better tools they have to get jobs and the more informed they'll be on social issues when voting.

Your prior post, as the parent points out, omit that Germany is a very different country and provides different benefits than the USA's system - such as their universal health care. Overall, it also has lower rent prices, lower grocery prices, and higher purchasing power than the USA. They have different social programs; but they are not a socialist country.

http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-...

Re:What's that you say?

[tempmpi]

Which do you prefer? Freedom, Higher risks and higher reward? No risk, less freedom, but a lower standard of living?

It is not a binary choice. Rewards for doing well are still high in Germany. It not "no risk" but lower risk. Average standard of living is almost the same in Germany and the US: Where-to-be-born Index You will have a lower standard of living if you are doing well and earning a lot, but on other hand your are not doing that well, maybe because of an illness or because of a few bad choices that you have made, then your standard of living will be a lot higher in Germany.

Socialism has made many promises it cannot keep. Capitalism promises nothing, but can generate much more wealth.

Germany is not trying to establish socialism. Its system is called "social market economy", it is basically capitalism with some regulations and some redistribution of wealth. But it is not even that different from the US. Germany is spending 25.8% of its GDP on these programs, while the US spends 19.2% of its GDP on these programs. There is not a huge difference. There is a slight difference in how the two systems are adjusted but it is not huge.
Statistics from the OCED

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. And to in my experience end up giving up liberty AND security.

How are people in germany giving up "essential liberty"? Since when is paying 35% instead of 25% taxes giving up "essential liberty"?

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazi...

Research shows that the system is working, says Sebastian Fohrbeck of DAAD, and that 50% of foreign students stay in Germany.

"Even if people don't pay tuition fees, if only 40% stay for five years and pay taxes we recover the cost for the tuition and for the study places so that works out well."

So by your own quoted source, they pay for it in taxes in a few years (like the ones while they are there) just as claimed.

Idiot and liar, product of a "free" education.

Re:What's that you say?

[tempmpi]

Most universities in Germany offer a wide choice of recreational sport activities. People will not get any credits for joining these activities. People are doing it for recreation and there are no official sport teams formed by the university. Universities in Germany do not really care if their students are successful at competitive sports.

Re:What's that you say?

[dave420]

That's not necessarily the case, though. Yes, the education is "free" as in taking a course or not results in you spending no more money. The economy gains for each educated person working within it. You seem to be confused about what you're complaining about - is it people calling things free or taxes or German students?

Re:What's that you say?

[dave420]

You seem incredibly confused and angry. Germans have an incredible quality of life and access to wonderful universities and so many other benefits of modern society, all not depending on to whom you were born. But we know that. You know that. You are angry about this and are trying to make it sound bad, and failing massively. You are ignoring so many of the benefits Germans get from those taxes, which doesn't strike me as particularly honest.

Re:What's that you say?

[dave420]

Because he pays 25% and is American, therefore paying 25% means freedom. Paying any more than that can't possibly be freedom, in his eyes.

Re:What's that you say?

[dave420]

Lots of countries do this. Germany used to do this, then stopped, and now has reinstated the program. I'm arguing that those people know more about this than you, regardless of what your fit-to-bursting ego tells you :)

Re:What's that you say?

[dave420]

â100 a month isn't a lot, and that could include spouses and children depending on the plan (which are trivial to find, and heavily regulated). The infrastructure argument stands, as even in US cities infrastructure isn't great. Germany might be smaller than the US, but it has fewer people to fund the infrastructure work, so your argument needs some refining before it stands up to honest scrutiny.

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Taxes that you pay from the money that you see, yes. Taxes your company pays for you are much higher in Germany.

Re:What's that you say?

[tempmpi]

90% of Germans have free healthcare too.

Healthcare is not free in Germany. If you are making less than around $50k per year, you need to be insured by one of the compulsory health insurances. They will not charge you based on individual risk, but will charge you a little bit over 15% of your wage. This also includes health insurance for your children and spouse. This is a really good deal for people with low incomes or people with pre-existing conditions, but on other hand it is a bad deal if you a healthy single with a good income and no kids.
If you are making more than around $50k per year, you can either stay voluntarily in this health insurances and you rates will get caped. Or you can go for a private health insurance, they will insure you based on personal risk, you will have to pay to insure your childern and spouse. They will pay higher rates to the doctors, so doctors will treat you nicer. But if you fail to pay their rates they can kick you out and if you are too old, you can end up without health insurance. If you went for a private health insurance once, the compulsory health insurance will only accept you back if you are still young and employed. If you are either unemployed or old you need to go for a private insurance and in Germany they are still allowed to charge you a huge premium or even exclude you if you have a pre-existing condition.

Re:What's that you say?

[dunkelfalke]

You look at numbers, but don't understand what they mean. For you, very high wages are important because you have to pay into a pension fund, you have to pay for the healthcare, you need to make some savings in case you lose your job, you need to pay off the loans and decent food is expensive. This is why you think that EUR 50k is basically the poverty line. Matter of fact it isn't, not in Germany, because all the things I have mentioned previously are already taken care of. So we pay more in taxes, but far less in everything else. This is why EUR 50k is solid middle class income for a single person in Germany.

Re:What's that you say?

[allcoolnameswheretak]

I disagree. It all starts with education.
I can be considered a living example of how a little help from society can make all the difference.

My parents are not wealthy, so they could provide almost no financial assistance to me at all. However by doing jobs on the side and especially thanks to the Bafoeg, (a state provided student loan without interest rate that you only have to repay 50% of once you finish studying), I was able to study and get a Masters degree in Computer Science. Today my income and the taxes I pay are well above the German average.

Sounds like a recipe for success to me.
Where would I be without the tax funded social benefits? I have no idea. But it's hard for me to imagine me doing better than now.

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

> So, explain to me again how paying a 50% tax rate instead of a 25% tax rate saves me money in the long run

Besides, this is the *marginal* tax rate. It's very unlikely anyone pays half of their taxable income in taxes.

And even if they do, those people make so much money that they still have a lot to live on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Germany#Income_tax

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

How's that? In the USA the top marginal tax rate is like 39.6%. You pay this rate for every dollar over $413K you make. At $100K you are going to pay a marginal rate of 28%, at $250K it jumps to 33%. In Germany literally EVERYBODY pays 42% (from 50K Euros which if poverty on up) and that jumps to the top marginal rate of 45% once you reach 250K Euros.

[...]

No. It works like in the US. (You pay a specific Tax on Euros in every Bracket.)
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einkommensteuer_(Deutschland)#/media/File:ESt_D_Tarifgeschichte_1990_bis_2014_zvE_300000.gif

The red line is the effective Income Tax rate (in the specified Year (the Diagram is a History of past Tax rates)).

I wonder how much Tax you pay in the US indirectly.

Re:What's that you say?

[3.5 stripes]

It's a good investment for a society, one with billions in tax revenue. It's not such a good investment for someone whose income will be limited or possibly nil if they're unfortunate.

It's not just about return on investment, it's about how much you're starting out with, something any decent investor realizes.

Re:What's that you say?

[jabuzz]

And it is so funny when foreigners don't understand the English language. You are writing in English, someone with a Bachelor degree has been a post graduate in England since *BEFORE* any university existed in what is now Germany by nearly two hundred years you ignorant twit.

Re: What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you do with them in the US?

Build military headquarters in Afghanistan that no-one need. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/a-brand-new-us-military-headquarters-in-afghanistan-and-nobody-to-use-it/2013/07/09/2bb73728-e8cd-11e2-a301-ea5a8116d211_story.html

Re:What's that you say?

[tempmpi]

If the return on investment was really that good, then the graduates should have no problem repaying their student loans.

The average return on investment is that good, the individual return on investment can be really bad. Some people are struggling with paying back their own student loan, while others could easily back way more than their own student loans.

I think it also works quite well, because German Universities are not afraid of kicking out already accepted students. No GPA or SAT test is really able to tell if people got what it takes to be a successful engineer. In Engineering almost half of the students usually fail during the first one or two years. It is way easier to kick people out, if they did not already spend >$10K tuition at that point.

Re:What's that you say?

[Jumunquo]

Given that the government guarantees the student loans, it doesn't matter if you're starting with nothing. Also, the student can always declare bankruptcy in the worst case, so there's no fear if you have nothing.

Just look at reality - look at all the people that got the loans and say they are struggling to pay it off now because college didn't give them the job with the return you're declaring here. Did you read /. story about boosting battery life by 8X? Where the reviewer says they could have advertised +50% and that would have been a great product, but now they are going to get ripped apart for claiming 8X? Claiming the pie in the sky completely undermines a viewpoint that otherwise could have been valid.

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it that when conservatives say they prefer "freedom" they usually mean "the freedom to turn YOUR money into MY money"?

"Capitalism promises nothing." - Yeah, nothing except the American Dream.

As George Carlin said, "It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it."

Re: What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never paid a penny for my three degrees (two Master's and a Ph.D.), obtained in Germany and the UK.

Germany's education has been free for a long time, recently small symbolic fees have been introduced to avoid long-term students abusing the system (staying tax-free without actually attempting to complete a degree).

It's a great system to offer free education to one's population, a sign of reaching a development stage that values knowledge.

The UK system is for pay, but then again they give scholarships if you're smart, so it doesn't really matter if the system is free or not if you do very well. However, I like the idea that free education leads to a larger proportion of people being educated, which is the kind of world I'd like to live in.

Re:What's that you say?

[sjames]

OTOH, you only pay if and when you earn. Meanwhile, German taxes aren't that much higher than in the U.S. once you account for all of the various U.S. taxes (often at 3 levels of government) and the cost of health insurance in the U.S.

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

You probably pay about 3 or 4 times what Germans pay for healthcare though etc. etc.

Re:What's that you say?

[sjames]

Now, treat your health insurance and retirement as taxes on your U.S. income since those are covered in Germany by the taxes.

Re:What's that you say?

[Eunuchswear]

In America, a large part of higher education is about crafting learned, "well-rounded" citizens.

Bullshiat! That's what it used to be...a long time ago.

Oh come on, we've all seen Americans. "Well rounded" is the perfect description.

Probably more due to HFCS than education, but...

Re:What's that you say?

[TrimTabTim]

...Having a country full of music majors and basket weavers might be interesting, it doesn't help much in the modern world. But if you say "free education for all" you are going to invite a bunch of young kids to get useless degrees from overpaid universities and end up adding to your debt load (not that Germany has all that much debt load at this point compared to the rest of the EU). What you really want to do is encourage the kinds of education that will reap you benefits. You want engineers, scientists, linguist and capable managers of businesses and finance, not basket weavers, musicians, artists in abundance.

Bobbied: Good thing the German system doesn't have basket-weaving as a major. The available majors are controlled and vetted to a degree on the basis of being beneficial for society. The arts have a small place, sports, not so much. However a majority of the available course options students in Germany have are in industrious fruitful directions. The universities around Germany are quite keen get their students out into the work force as it raises their prestige.

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course your taxes are low!!!

You're a 1% er !!

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

"50% tax rate instead of a 25% tax rate saves me money in the long run."
If you are self-employed you pay the employer's side of Social Security and Medicare as well as the employee's side which sums to 15.2% on the first X dollars you make. Used to be $69,000.00 now I believe it is over $100,000.00.
Sales taxes are at 7.8%, admittedly you don't pay them on everything.
State income taxes are about 4% (Colorado) to 6% (Minnesota) so we will say 5%.
15.2% + 7.8% + 5% = 28% before you include the Federal income taxes.

Re:What's that you say?

[Opportunist]

Capitalism is like playing the lottery. Anyone can get rich. But not everyone. Most are just losing money in the system so a few fortunate ones can be rich.

And since anything you can influence to be among the rich has been eliminated, it's really not that much different from playing the lottery...

Re:What's that you say?

[Opportunist]

What bothers me about this statement is how he conflates personal liberties with economical. Because economical liberties are a myth at best for nearly everyone. Who has the ability to actually BE economically liberal? Only people with enough money to not be dependent on an income that pretty much ties them down to whatever they have to do to hold down a job or generate their income.

In that way, the average German is far more economically liberal than the average US-American. The German can say "Fuck you, I quit" to his abusive employer, knowing that he won't have to worry that his new home is underneath a bridge. How many US workers have that liberty? And how many are forced to stay with a job that is closer to slavery because that's their only way to live on another month?

Re:What's that you say?

[Opportunist]

Yet I sit here in Europe and envy the Swedes for their socialist hell hole...

Re:What's that you say?

[Opportunist]

The problem is that the poor in the US are not supposed to rise from the bottom. They're supposed to be cheap labour. Educated barely beyond what's required to serve their masters.

If you can't see it, or don't want to admit it: The system is rigged. And the problem is that those it's rigged against are noticing it. Why do you think you need all the surveillance?

Re:What's that you say?

[Opportunist]

You might want to add that 50k does actually allow you to live comfortably in Germany. And it's very affordable to have kids, since, you guessed it, society pretty much pays for them.

Re:What's that you say?

[Opportunist]

Or, in a nutshell, earning those 50k means that you take 30k home for you to spend on living your life. Insurances, taxes, retirement, healthcare, school for your kids ... all taken care of already.

Re:What's that you say?

[bobbied]

Not exactly.. Where there IS some luck involved when some win big, hard work can also pay off. You see it's not about everybody being rich, it's about everybody being better off. It's about being able to chart your own course and make your own way as YOU see fit, working hard for your own benefit.

You see, in general, EVERYBODY from the poor on up are better off in capitalistic economies. More wealth is created and even the poor live better. Yes, you will have some that get very rich, and some that don't do well, but on average it's better.

Re:What's that you say?

[bobbied]

Don't be cynical, it's not helpful... There are people who have managed to make it in this system you claim is rigged so you cannot use this as an excuse.

Look, I grew up with some VERY poor people and I can tell you that the problem isn't about the system being rigged, but it's more about people's attitudes towards the system. Many are stuck in the cycle of dependence by their own actions, not because the "system is rigged" or "the man won't let them" succeed. I know they THINK that's the reason, but if you look closely and hear what they really say and observe what they actually do, it's clear that's not true.

Out of the 200+ in my senior class, only 4 went to any kind of college and 2 that I know of graduated. I hope that's changed in the decades since then, but I doubt it has by much. Not that it was beyond their reach or ability, but because they choose to stay where they where, to not try, though the resources existed for scholarships and they would have qualified for grants both on need and demonstrated ability.

So, in my limited experience, in that poor county, it's not the system that's rigged, but the mindset and cycle of dependency that says that it's not worth the trouble to try. Oh they want to believe that the system is rigged and THAT'S why they are where they are, but in reality it's more that they didn't try and the excuse is that the system is rigged so there's no need to try.

I'm not going to tell you that there isn't issues with the "system" but you don't fix the problem by throwing up your hands and refusing to try. You keep trying, keep after getting a better situation a better job, better education. You tell yourself that the obstacles you face may slow you down at times, but they cannot KEEP you down, that hard work and persistence are qualities that make successful people what they are. So even if the system is rigged at times, it's not an excuse for refusing to try...

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct, and they have real high quality tech schools, not these for profit mills that fleece both the student and the taxpayer in the US.

Re:What's that you say?

[KGIII]

That makes more sense. Thank you.

Re:What's that you say?

[seffala]

Also, the student can always declare bankruptcy in the worst case, so there's no fear if you have nothing.

Student loans are not forgiveable in a bankruptcy.

Re:What's that you say?

[Jumunquo]

Student loans are not forgiveable in a bankruptcy.

Not true. According to a 2011 study, 40% of people who included student loans in their bankruptcy filings were granted a discharge by the judge:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pa...
You just have to prove undue hardship. Also, the study found a lot of people didn't ask for it, and those who did not hire a lawyer were less likely to ask for it. So the bigger problem is this misinformation that people think it's not forgivable.

Re:What's that you say?

[Jumunquo]

The average return on investment is that good, the individual return on investment can be really bad.

This is very different from the statements I criticized. Not only do you need to look at average return, but you need to look at difference between the average return that you get with the current programs versus the return you get with free education. I can't say whether the average return makes it pay for itself or not because I don't have that data - that's my criticism - people making these sky high claims of paid back in 5 years. It's no different from the 8X battery life claims. We're not saying that product doesn't boost battery life, but you can't just claim 8X w/o data.

I think it also works quite well, because German Universities are not afraid of kicking out already accepted students. No GPA or SAT test is really able to tell if people got what it takes to be a successful engineer. In Engineering almost half of the students usually fail during the first one or two years. It is way easier to kick people out, if they did not already spend >$10K tuition at that point.

In the engineering departments I've encountered, they have quotas, and you can't enter until you've spent about 2 years doing well in the intro (e.g. "weed-out") courses. And they have no issue kicking you out if you fail the courses regardless of how much you paid. The problem, if tuition is free, is not those majoring in highly employable fields but those majoring in fields with low demand. At the university, I saw it both ways. I saw students who just partied. Overwhelming, these students didn't have to pay a dime themselves (usually their parents paid), so they didn't care. I also saw students whose grades were impacted by having to work too much part-time. Thus, I think there's a balance about how much funding is most effective.

Re:What's that you say?

[david_thornley]

It's worse than that. Student loans are typically not discharged by bankruptcy, so if you hit rock bottom and get that judicially recognized you still owe that money.

Re:What's that you say?

[david_thornley]

An individual college degree is a gamble, and can turn out bad. Ten million college degrees are much more predictable, thanks to the law of large numbers. Do things on a large enough scale and you can count on the results, even if they're thoroughly random. Casinos have only a slight edge in any given bet, but they don't seem to run out of money ever.

Re:What's that you say?

[Opportunist]

Because a handful of people managed to get out of the treadmill is a "proof" that the system ain't rigged? If that is your proof, play the lottery to get rich! A handful of people managed to do just that, they played the lottery and are rich now! The system works! Yay!

Sorry. Hard work is not the way to get rich. If it was, all those single moms working three jobs would be billionaires instead of trying hard to make ends meet. There are many, many people who have NO chance, none at all, to ever escape that system except for a sudden break of pure luck. There is no amount of work they could put behind it to even remotely better their situation.

And while a person without a perspective to ever improve his situation is hopeless, a LOT of people without a perspective is a very, very dangerous situation.

Re:What's that you say?

[Opportunist]

Comparing the moderated market economy of Europe with the quite unfettered one of the US I just simply cannot see the advantage of the latter. Unless of course you happen to have more money than a Detroit mayor could spend in a term.

Re: What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good for you. You are very generous. However, I am not. When you take my money for a purpose I don't agree with you are nothing more than a thief.

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I think you got my point even though Obamacare has shortcomings. Personally, I'm heavily biased in favour of a state-run UHC because I have had a very serious condition (but it's in remission now) and unless my parents had far above upper middle class wealth (they don't), I would be SOL and certainly not have an M.Sc. (and maybe not even be alive). I'm also questioning whether insurance would've covered it in the US (or to be precise, whether I could've gotten insurance in the first place). I will thus remain forever grateful to such a system but because I like moving around, my taxes don't contribute to precisely the same country's system that footed the bill. However, I can imagine that there are other people like me who have instead moved from another UHC country to the one that treated me and it thus "balances out". In my case UHC thus ensured that I became an engineer that happily pays high taxes to a system which works. Of course, I get some of them "back" because even now in remission, treatment still costs about 1kUSD per month (and I know it's the best treatment option available because I've explored the latest medical options myself).

Re:What's that you say?

[tehcyder]

You want engineers, scientists, linguist and capable managers of businesses and finance, not basket weavers, musicians, artists in abundance.

You need both mathematicians and musicians in a decent society, you moron.

Re:What's that you say?

[bobbied]

Look at what I was saying.... You need the right MIX of these things and not an abundance of them.

Re:What's that you say?

[tehcyder]

And it is so funny when foreigners don't understand the English language. You are writing in English, someone with a Bachelor degree has been a post graduate in England since *BEFORE* any university existed in what is now Germany by nearly two hundred years you ignorant twit.

No, here in England, if you have a Bachelor's degree you are a graduate. If you are doing a Master's you are on a post graduate course.

Re:What's that you say?

[bobbied]

Comparing the moderated market economy of Europe with the quite unfettered one of the US I just simply cannot see the advantage of the latter. Unless of course you happen to have more money than a Detroit mayor could spend in a term.

The mayor of Detroit is a pretty poor example.... That city literally has NO MONEY and is in receivership so I'm not sure the mayor could get a dime for the parking meter from the city...

Re:What's that you say?

[bobbied]

I pray for your enlightenment.

I was poor too, I graduated high school, worked my way though college and got out of the cycle. Don't tell me working doesn't make a difference or that my success was from some stroke of luck. Collage was HARD WORK given that I had to work full time while I went to school full time too. It took 5 years to get my degree, but I managed it. My first professional job was lousy pay, but I worked hard, moved up, made more. I moved and worked in 4 different states to improve my standing, make more money and advance my career. 25 years later, I'm still at it, while the bulk of my peers from high school are still on welfare, living on nearly nothing because it's easy.

My experience wasn't "a stroke of luck" but working towards my goals, none of what I have was just handed to me nor did I steal it, I earned it. I'm not fabulously rich, but I don't live paycheck to paycheck either. But I started with nothing, came from a poor family, was the first to get a college degree. Now I'm sending MY kids to college and they will start out their adult lives BETTER than I did, with more education, more prospects and higher goals. So WHY is this?

I believe the difference is in how I was raised. I was taught that you work hard, earn what you need and don't depend on the government but yourself to provide for your needs. I've had paying jobs nearly constantly since I was 14, earning money, saving for things. I've shoveled you know what on the farm, cleaned toilets, dumped trash, mowed thousands of acres of grass and even managed to work as a software engineer for decades, because that's how I was raised.

I suppose you *could* call it luck that my parents passed that work ethic on to me, that I wasn't born to a family stuck in the cycle of dependence, that I was raised to succeed... However, I believe that it was and is attitude that kept the bulk of my peers "enslaved" in the dependency cycle and not "the man" or "the system being rigged". I'm not saying it's easy, and I'm not saying that some of my peers wouldn't face obstacles I never had too face, but I am saying that how I did it, how I got to where I am, is something that works for the vast majority who try it...

Re:What's that you say?

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Except that they seem to get a whole lot more for their taxes than we do. From what I can see they get roads good enough to not have a speed limit when traffic volumes are low, healthcare for everyone, education for everyone, etc. While in the US I get a government that likes to waste money on shit bridges to nowhere, bomb brown people, spy in bulk on its own citizens, etc. But by god I pay less in taxes to do so. I want an effective efficient government and while I may not be terribly familiar with some of the finer points of the German government they seem to be doing a better job

Re:What's that you say?

[Bob the Super Hamste]

You are missing a couple of taxes at the federal level. There is social security and medicare tax (7.65% or 15.3% depending on how you want to look at it) that hits everyone but starts cutting out at higher incomes. And while you point out that you don't live in a state with income tax a lot do. Additionally a lot of states have a sales tax and this ignores local property taxes or local income taxes. When I did my taxes this year I was curious what my overall rate was and it is slightly below 30% and if I included sales tax it would likely be about 2% higher but that is just a rough guess.

Re:What's that you say?

[bobbied]

Yes, and I also omitted a number of German taxes (solidarity tax and Church tax) which pretty much make up the same percentage.

I think it's pretty clear that the overall tax burden in Germany is somewhat larger than here in the USA (and as you point out this will vary based on the local tax rates) but I'm pretty sure that 5% more for Germans would be pretty universal, with it usually being more.

So, in the absence of some hard numbers, where somebody goes though and actually comes up with real numbers, all we have is your guess and mine, so I'm picking my number to be more accurate, until proven otherwise.

Re:What's that you say?

[Opportunist]

I am still sure spending money would not be a problem, provided it was provided.

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

I got a degree in 1999, BS in Physics. I now make 6 figures and that from $45,000 in loans. I am still paying it off at $223/month.

So, 'crushing debt'? Not so much. More like 'annoying debt'.

I guess if fewer people spent 10 years getting a MS in Philosophy, then being mad that they needed 10 years of loans to get that MS then fewer people would feel 'crushed' by their debt.

I spent my first two years at a Community College (to minimize debt) and my last two at a STATE SCHOOL (also to minimize debt)...

Re:What's that you say?

[bobbied]

Capitalism is like playing the lottery. Anyone can get rich. But not everyone. Most are just losing money in the system so a few fortunate ones can be rich.

I have to disagree, or somehow I must have won a lottery when I wasn't looking, a lottery that keeps paying me a little bit more each year as time goes on.

Look, I came from a poor family, not even middle class, from a very poor area. But I'm what you might call middle to upper class now. I got here by working, by paying my own way though college by working full time and doing school full time to live. In the summers I mowed thousands of acres of grass to pay tuition. Heck, with few exceptions, I've been gainfully employed with a regular job since I was 14. You name it, I've likely had a job doing it, shoveling you know what, cleaning toilets and floors, dumping trash, mowing lawns, plumbing, electrical and construction work.

Don't give me this sob story about the system being rigged, or the rich only getting that way because of luck or because they cheated others out of it. It's not usually true and I KNOW it's not true in my life.

Re:What's that you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Having paid taxes in both countries, I can say for certain that your statement is false. German taxes are significantly higher.

Re:What's that you say?

[nicoleb_x]

I just put a kid through college in Florida. It wasn't all that expensive with the Bright Futures scholarship and Florida's relatively low cost for college. I spent more on the car than I did on tuition and that was certainly optional. We never even considered getting a loan.

Re:What's that you say?

[jwhitener]

In theory, it's possible that educating everyone increases the wealth of everyone involved by an amount greater than the taxes paid out to cover education over the course of their working lifetime.

That has already been proven time and time again. Educating a populace pays for itself in terms of a lifetime of higher tax revenues. It doesn't really matter that it is fiscally sound, because it doesn't fit in with the conservative viewpoint that giving people stuff for free is somehow always bad.

Re:What's that you say?

[jwhitener]

Yeah, US taxes wouldn't have to be raised much higher to get free college, free healthcare, free payed maternity/paternity leaves, etc..

We would, however, have to re-structure our budget. Small things like spending more on our Military than the next 7 countries combined spend, sorta eats up one's money that could be used to help society.....

http://pgpf.org/Chart-Archive/0053_defense-comparison

Ob

[Hognoxious]

When Katherine came to Germany in 2012 she spoke two words of German: 'hallo' and 'danke'

Top decile of Americans in language skills, then.

By the time she graduates she might know Bier and Sheisse.

Re:Ob

[JustNiz]

Yeah the arrogance of people that decide to live in another country for years but can't even bother to at lest learn some of the language beforehand amazes me.

Re:Ob

[wardrich86]

She may even learn about ÃY so she can write words fancily like scheiÃYe, schloÃY, and straÃYe! (I have no idea if there are any rules on when an "ss" can't be replaced by a ÃY)

Re:Ob

[Paradise Pete]

As someone who has lived for a long time in several non-English speaking countries, I can tell you that many don't bother to learn much of it after arriving, either. It's baffling.

Re:Ob

[ganjadude]

que?

Re:Ob

[morgauxo]

I like learning languages myself. But.. Hey.. they set it up so that she didn't have to. Why should she not take advantage of that?

Re:Ob

[BlackPignouf]

Why? I didn't speak a word of Spanish when I came to study engineering in Madrid, and I didn't speak a word of German when I came to work in Stuttgart. 10 years later, I'm fluent in Spanish and German.
I need human contact with native speakers (and beers, lots of beers!) in order to learn a language.

Re:Ob

[Anonymous Coward]

There are rules, they changed "recently" and there are of course many exceptions, but mostly it's this: Short vowel before sharp s = ss (as in "Masse", mass). Long vowel before sharp s = ß (as in "Maße", measurements).

Re:Ob

[Hognoxious]

I doubt most Germans do. They changed it a few years back (apart from Schleswig-Holstein, which ought to be part of Denmark anyway).

In the IBM mainframe world, which didn't support weird characters, ss for the beta thing and e-after for an umlaut are long established conventions.

Re:Ob

[JustNiz]

Because there's much more going on than just going to lectures.

For instance what does she do when she needs to ask about/buy something in a store or whatever? just expect everyone should make the exception for her and to learn and speak American because she can't be bothered to learn German? It's exactly that ignorant, arrogant mentality that causes Americans to often have such a bad reputation overseas.

Re:Ob

[Anonymous Coward]

If you say that in the US, then you are a racist though technically the US does not have a language.

Re:Ob

[JustNiz]

I'm not saying you can't survive, but you have to admit you would have been at least socially much better off in at least the first year or two if you'd have learnt the languages before you got there.

Re:Ob

[nedlohs]

You learn the language while you there, mainly because of those very things.

Re:Ob

[JustNiz]

Sorry but thats just peecee bullshit.
To be racist you need to be anti a particular race. Where did I say that?

Re:Ob

[ganjadude]

the funny thing is the people who complain about this (rightfully so) are the same ones that would call me a racist for saying learn english here in america

Re:Ob

[Anonymous Coward]

Already modded so posting anon.

just expect everyone should make the exception for her and to learn and speak American because she can't be bothered to learn German?

This is the same thing in this country where you have people of Latin American descent* who think everyone should put Spanish on everything because they can't be bothered to learn English. Or those who live here for decades yet can't communicate with police or EMS when there is an issue (a true story from not long ago in my area).

If you're going to live in a foreign country for any extended period of time, it is incumbent upon you to learn and adapt to them, not the other way round.

* I'm not deliberately picking on Latinos because you see the same thing in Chinatowns or other non-English groups. I only used them because they're the first group people think of when talking about illegal aliens or those who don't speak the language and expect everyone else to adapt to them.

Re:Ob

[JustNiz]

...And what does she do in the first year or so meanwhile?

Re:Ob

[Anonymous Coward]

Learning a new language doesn't come easy to many people. And many people don't have the time or other resources to pay for instruction.

Many low-wage workers in the U.S. don't speak English very well. The janitor who cleans my office every night moved here from Hong Kong over 30 years ago. He's a very nice guy, and has put two of his kids through college on his salary (they're unionized in my building). But his English is very, very poor. Some people will say that he never learned because it's too easy to make a living without having to learn English. But not being able to speak English well is a severe handicap even in large metropolitan area where you can live and work among people who speak your native language. Not being able to speak the language is a sort of prison--sure, you manage to provide food, clothing, a shelter, but it pretty much ends there in terms of work options.

A friend of mine once said that learning languages is easy, and he pointed out all the people he knew from foreign countries who live here and who speak English fluently. But that's a selection bias. You're very unlikely to befriend or otherwise interact with people who live here and haven't been able to pick up the language. Also, he has a Ph.D. His circle of acquaintances are almost by definition people who's intelligence or wealth puts them at the far end of the curve.

I've lived in other countries and encountered expat communities where people by and large don't bother picking up the language. But is that arrogance? Again, for most people it takes time and money to learn a new language, and for many it takes _much_ time and/or money to do so. If you can afford not to, why does it matter? The locals are more than happy to take your money. And not learning the language is low on the list of things they dislike about the expats.

Re:Ob

[JustNiz]

>> If you're going to live in a foreign country for any extended period of time, it is incumbent upon you to learn and adapt to them, not the other way round.

I totally agree.

Re:Ob

[Anonymous Coward]

Straße is nowdays spelled "Strassse", least in Austria.

Re:Ob

[angel'o'sphere]

Yes, there are rules, but they go the opposite direction, when can an "sz" be replaced by "s" or "ss".

And they are so complicated, most germans don't know them (I definitely don't and don't care).

Re:Ob

[FlyHelicopters]

For instance what does she do when she needs to ask about/buy something in a store or whatever? just expect everyone should make the exception for her and to learn and speak American because she can't be bothered to learn German? It's exactly that ignorant, arrogant mentality that causes Americans to often have such a bad reputation overseas.

*puts on America center of the world hat*

Well, Germans should learn English, as should everyone else.

We have 11 aircraft carriers, Germany has none. We have 10,000 nuclear weapons, Germany has none. The US Dollar is the world reserve currency, the German Euro is not.

Yep, they should speak English. :)

---

In fairness, that is a bit of a parody of the average American's viewpoint, but it is also true to some extent.

That being said, learning another language can be good for the soul and for understanding other people and points of view, which isn't a bad thing.

Perhaps America would be better off if we required all students to learn another language.

Re:Ob

[Qzukk]

(I have no idea if there are any rules on when an "ss" can't be replaced by a ÃY)

Rule 1: When used on slashdot

Re:Ob

[nbauman]

Why? I didn't speak a word of Spanish when I came to study engineering in Madrid, and I didn't speak a word of German when I came to work in Stuttgart. 10 years later, I'm fluent in Spanish and German.
I need human contact with native speakers (and beers, lots of beers!) in order to learn a language.

It's a lot easier to learn German from a German girlfriend than it is to learn it from Berlitz.

Re:Ob

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry but thats just peecee bullshit. To be racist you need to be anti a particular race. Where did I say that?

I think the AC meant that you are CONSIDERED a racist if you say that. And people are.....

Re:Ob

[JustNiz]

>> Learning a new language doesn't come easy to many people. And many people don't have the time or other resources to pay for instruction.

Sorry but that's just a lame excuse. Its all just a case of motivation. The reality is there are many nice but fundamentally lazy people in this world that will never make an effort (even to improve their own life) if they can possibly avoid it. The fact he's (still) only a janitor is a clue. Are you seriously telling me that in over 30 years he couldn't find the time to study a language thats in use all around him all the time? Sorry but you don't need to pay for tuition to do that. You just need to make an effort and maybe buy a book.

Just to prove the point by taking it to the extreme: if he was told he'd have to pass a fairly tough English test in 1 year or his wife/dog/kid would be shot, I freakin guarantee he'd suddenly get it together.

Re:Ob

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, pros go with sz for transcribing ß.

Re:Ob

[JustNiz]

I'm sure you're right, but if we worried about all the stuff that ignorant people make up and claim is right, then we'd all be too scared to even leave the house every day.

Re:Ob

[CrimsonAvenger]

It's a lot easier to learn German from a German girlfriend than it is to learn it from Berlitz.

Hmm, a great many years ago, I heard that referred to as a "sleeping dictionary"....

Re:Ob

[BlackPignouf]

"First year or two"?
You're doing it wrong. The trick is to put your brain in a position where the only possible escape is to learn the new language, and learn it fast.
I made it clear to my room-mates/colleagues/acquaintances that I didn't want to fall back to any other language. They were really nice and patient, and were already laughing while I tried to make silly jokes with my 50 words vocabulary. I had some big headaches during the first month, and was exhausted every day after trying to make sense of the new language.
After about 2 months, I could speak well enough to make myself understood by anyone. I had a great time, and my social life was also helped because locals found it cute that I went through all this trouble.

Re:Ob

[Anonymous Coward]

We asked one of my wife's Spanish cousins what it was like visiting the U.S. being a non-native English speaker. He looked quite surprised at the question. He was visiting NY, and he said, "NY is a Spanish city."

So, don't just blame Americans for not learning the native language!

Re:Ob

[JustNiz]

>> Well, Germans should learn English, as should everyone else.

As an Englishman living in the USA I can't agree more. Americans are at the top of the list of nations that need to learn English :-)

Re:Ob

[andymadigan]

The general consensus seems to be that you don't need to speak German to live and work in at least some areas of Germany. Go to a cafe in Berlin and try ordering a latte in German - you'll get a confused look. Or Munich, get in a taxi and say "Auf Flugenhafen Bitte", your American accent will give you away and the driver will reply "Sure, I'll take you to the airport" in perfect English.

The French are very, erm, proud of their language. Speak to them in another language and they'll look down their nose at you. Germans don't seem to mind much, I think any idea of spreading German culture or complaining about immigrants brings up bad memories. Good for them too, you can build a much stronger economy if your population doesn't care about things that simply don't matter.

Re:Ob

[Sique]

Actually, only the military does, and only on the teleprinter. The official transcription is still 'ss'.

Re:Ob

[Sique]

It's not only the IBM mainframe world. Those are the official replacements in Germany. IBM just used it, because it was already standardized.

Re:Ob

[Opportunist]

Anyone under 50 will speak English reasonably well to get along. There are hardly any people (ok, provided they have an IQ above room temperature) who aren't bilingual.

Re:Ob

[nbauman]

In New York City, I don't need a Spanish dictionary. I just stop a pretty Spanish girl on the street, say, "Hable espanol?" and ask her to translate the word.

I wish I had known that when I was younger.

Re:Ob

[FlyHelicopters]

Ha! That was funny, thanks for the laugh...

And of course... you're right! :)

Re:Ob

[JustNiz]

They can label you however they want, but it stil doesn't make them right. I think the problem would be helped a lot if the US formally declared a national language. ...But (assuming Spanish doesn't win) please call it American not English. What you people speak and write really isn't English. At least until you (finally) throw Websters away and adopt the Oxford English Dictionary as the arbiter of correct spelling ... and maybe learn to pronounce the word "duty" in a manner not freely interchangeable with the word "doody". :-)

Re:Ob

[Anonymous Coward]

Switzerland got rid of the ß completely.

Re:Ob

[Anonymous Coward]

And by "pros" you mean very old people, right? Don't be fooled by the HTML entity "ß". That describes how the symbol came to be, not how it is transcribed. The s-z-ligature name is a result of the Sütterlin script forms of s and z. In modern German, print or script, ß looks nothing like "sz". The two "ss" and "ß" are generally not interchangeable. When ß is not available (ASCII, etc.), it is transcribed as ss (and ä, ö and ü as ae, oe and ue respectively).

Re:Ob

[sribe]

Well, Germans should learn English, as should everyone else.

Yeah, seems to be a lot of people on here who've never been to former west Germany--they pretty much all speak English.

Re:Ob

[JustNiz]

Really? wow. Was he joking or sincere? I could imagine that being believed/said (perhaps naively) with a reasonably straight face about towns in what was the Mexican Cession states, ( Cali, Arizona, Utah, Texas, New Mexico, etc) but NY seems a long way too far North East for that to be intended as a serious comment.
Demographics seem to prove him generally wrong too:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...

Re:Ob

[Anonymous Coward]

Or Munich, get in a taxi and say "Auf Flugenhafen Bitte", your American accent will give you away and the driver will reply "Sure, I'll take you to the airport" in perfect English.

Although it won't be your American accent but the fact that you just literally told the driver "on airport, please!".

Re:Ob

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in Germany I had 9 years of English and 5 years of French in high school before I was allowed to study at a university.
And trust me, this was the minimum I could get away with.

Re:Ob

[perpenso]

Perhaps America would be better off if we required all students to learn another language.

It seems pointless. I had a few years of Spanish in high school. While driving through Mexico we were on a desert highway, hundreds of miles south of the border, hadn't seen anything for many miles. A lone gas station becomes visible and we decide to stop. The driver had taken French in high school so I talk to the attendant and ask for a fill of unleaded gas. He repeats my request in perfect English to confirm. Seriously, the gas station attendant hundreds of miles from the border in the middle of nowhere spoke better English than people who grew up around me in California.

As I mentioned in another post, when traveling in Europe it seemed unnecessary to know anything beyond hello in a local language. When saying hello in the local language its as if the clerk, attendant, hostess, waiter, etc thinks "oh, its one of the polite Americans, I'll answer in English rather than pretend we have a language barrier". This really saps the motivation for learning anything beyond hello, please and thank you. :-)

Re:Ob

[ganjadude]

i think its already called "american-english"

Re:Ob

[FlyHelicopters]

Actually, I know they do... We've had a German AuPair, they all learn English in school these days. :)

Re:Ob

[linuxrocks123]

Look, as a society. you have a choice:
- Allow immigrants and foreigners some leeway in not knowing your native language.
- Don't allow immigrants and foreigners into your country.

Some linguists think it is the case that it is physically impossible to become natively proficient in a language after 12 or so. Even if this isn't the case, learning a new language is an arduous and time-intensive process for an adult who has other things to do with his time. Expecting every tourist to your country to learn your language fluently before going is simply stupid. Expecting an exchange student to learn your language fluently before going is also not reasonable: this person is a full-time student who has a million other things to learn besides a giant bidirectional map between his words and yours.

Expecting true immigrants to learn your language, after they've been there some time, is reasonable. Immigrants are planning to be in your country for the rest of their lives, or at least many years, and it's reasonable to expect they would make a time investment to, over the course of 5-10 years, become proficient in the language of the country they are in so that they're not in a social ghetto where they can only interact and befriend other immigrants. This usually happens; when it doesn't, it's troubling, because it fractures the country's culture.

BUT, the point is ... if you are in a country that anyone wants to visit, for any reason, you will occasionally run into people in your country who don't speak the native language. The most you might expect from these people is that they've made a token effort to memorize some key phrases to shift some of the burden of communication to them instead of you. And if you don't live in a country anyone wants to visit, well, that sucks for you.

Re:Ob

[dmpot]

say "Auf Flugenhafen Bitte", your American accent will give you away

Maybe, because it should be "Zum Flughafen bitte."

Re:Ob

[nospam007]

"...And what does she do in the first year or so meanwhile?"

They eat for almost free in the University Mensa by showing on the menu they want to eat or they write the numbers of the menu items on a napkin in Chinese restaurants.

For the rest, just substitute 'ein' for 'one' Beer, Vodka Tonic, Manhattan, Harvey Wallbanger etc

Re:Ob

[nospam007]

"Go to a cafe in Berlin and try ordering a latte in German - you'll get a confused look."

You obviously should have entered a starbucks in Berlin instead of a café.

Re:Ob

[nospam007]

"Here in Germany I had 9 years of English and 5 years of French in high school before I was allowed to study at a university.
And trust me, this was the minimum I could get away with."

But only because you sucked at maths and physics. :-)

Re:Ob

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect that England is in second place.

Re:Ob

[JustNiz]

Yeah thats about as much of a misnomer as "African American".

If you took any Black American that is more than 1 generation off the boat yet still proudly calling themselves African American, and dropped them in the middle of Africa, I can frickin guarantee they would very quickly change to thinking of themselves as 100% American.

Re:Ob

[Anonymous Coward]

There are hardly any people (ok, provided they have an IQ above room temperature) who aren't bilingual.

You finish school education with at least two foreign languages these days, but they may well be French and Latin. English is common as first foreign language in Germany but not universally so, and the actual regulations don't give it special status over any other foreign language, so there are actually still schools where you can get your college qualification (Abitur) without having taken foreign language classes outside of Latin (as obligatory first foreign language) and (Classical) Greek (as a choice language). Of course, making those choices work for you is still your own responsibility.

But frankly: if you want to become a programmer later, acquiring the meaning of 20 English reserved words in a computer language is something you can learn much easier than getting used to keeping track of 6levels of nesting and possibly relevant grammatical context. You cannot spell "Greek" without "Geek". Classical Greek is really a beast to master, not just because of its humongous number of verb forms but also because of the humongous sentence structures built from them.

Re:Ob

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you need to disambiguate "Masse" from "Maße".

Re:Ob

[Anonymous Coward]

I always referred to it as "sucking the native tongue"

Re:Ob

[bickerdyke]

Germans don't seem to mind much, I think any idea of spreading German culture or complaining about immigrants brings up bad memories.

Nah. They're just glad to get a chance to actually use and practice what they had to learn at school. And it's part of the "getting things done" attitude. Use the language that poses the lowest language barrier.

And most people know alone the German concet of grammatical gender will drive any student to madness and back again.

Re:Ob

[Anonymous Coward]

Relax. You may not be a racist, but just an asshole.

Re:Ob

[ganjadude]

says the AC

Re:Ob

[blueg3]

As an Englishman living in the USA I can't agree more. Americans are at the top of the list of nations that need to learn English :-)

Sorry, couldn't understand what you wrote. Could you translate to American?

Re:Ob

[Anonymous Coward]

Ask. For. Help. It's not going to be easy, but fuck me it's not the end of the world if one American puts aside their rugged individualism for twelve months.

Re:Ob

[angel'o'sphere]

Sigh ....

Sometimes you write something that half makes sense. But this again ... (shake heads).

Well, Germans should learn English, as should everyone else.
English is the first foreign language germans learn since 75 years. However since about 10 - 15 years parents can chose for french (surprise our neighbour country is France!) and meanwhile also for other languages as "first" language. Learning english is mandatory. More or less all over the world.

We have 11 aircraft carriers, Germany has none.
Yes, because before the "reunion" and the peace treaty (you know the peace treaty after WWII was crafted 1990? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...) Before that Germany was not allowed to own/build/operate carriers or any other war ship above 5000 tons.

The US Dollar is the world reserve currency, the German Euro is not.
Neither is. The "reserve currency" is gold. Since oil is traded for Euros equally as for dollars, no one is holding money reserves in dollar anymore (that started around 1987 ... you live in a delusional history world).

Countries like Switzerland, Japan or Saudi Arabia have their "reserves" in Euros and Dollars, more or less 50 / 50 with a noticeable sland towards Euros.

Re:Ob

[Greyfox]

Reminds me of that old joke, the punchline to which is "What do you mean, 'wrong hole'?"

Re:Ob

[KGIII]

Racist... Yes, you are racist. Perhaps you can consult the OED for a definition?

Re:Ob

[angel'o'sphere]

But only because you sucked at maths and physics. :-)
Nice joke. But wrong. You can not get rid of both languages in the end of high school. And it has nothing to do with other topics at all.

Re:Ob

[angel'o'sphere]

(apart from Schleswig-Holstein, which ought to be part of Denmark anyway).
For what reason? The danish minority in Schleswig-Holstein is not even 2% of the population. Why should it belong to another country?

Re:Ob

[andymadigan]

Perhaps I should have finished my coffee before commenting.

Re:Ob

[FlyHelicopters]

Sigh ....

Sometimes you write something that half makes sense. But this again ... (shake heads).

Reading comprehension, it can be a good thing...

This is not the first time you've completely misread something I've posted.

Re:Ob

[Bing Tsher E]

Anybody who utters the word 'racist' is by definition 'racist.'

The whole idea of 'race' is contrived.

Re:Ob

[haruchai]

A well-traveled friend who speaks several languages fluently says you can't learn proper Russian without staying out late at night drinking vodka.

Re:Ob

[dywolf]

Anybody who utters the word 'racist' is by definition 'racist.'

bull and shit

Re:Ob

[dywolf]

standard generational assimilation profile:

1st generation (immigrant): speaks mother tongue
2nd generation: bilingual
3rd generation: speaks major language of country

but looking through your post history, your grasp of facts or history isnt as strong as your racism, so you may struggle to understand this.

Re:Ob

[KGIII]

I am definitely racist. I hate all races equally though, so there is that.

Re:Ob

[Sique]

... which normally results from the context, because the mass is singular, while the measurements are plural.

Re:Ob

[shutdown -p now]

Most European languages have grammatical gender. I don't see why English speakers should be given any slack on that account - it's their problem if they chose to emasculate their language ;)

Re:Ob

[shutdown -p now]

Not picking up the language because you can't be bothered or can afford to hire people that take care of it for you is not a problem. The problem is when you begin to demand that other people, organizations, and the government use the language that you can understand, which is different from the language that they normally know and use, for free.

Re: Ob

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm more racist than you: I only hate humans.

Re:Ob

[bickerdyke]

That's why I failed at French but managed to speak a fairly fluent English.

Re:Ob

[dave420]

He's nearly right. English is not the official language of the US, so you calling for "them" to learn "your" language is perverse beyond belief, but it's not racist. It's xenophobic, small-minded, childish, illogical, and downright pathetic, but not racist.

Re:Ob

[dave420]

And you are frequently wrong, so what should happen now? Tickle fight?

Re:Ob

[Anonymous Coward]

Being a Dutch native who simply adores every British accent but dislikes the shrill sounding noises coming from the other side of the Atlantic, I could not agree more. I live in Amsterdam and cringe every time I hear a loud 'whheehh rweh wengh weehh' sound coming from a United Statesman. They have the nerve to call it 'talking'. I would rather listen to drunken Welshmen or Scots.

Re:Ob

[FlyHelicopters]

Nope, but you and angel'o'sphere clearly understand a different version of English and view the world very differently than I do.

And that isn't likely to change. Nothing you say here, nor I say, is likely to change the other side's point of view.

Re:Ob

[dunkelfalke]

If you think that German grammatical gender is complicated, you'll commit suicide trying to understand it in a Slavic language.

Re:Ob

[Anonymous Coward]

The "beta thing" is called "sharp s" and "e-after" is called a "written out umlaut". The "written out" forms are sz/ss, ae, oe, ue. They have been in use for centuries and they haven't been invented just for non-native typewriters, linotypes or mainframes. :D

Re:Ob

[tempmpi]

You finish school education with at least two foreign languages these days, but they may well be French and Latin. English is common as first foreign language in Germany but not universally so, and the actual regulations don't give it special status over any other foreign language, so there are actually still schools where you can get your college qualification (Abitur) without having taken foreign language classes outside of Latin (as obligatory first foreign language) and (Classical) Greek (as a choice language).

No, that is not true. English has a special status over other foreign languages. It has to be either your first or your second foreign language. If you pick Latin or French as your first foreign language you have to learn English later as a second language. However, being forced to learn English at school does not necessary guarantee that people are really able to speak English. If people do not use a language, they will quickly forget what they once learned.

Re:Ob

[Hognoxious]

Because the Prussi-huns stole it in 1864, that's why.

Re:Ob

[Anonymous Coward]

"But only because you sucked at maths and physics. :-)"

Actually I aced both as "Leistungskurse".

Re:Ob

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not racist, but it is stupid. America is probably the worst place in the world to learn English.

Re:Ob

[Anonymous Coward]

I (fellow Dutchman) completely agree, but unfortunately many Dutch people speak English with a horrible American accent (even many who speak English reasonably well otherwise).

Re:Ob

[JustNiz]

ok I can try...

Y'all listen up now coz y'all need to word up yo edjumacation.

Re:Ob

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you recognise a Spanish girl? They don't generally look that different from Portuguese, Italians or Greeks...

Re:Ob

[angel'o'sphere]

Pfft ...

Prussia and Huns are complete different ethnics.

With your logic we could go back until beginning of time and revert all changes of allegiance.

For starters: at that time Schleswig Hollstein where two _german_ Dukedoms "occupied" by force by the Danish Kingdom.

Hint: "Schleswig" and "Hollstein" are german words and not danish. Obvious enough that they "never really where danish".

But that is how history wen't ... I for my part don't care as both are now in the EU and I can travel there without even showing my passport.

Re:Ob

[david_thornley]

So what do you call somebody who believes in these contrived categories and applies stereotypes to them that harm members of some of them? The fact that race is basically a social construct doesn't make it irrelevant, unfortunately.

Re:Ob

[david_thornley]

Perhaps America would be better off if we required all students to learn another language.

Draw a circle around me a thousand miles in radius, and it's all English-speaking in the sense that anybody who doesn't speak it well is seriously disadvantaged. (At least the UK isn't that far from France.) There are communities that speak other languages (primarily Spanish, Hmong, and Somali) here but I almost never notice anything of them. Send me abroad anywhere important for business and there will be people fluent in English.

Not only do I not need to learn another language, I don't have anywhere convenient to go where I can keep in practice. I learned a lot of Russian over forty years ago, and have forgotten most of it. I don't see that that has done me all that much good, compared to other things I studied.

Re:Ob

[tehcyder]

Expecting an exchange student to learn your language fluently before going is also not reasonable

There is a big difference between being fluent in a language and being able to say please, thankyou, ask for directions or the price of a drink and so on. In addition, if you're going to live/study somwehere for a couple of years, it is probably a good idea to get at least a reasonable idea of that country's customs and history, which is something that you tend to acquire when studying a language anyway.

Re:Ob

[tehcyder]

Anybody who utters the word 'racist' is by definition 'racist.'

The whole idea of 'race' is contrived.

Yeah, and it's contrived by racists.

Re:Ob

[tehcyder]

when traveling in Europe it seemed unnecessary to know anything beyond hello in a local language

This is only true if you stick to the touristy bits of a country. I have been in bars and restaurants in major cities like Barcelona, Copenhagen and Brussels where no one spoke a word of English, as they were off the normal tourist routes.

If you hang out in major hotels and so on, fair enough everyone probably will speak English.

Re:Ob

[tehcyder]

There is no real advantage to having genders in a language. If cat is feminine and dog is masculine, you still need to have a way of indicating whether it is in fact a male cat or female dog.

And there is absolutely no point whatsoever in having a third neuter gender, especially when it leads to your word for girl being neuter.

Re:Ob

[tehcyder]

It's a lot easier to learn German from a German girlfriend than it is to learn it from Berlitz.

Translation for slashdotters: start listening to the dialogue in all the German porn films you watch.

Re:Ob

[JustNiz]

Actually I've always been impressed with how well nearly all the Dutch people I've ever met speak English without much of an accent.

Re:Ob

[Bob the Super Hamste]

This a thousand times. I had a similar experience when I lived in France. I only lived there for 3 months but got dropped right into it. Before I arrived I had managed to learn a few things so I wouldn't starve, get to lost, and be able to pay for things but I was pretty useless. By the end of the 3 months I could hold a conversation to some degree with the locals even if I was about at a kindergarten level. My only request is that someone teach the French how to pronounce "Häagen-Dazs" as it confused the hell out of me at first when coworkers would ask if I wanted to go get Häagen-Dazs after work. I tried but failed.

Re:Ob

[perpenso]

Admittedly this was in major cities but not necessarily near the tourist hotels and such. Now in Paris I was spending time near a university so perhaps that helped. However I think it may also be a generational thing. I've been told that the most recent generation or two of Europeans generally speak English to each other when traveling within Europe. Perhaps more so in some countries than others. For example perhaps more English speaking in Prague.

Also I'm not necessarily referring to fluency. Just enough English for the clerk, waiter, etc to get the job done.

Re:Ob

[shutdown -p now]

There's no real advantage to probably 2/3 of the things in natural languages (and English has its own share of ridiculousness there, starting with spelling). For pure communication, we could just as well use Lojban.

OTOH, all that stuff adds "color" and "flavor" to the language, if you know what I mean. This can have a very real advantage when it comes to literary works, especially poetry.

Re:Ob

[Hognoxious]

Prussia and Huns are complete different ethnics.

What's that got to do with anything?

Obvious enough that they "never really where danish".

Not as obvious as the fact that you're as dumb as a box of rocks.

You couldn't even point to Germany or Denmark (note the capitalisation) on a map, so stop quoting random shit you found on thickiepedia.

Re:Ob

[morgauxo]

If everyone isn't making an exception for her (and all the others) and she truly doesn't know any German than what is she doing? Importing her food from an English speaking country via the internet? Starving?

If people are managing to get by without knowing the local language then I guess someone has made the decision to enable them. Nobody is forcing the local shopkeepers, landlords, etc to learn English are they?

Re:Ob

[morgauxo]

You should hear people speak Spanish from different parts of the world. American vs UK English is NOTHING!

Besides... what gives the English ownership of 'true' English if not history since it started there. What I have heard is that American English is closer to what the English spoke at the time of the revolution than what the English speak now is.

Re:Ob

[Anonymous Coward]

However since about 10 - 15 years parents can chose for french (surprise our neighbour country is France!)

Not that much of a surprise. You only invaded them twice last century.

Re:Ob

[angel'o'sphere]

The parent claimed the Prussian Huns invaded Denmark and attached it to Germany.

So I pointed out that Prussia and Huns have nothing to do with each other.

Regarding your idea about maps ... I live in Germany and Denmark, in Copenhagen to be precise. The nice things about maps btw, is that country names are included for free. So if one can not find a country on a map he must be a complete retard. Thank you that you take me for one :D

So I suggest you get a history lesion ... Capitalization or the lack thereof does not magically change map positions ... just for your interest/education.

During the period where the "German" Dukedooms Schleswig and Hollstein belonged to the Danish Kingdom, the population and the Dukes where: German.

How can they afford it?

[Anonymous Coward]

They can afford it off the backs of the Greeks and the other unfortunates in the Eurozone that they utterly dominate.

Re:How can they afford it?

[Hognoxious]

If DeVry's Master of Finance program allows resits, you should look into it. Because you appear to have debtors and creditors the wrong way round.

You aren't that fucking 7 digit windbag who goes on about Aristophanes, are you?

Re:How can they afford it?

[rogoshen1]

Look man, if the Germans are going to dominate Europe, there's worse ways they could go about it -- right?

Re:How can they afford it?

[bsolar]

University is pretty cheap in almost all Europe. Most countries have tuitions of about 1000$ per year, which include administrative costs. More than a few countries offer completely free university to EU citizens and Finland offers free university to non-EU citizens too.

Re:How can they afford it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not anymore in Spain. Tuitions have skyrocket in the last few years from 500 a year to >2000 euros. BLame the economy (sarcasm).

Re:How can they afford it?

[PRMan]

Too soon?

Re:How can they afford it?

[Kartu]

Compared to USA where they are paying 10k+ (several times more than that in top universities) that's still very cheap.

Re:How can they afford it?

[wired_parrot]

They can afford it because:

1) They get a third of the number of foreign students that the United States attracts

2) German universities tend to be a "no-frill" affair, with large auditoriums, limited to no athletics programs, and none of the social life seen in American campuses, Most students tend to study locally, so generally there are no dorms. They are more comparable with American state colleges. This isn't a bad thing, in my opinion, but those who go to college hoping for the experience of the "college life" will be disappointed if they go to Germany.

Re:How can they afford it?

[Daniel Hoffmann]

2000 a year is still somewhat cheap, is that price the same for all courses in all colleges? For example in Brazil private medical and dentist schools cost a ton of money.

Re:How can they afford it?

[will_die]

No, the schools that are free are compatible to community colleges in the USA so in that realm of classes you can take what they offer. Even then it is not free, Germany charges you around $2000 a year for the "free" colleges.

Re:How can they afford it?

[redmid17]

There's plenty of social life. The student dorms usually have a bar or two. Oh yes, there is plenty of student housing, like a ton.

Re:How can they afford it?

[antiperimetaparalogo]

If DeVry's Master of Finance program allows resits, you should look into it. Because you appear to have debtors and creditors the wrong way round.

You aren't that fucking 7 digit windbag who goes on about Aristophanes, are you?

It is Antisthenes, not "Aristophanes" - and no, he is not me, i always post with my pseudonymous 7 digit account, plus i made many comments recognizing Greeks as debtors and Germans as creditors!

But since you mentioned Aristophanes: The young and immature will get old and mature, the uneducated can be educated, and a drunk will get sober, but stupidity lasts forever...

Re:How can they afford it?

[Anonymous Coward]

In Europe Universities are generally free, doesn't matter if you want to be a m.d., dentist or engineer. Unfortunately, previous swedish rightwing government decided to take out administrative fee from foreign students to imitate "big brother" (i.e. USA), while the rest of the world goes the other way and gives even more for free. The goodwill and pay-back is many-fold and you get educated and intelligent immigration.

What kind of immigration would you want in your country? Young, healthy, people who have the ability to study, and finish their projects and set root in the new host country giving back many times over, especially when the costly upbringing (yeah, the first 18-19 years of a child upbringing is very costly for governments around the world), or some people running away with PTSD from war-torn country that need decades to readjust and return to normalcy of life after all their horrific experiences. Or maybe the poor mexicans without education, and no ability to become more productive because of the environment and tradition of higher education?

It's amazing how short-sighted U.S. population is towards their own and others, no wonder your society is rotting from within.

Re:How can they afford it?

[dunkelfalke]

Then again, no campus police either.

Re:How can they afford it?

[Daniel Hoffmann]

It is kind of ironic, the best schools in Brazil are free, but they are very hard to get into (medicine in the best schools usually go from 100 to 200 applicants for each vacancy). The private schools are considered inferior because anyone (with money) can get into them, even though some (but very few) of them are actually better staffed than the public ones.

Re:How can they afford it?

[angel'o'sphere]

Most students tend to study locally, so generally there are no dorms.
Wrong in both.
Most students used to study where ever the "student distribution system (ZVS)" placed them. Or they study where according to their school grades they believe they get the best education. Perhaps 50%, as far as I have experienced in Karlsruhe, far less, study locally.

Dorms, that is a special US thing. Most Europe has no such thing. However the equivalent of a "Dorm" is a "Studentenwohnheim". Special ways of housing for students only where people have a single room apartment with a central kitchen for like 5 to 10 rooms, a pub in the basement or on top of the house etc.

You don't "know that" because those "Dorms" are not on the campus but distributed all over the city.

Karlsruhe has 6 majour ones, with roughly 1000 places each. However Karlsruhe also has about 10 universities. Students from any university may live in any "Studentenwohnheim".

hoping for the experience of the "college life" will be disappointed if they go to Germany.
Perhaps, but I don't think so. The german student life is partly centered around "Studentenwohnheim" if you live in one or ordinary cheap pubs, so called "Studentenkneipen".
However I grant you that the universities themselves don't offer a big "plan of living and social life", but there are plenty of student organizations you can participate in.

Re:How can they afford it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, there are private universities in Germany too, but most are a bit looked down upon as schools for those who need to pay for their degree, if you know what I mean. For the public universities, $2000 a year is on the high side. In most regions it's far less than $1000, and it's not tuition but a contribution to the student body organizations and payment for a (non-optional) public transport pass. A frugal student can get by on less than $10000 per year, all costs considered (fees, accommodation, food, insurance, etc.).

American students may expect far more personal tutelage than German universities provide. There are many more students per adviser or professor. Lectures, especially undergraduate lectures, are cramped. While all students, advisers and professors understand and speak English, quite a lot do so reluctantly and poorly. Knowing some German definitely helps. Administrative staff will give you a hard time if you don't understand German at all. While you can complete your studies with nothing but English, it limits your choice of courses. For students who only understand English, a university in the Netherlands is probably a better choice. The Dutch are fluent in English.

Re:How can they afford it?

[bobbied]

They can afford it off the backs of the Greeks and the other unfortunates in the Eurozone that they utterly dominate.

Hold that phone.. OFF THE BACKS OF THE GREEKS? Not even close..

The Greeks have made their OWN problems here and it's Germany that keeps propping them up thank you. (And this from a largely disinterested third party over here in the USA). Greece's problem is the government made the mistake of joining the EU yet making promises to their countrymen that the government couldn't afford to fulfill. They piled on national debt providing services and benefits to their citizens with no possible way to repay, and they've been doing it for decades.

Now the debt is due and they cannot even make the INTEREST payments on it to keep kicking the can down the road like they've done so many times in the past. Now the interest on their debt is more than what they can repay and the creditors (like Germany) are going to be left holding the bad debt and paying for what Greece spent on themselves.

This is not a problem with Germany taking advantage of Greece, in fact, quite the opposite is happening. Germany (and the rest of the EU) is going to pay for the excesses of Greece. To be sure, the people Greece will suffer the most, but it was their choice, their votes for the leaders they elected that is the cause. Yet there will be people in Germany and the rest of the EU which will also suffer due to Greece's failures, though they themselves never had the chance to voice their opinions like the people of Greece did.

Try to tell me that's fair, because it's not. Nor is it Germany's fault when Greece fails.

Re:How can they afford it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't think of any non free German school of higher education that is well known in one of its fields of research.
The administrative fee for half a year at the local university is 290 Euros. This fee includes a pass to ride all busses in the city and all slow trains within state borders.

Re:How can they afford it?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is kind of ironic, the best schools in Brazil are free, but they are very hard to get into (medicine in the best schools usually go from 100 to 200 applicants for each vacancy). The private schools are considered inferior because anyone (with money) can get into them, even though some (but very few) of them are actually better staffed than the public ones.

It is true that public tertiary education is free and generously funded in Brazil, so it is relatively quite well regarded, and private schools do have some stigma associated with `anyone with money can pay in'. But what is actually ironic is the amount of 'paying in' required to attend the free universities - obviously only the most competitive candidates make it (read: those best prepared by the most expensive secondary education, studying full-time, etc...). Further, selective pressures for the good private universities are still very high (100:1 ratios are quite common in many areas), and any kind of tertiary education remains inaccessible for vast amounts of the population, so meritocracy in public/private schooling really is just a matter of perception.

Re:How can they afford it?

[nospam007]

"Most students tend to study locally, so generally there are no dorms. "

Bull. There are tons of them, also fraternities, some of them even still wear swords and hit each other in the face with them.

Re:How can they afford it?

[Stephan Schulz]

They can afford it because:

1) They get a third of the number of foreign students that the United States attracts

2) German universities tend to be a "no-frill" affair, with large auditoriums, limited to no athletics programs, and none of the social life seen in American campuses, Most students tend to study locally, so generally there are no dorms. They are more comparable with American state colleges. This isn't a bad thing, in my opinion, but those who go to college hoping for the experience of the "college life" will be disappointed if they go to Germany.

• "Large auditoriums" is true for popular (or required) undergrad courses in popular programs, but is not generally true for graduate courses. Students at major universities are expected to be independent and get less counselling and support than in the US system. But that is much less true for Universities of Applied Science and Cooperative Universities, which typically have much smaller classes and more direct contact between lecturers and students.
• "no athletics" is wrong, most have quite good, but much less flashy programs.
• "none of the social life" - that's not true at all. It's different, but there is plenty of it. And of course there are dorms, as well as shared flats. Take a look at Kommune 1 for some history...

Re:How can they afford it?

[Pinky's Brain]

Germany runs a trade surplus, so that's not exactly right. They can afford it because they are best in the Euro zone at extracting capital from the capitalists. They are winning the race to the bottom, the destination is not so good but as long as the race is on winning the race is still better than not winning.

Re:How can they afford it?

[Pinky's Brain]

Frats are as big a thing for most of the established universities as they are in the US ... if you're a badass frat you can even still do mensur fencing in Germany.

Most foreign students just have a bit more of a nose to the grindstone attitude than the domestic ones.

Re:How can they afford it?

[Pinky's Brain]

Joining the EU wasn't the problem ... joining the Euro was.

Re:How can they afford it?

[bobbied]

Joining the EU wasn't the problem ... joining the Euro was.

Sorry for confusing the two. In my mind they are the same event when talking about Greece, however they where two distinctly different events.

However, the Euro isn't the source of Greece's problems right now, it's actually what's holding the country together right now. If they withdraw or get ejected from the Euro, really bad things will happen. At this point, I don't see how they stay in unless countries like Germany agree to forgive their debt, but without some kind of iron clad assurance they won't do it again, I don't see Germans wanting to do that. So we kick the can down the road, forgive a little, turn the thumb screws a little, and hope Greece elects reasonable leadership, full knowing we just bought ourselves another quarter at the most.

This unpleasant cycle will continue until somebody gets tired and lances the boil ejecting them from the Euro, the whole thing blows up in violence, or both....

Re:How can they afford it?

[angel'o'sphere]

Germany charges you around $2000 a year for the "free" colleges
No, it does not, it is less than 400 (200 per semester) and that often includes a free ticket for local public transport.

Re:How can they afford it?

[angel'o'sphere]

The problem of greece is that the whole country is corrupt and everyone is trying t cheat everyone.

You work for a phone company: you have a free phone connection. In any sane country that "free benefit" is taxed. In germany no one who is working for a phone company has a free phone at home. It simply makes no sense.

You work for an electricity company ... guess what? You have free electricity. Again, in Germany that would be considered a 200 Euro "cash benefit" and taxed. Not so in Greece.

As you have a free electricity connection, you connect your neighbours and charge them.

In Germany that would be fraud: towards your employer. It would be "illegal business" and "tax fraud" regarding the money you "earn". Not so in Greece: it is considered "clever"!!!

Greece joined the Euro and with the absurd amount of money that suddenly poured into the country they only crafted bullshit. And now the bullshit costs them.

The misery in Greece is completely home made by Greek people ripping off other Greeks or the rest of Europe.

Living in a family, where a few family members work for "public transport", a phone company, an electric power company, the police etc. so that the "whole house" has free phones, free electricity, free bus tickets and never gets a parking or speeding ticket: thats the greek way.

However, society, all the rest not working in such a "privileged" job, is paying the bill for that.

On top of that they are the biggest racists I ever have encountered. Worse than Israelis.

Try to run a business in Greece as a foreigner. You can simply forget it. Every bureaucrat will jump on you with fake complains and fines unless you bribe them to stop. And if you do that "wrong" you end up in court for bribery.

Re:How can they afford it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Joining the EU wasn't the problem ... joining the Euro was.

Not really. They relinquished control of the money printing presses that they used in lieu of a general silent and inescapable taxation on funds and thus on non-reinvested profits. Tax evasion was rampant all the time but you cannot evade inflation in large scale while keeping under the radar: you need to convert monetary gains into other currencies or assets. So Greece stopped printing money as a significant general taxation measure and omitted to replace it by anything remotely in scale. And that was the problem. If they had changed their economic parameters to match the switch to Euro, they'd have done fine. Of course that would have been unpopular. Instead they behaved as if they were still in control of the money printing presses.

Re:How can they afford it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually a few top US schools (Harvard, Stanford) are now free if you can't afford them.

Re:How can they afford it?

[Richard_at_work]

When they joined the EU, they took on the requirement of joining the Euro, so yes, joining the EU was the problem.

Re:How can they afford it?

[dave420]

Wha? You get completely-different ideas confused in your head? Now waaay! How can anyone trust anything you say if you confuse the EU with a currency?

Re:How can they afford it?

[Daniel Hoffmann]

Actually there is meritocracy in the system (unlike in the US where your parents might be friends with the dean), the vestibular (test that gets you into the university) is mostly a fair in respect to the students capacity. The realm problem is that to stand a chance you pretty much need to go to private schools because the public ones suck.

So the system has a degree of meritrocracy, but the poor students are not given enough chances.

Re:How can they afford it?

[Eunuchswear]

When they joined the EU, they took on the requirement of joining the Euro, so yes, joining the EU was the problem.

Greece joined the EU in 1981. The Euro didn't exist then, so how could adopting the Euro be a condition of membership?

Re:How can they afford it?

[Richard_at_work]

I suggest you go and read the treaties and agreements that were signed at that point by Greece - the European Monetary Union had been a long standing goal of EU founder member states since before Greece joined the EU, and provisions were included in member state agreements and treaties requiring all states without a viable opt out clause (only a couple of states had this, including Denmark and the UK) to join the EMU in due course.

The EMU became the Euro currency and the European Central Bank banking system during 1992 with the signing of the Maastrict Treaty, and member states from that point onward were bound by the agreements they had already signed when joining.

Re:How can they afford it?

[Toad-san]

Goose-stepping is purely optional. And they still have academic fencing! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... Joy!

One can never have enough scars, ne?

Re:How can they afford it?

[david_thornley]

The Euro is indeed a problem for the Greek economy. Suppose Greece were to have its own currency, the drachma. At that point, the value of the drachma relative to other currencies would drop. This would make Greek exports cheap and imports expensive, and attract tourists. It would be something like an automatic national austerity program that would more or less work, rather than the artificial ones imposed from without that hurt the economy.

Re:How can they afford it?

[Eunuchswear]

Your timeline is rubbish.

The Werner plan for EMU was abandoned in the early '70s, (before Greece joined) and EMU was only re-introduced in 1988 (after Greece had joined).

Greece wasn't obliged to join the Euro, in fact they had to lie (with the help of those nice people from Goldman Sachs) to be let in.

Re:How can they afford it?

[fintux]

No, the schools that are free are compatible to community colleges in the USA so in that realm of classes you can take what they offer. Even then it is not free, Germany charges you around $2000 a year for the "free" colleges.

I'm not sure if you're referring to the ones in Germany or Europe in general. But at least in Finland, you only have a fee of some €80 / year, and I don't really think the community colleges compare to that. All of the courses are included. Although the new government is likely to add a fee for non-EU students in the coming years - it would likely be somewhere in the ballpark of €500 / year. The fee includes also health care in the YTHS (or FSHS in English; basic health services are free of charge; dental check-ups are free of charge and filling a cavity, for example, is typically some €20).

How can the state afford this and public health care? We have higher tax rates. How can we afford the taxes? We don't pay crazy amounts for private schools and private health care.

Re:How can they afford it?

[tehcyder]

The Greeks still think that Germany owes them about ninety three gazillion euros from WW2.

Bearing in mind that Germany settled up for the devestation they caused with a "soz" and a bag of apples, they have a point.

Re:How can they afford it?

[tehcyder]

And we were all doing so well not mentioning the war. I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it.

Re:How can they afford it?

[tehcyder]

God, it sounds almost as bad as Italy.

Germany gets it

[Anonymous Coward]

'Nuff said.

Good heavens...

[Anonymous Coward]

They took communism seriously. US education institutions are busy being capitalists.

Re:Good heavens...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not true - Germany is totally capitalist, but lacking any other resources they are harvesting brains.

Re:Good heavens...

[Muros]

Not true - Germany is totally capitalist, but lacking any other resources they are harvesting brains.

Really? Have a look at page 5 of this. With a population of ~25% of the US, Germany produces 49% as much steel, or about twice as much per capita compared to the US. First resource that popped into my head, and probably the one Germany is most famous for, so other examples might not be so impressive, but... Germany does produce stuff. It is the beating heart of a first world economy with a population 3 times that of the US. Saying it is without resources is absurd.

Re:Good heavens...

[angel'o'sphere]

Germany is producing steel.

However most of it is recycled and the rest is from imported iron and coal.

So regarding without resources the parent was right.

Germany is basically importing all raw materials.

Re:Good heavens...

[haruchai]

So they're zombies? Are they about to start World War Z?

Education

[ajzimm3rman]

This simply isn't true. People come to the US all of the time, and get their education...then move back to their country of origin and work there. Sure, not Everyone moves out of the US after studying here...but they're not forced to. And the taxes you're paying for all that FWEE education come from the working residents of Germany, from whom you'll have to continue to pilfer to fund this Utopian solution.

Re:Education

[gstoddart]

And yet, Germany has the biggest economy in Europe, a massive trade surplus, and has a heavy focus on technology and manufacturing.

Maybe the Germans have collectively decided that the cost of the education is trivial compared to the long term gains of keeping some highly educated people around, or having its own citizens be educated.

Maybe, gasp, it's possible to both make profits and take care of your people -- and that it isn't an either/or proposition.

Re:Education

[Anonymous Coward]

Part of it is not eating your planting seed. Germany sees what lack of education has done in the US, and isn't going to make that mistake.

In the US, pursuit of an education means that one has to get a decent job to deal with student loans unless one is born into wealth. While I was getting my degree, the classmate from Germany, China, and Chile were also doing coursework. However, come graduation, they all left and went home debt-free, and were wondering why the US penalizes people wanting to better themselves worse than they do criminals (since most fines and virtually all civil judgments can be tossed in bankruptcy.)

There is becoming a larger and larger disaffected population in the US. Right now, it mainly is apolitical and hedonistic, but just like a jar of liquid sodium acetate, it doesn't take much for things to crystallize around the smallest ideal and form an insurgent cause if people feel it might better their lives from the minimum wage grind.

Re:Education

[Jhon]

"Maybe the Germans have collectively decided that the cost of the education is trivial compared to the long term gains of keeping some highly educated people around, or having its own citizens be educated."

Maybe Germans would re-think that decision if they had to pay a realistic sum for their own civil defense rather than rely on the US and NATO.

"Maybe, gasp, it's possible to both make profits and take care of your people -- and that it isn't an either/or proposition."

Pick two:

o Make Profits
o Take Care of Your People
o Protect your People

Re:Education

[digsbo]

Maybe the Germans have collectively decided that the cost of the education is trivial compared to the long term gains of keeping some highly educated people around, or having its own citizens be educated.

I think part of that collective attitude is also that Germans do not have much tolerance for people and subcultures which are belligerent to the idea of education. It is much easier to have a socialist system when you don't have radically different values in different subcultures within your society.

Re:Education

[Anonymous Coward]

I got a late start in college and have sizable debt now.
A) I am really worrying about retiring someday in the states. I am paying back my loans and facing a shitty situation where I won't have as easy of a time retiring decently here. Also healthcare is just getting more expensive
B) I do want to get a masters in electrical engineering. Germany's free education sounds like just the ticket for me. Move to Germany and write off part of my student debt AND get a good job and education.

Re:Education

[JustNiz]

Getting an education in the US is waay different to Germany.

Firstly, education in the US is one of the most expensive in the world. So foreigners that study in the US generally are relatively rich (or from rich families) to start with, and paying A LOT more than it would cost them to live in their own country to be there.

>> not Everyone moves out of the US after studying here...but they're not forced to.

They pretty much are. To study in the US you need a student visa which expires after you graduate or flunk out. If you stay outside of that, without having an something like an H1B or a green card you're illegal. simple. And those are not so easy/quick to get.
Also except for some very specific cases to do with training related to study, a student visa does not entitle you to work either.

Re:Education

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not all three?

Who is really going to invade a country with nuclear arms? The US fights a war from 60 years ago while modern Germany "fights" on an economic and intellectual front. Good luck fighting this year's battles with 6 decades old thinking.

Sorry to dismantle your three-way false logic.

Re:Education

[DutchUncle]

A problem, as in other European countries, is that they are facing immigration from other subcultures which DO have different values, especially about remaining distinct (not integrating socially and/or culturally).

Re:Education

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather my taxes went to funding education for anyone that wanted it than funding the military industrial complex that is flexing its muscle all over the world.

I wish I could find the article again but the last time the US was in Iraq I read an article breaking down the costs. Soldiers were getting air-con in their tents...probably a necessity given the climate but the kicker was that the budget for the air-con alone....just the fucking air-con and nothing else...was more than NASA's yearly budget. WTF??

Re:Education

[Daniel Hoffmann]

It is kind of different, american schools see foreign students as money grabs because most of them come through scholarships and they (I mean their governments/scholarshipt granting institutions) pay even more in tuition than native students do. Most of these scholarships have clauses like: "You must come back to your home country and stay here at least as much time as you spent outside studying".

Re:Education

[FlyHelicopters]

Who is really going to invade a country with nuclear arms?

Germany doesn't have nuclear weapons.

Sorry to dismantle your three-way false logic.

Except, you didn't, you proved his point by talking about the US nuclear umbrella.

Re:Education

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe Germans would re-think that decision if they had to pay a realistic sum for their own civil defense rather than rely on the US and NATO.

Oh I love how this argument always comes out when it comes to how one country manages to do something different compared to the US.
For all the bullshit spewing about how the US "protects everyone else in the world and you would all be fucked without us", you folks certainly let Ukraine down.

Re:Education

[Anonymous Coward]

"Protect your People" That's rich. Since when is Germany facing a problem of not protecting their people? I don't see anyone even threatening to invade German territory.

If you think that America spends all it spends on armaments because it wants to protect its people, then try to actually cut the funds for an arms system that is not necessary to protect the USA. You will find an army of lobbyists and politicians that will fight your tooth and nail to keep companies from removing jobs from their respective districts. The massive military we carry is about money.

Re:Education

[angel'o'sphere]

This solution is not utopian and not german.

It exists with a few changes in germany since over 75 years.

And the rest of the EU and Scandinavia is very similar.

Re:Education

[roman_mir]

And Greece collectively decided on an entire set of failing ideas as well, and all was good until they ran out of other people's money.

Germany will take much longer to run out of money for their collectivist crap but it never ends well in the long run.

Re:Education

[FlyHelicopters]

For all the bullshit spewing about how the US "protects everyone else in the world and you would all be fucked without us", you folks certainly let Ukraine down.

Ukraine isn't in NATO and we have less of a strategic interest there than Russia does. If the US Government sent the Army into Northern Mexico, would you expect Russia to get involved?

If Russia tried to take part of Germany, you'd see the US Army deploy in large numbers to Germany. It would probably start WWIII, which is why Russia isn't going to do that.

Re:Education

[dunkelfalke]

You mean offense, not defense, right?
If you insist on starting idiotic wars, you can fight them alone.

Re:Education

[FlyHelicopters]

I don't see anyone even threatening to invade German territory.

Of course you don't, because the US military would come to Germany's defense.

That protection is expensive and isn't paid for by Germany.

Re:Education

[angel'o'sphere]

Maybe Germans would re-think that decision if they had to pay a realistic sum for their own civil defense rather than rely on the US and NATO.

Yes, another brain dead idiot. Clap! Clap! Clap!

Why don't you simply check on wikipedia how much Germany is paying for its military? Hu? That is to simple, right?

Hm, and now compare it to other countries:
o UK
o France
o Italy
o Spain
o Norway
o Sweden (neutral btw and not in the NATO)
o ...

And finally: get a damn clue! Defense treaties are made for one single reason: to share the burden of the outrageous costs of a modern army.

And next time USA gets invaded, please defend your self and don't rely on the NATO.

Ah, as we talked about germany: do you remember WWII? You had that in history, hadn't you? So you DO KNOW that germany was not allowed to raise an army beyond certain limits, e.g. amount of tanks, planes and size of ships after we lost the war? So how the fuck should we defend our selves ALONE without a NATO if we are not allowed to even build up an autonomous army?

What you think why Germany as one of the few (bigger) EU states has no carrier?

And finally: look on a damn map! Germany bordered the Warsaw Pact till the USSR broke apart and Poland joined the NATO. How should it be even possible by spending 50% of the GNP or more to defend that ALONE? How should Germany defend itself with a population of 60 million at that time against an army of 60 million?

Ever heard about the Blitzkrieg? With 20,000 tanks the russians could have occupied/conquered whole germany in a day or two. Regardless how much money we ever had spent in defenses. Why? Because Germany is so freaking small!!

Re:Education

[nbauman]

This simply isn't true. People come to the US all of the time, and get their education...then move back to their country of origin and work there.
Sure, not Everyone moves out of the US after studying here...but they're not forced to. And the taxes you're paying for all that FWEE education come from the working residents of Germany, from whom you'll have to continue to pilfer to fund this Utopian solution.

FTA:

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazi...

Research shows that the system is working, says Sebastian Fohrbeck of DAAD, and that 50% of foreign students stay in Germany.

"Even if people don't pay tuition fees, if only 40% stay for five years and pay taxes we recover the cost for the tuition and for the study places so that works out well."

Re:Education

[nbauman]

Part of it is not eating your planting seed. Germany sees what lack of education has done in the US, and isn't going to make that mistake.

In the US, pursuit of an education means that one has to get a decent job to deal with student loans unless one is born into wealth. While I was getting my degree, the classmate from Germany, China, and Chile were also doing coursework. However, come graduation, they all left and went home debt-free, and were wondering why the US penalizes people wanting to better themselves worse than they do criminals (since most fines and virtually all civil judgments can be tossed in bankruptcy.)

There is becoming a larger and larger disaffected population in the US. Right now, it mainly is apolitical and hedonistic, but just like a jar of liquid sodium acetate, it doesn't take much for things to crystallize around the smallest ideal and form an insurgent cause if people feel it might better their lives from the minimum wage grind.

Bernie Sanders, who got a free education at Brooklyn College, supports a European-style free education system. He also wants to forgive college loans.

Re:Education

[nbauman]

"Maybe the Germans have collectively decided that the cost of the education is trivial compared to the long term gains of keeping some highly educated people around, or having its own citizens be educated."

Maybe Germans would re-think that decision if they had to pay a realistic sum for their own civil defense rather than rely on the US and NATO.

Maybe the Germans have decided that the last time they had a military big enough to bully everybody else it didn't work so well.

And let's not use euphemisms like "defense." The reason the U.S. has a military as big as the rest of the world put together is so that war wimps like GWB and Cheney can push other countries around. We would have been better off without it. They wouldn't have been able to evade Iraq.

"Maybe, gasp, it's possible to both make profits and take care of your people -- and that it isn't an either/or proposition."

Pick two:

o Make Profits
o Take Care of Your People
o Protect your People

o Spend $3 trillion invading Iraq. That's the one I can do without.

Re:Education

[misexistentialist]

Also has the lowest birthrate on the planet: the Final Solution to providing for the children and taking care of your people is to not have any

Re:Education

[ranton]

"Protect your People" That's rich. Since when is Germany facing a problem of not protecting their people? I don't see anyone even threatening to invade German territory.

Perhaps I don't know my history very well, but isn't the US the only reason Germany isn't part of Russia right now? The Berlin Wall was in Germany, right?

The Ukraine is probably the best example right now of what happens when you don't have a large enough army or at least powerful allies. If the Ukraine was part of NATO there would be no warmongering in that country right now.

Re:Education

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure I'm on board with forgiving college loans. I opted not to go to an expensive college (attended only jr college) as a calculated choice that I was better off entering the job force during the dotcom era than taking out loans that I'd have to pay back. I benefited in the short term but missed out on experiences, networking, and having a bachelors degree. No one bothers asking my education level anymore, so I don't think it hurts my income but I've probably missed out on jobs because I didn't fit into the defined specs for a job before.

I'm not sure why I should be paying for the people that knowingly took out loans that they have to pay back.

I would however be in favor of them picking a date in the future where going to college was free since I'm in favor of free education. Just don't rewrite the the rules after people make commitments to loans.

Re:Education

[bobbied]

Part of it is not eating your planting seed. Germany sees what lack of education has done in the US, and isn't going to make that mistake.

It's like we don't spend anything on education in this country... Could it be that we spend ineffectively? Yet listen to the howling when somebody talks about shifting things around in the department of education.....

We don't lack education opportunities here in the USA, it's here and what we have is very good if you look in the right places. It's also not that expensive if you are careful about where you go and don't get caught up in the student loans are easy trap and borrow more than you needed too.

Here's hoping Germany does better in their attempts to invest in their work force's future, but I'm not holding my breath. Nationalizing all of the education institutions in a country is generally not effective at producing good educations and if you have the government paying the bills, they will own the schools eventually.

Re:Education

[cheesybagel]

How should Germany defend itself with a population of 60 million at that time against an army of 60 million?

Same way Israel manages to do it. See simple.

Re:Education

[cheesybagel]

Eventually they'll run out of other people's money and the US will run out of schmucks who are underpaid as well.

Re:Education

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, so let's elect 534 more of him and we'll be getting somewhere...

Re:Education

[gweihir]

On country-level getting everybody the best education that their talent, skill and motivation can sustain has a great ROI and is an entirely capitalist thing to do. Of course, on individual level, egoists can do better for themselves as long as they are not too many. If egoism becomes widespread, the community goes into a downward-spiral and eventually dies. There is a reason Human beings found it advantageous to form communities.

A similar situation is found, e.g., in vaccinations: If only a few refuse them, then these few have a slight advantage dues to avoiding the risk of vaccination. If many refuse it, then the illnesses that would otherwise have been prevented make a return and everybody, even those vaccinated, pay a huge price. Same here, the level of egoism a society can tolerate before having real problems from it is limited.

This has nothing to do with Socialism. It has to do with local optimization strategies for a number of problems not being global optimization strategies. The markets do not self-regulate as soon as some players can be too large and as long as egoism does not come at a price. These are not new insights, just ones regularly ignored by the greedy and the egoistic.

Re:Education

[Erikderzweite]

That is why you need more university students from abroad: they are much more likely to integrate into the German society than refugees or foreign low-skilled workers.

Re:Education

[thegarbz]

And those are not so easy/quick to get.

It's worse than that. Part of the process for obtaining a work visa for the USA includes a justification of why *you* are special and should displace a local workforce. That's quite a hard thing to justify if you were trained in the same way as ever other person in the country.

Unless you're an expert with actual experience, or want to work for cents for a company that hires only people from one specific country getting a visa to work in the USA is actually very hard.

Re:Education

[mirix]

It's "defense" alright... defending the American hegemony.

Re:Education

[JustNiz]

>> the US will run out of schmucks who are underpaid as well.

Nope I'm having a hard time imagining that, partly because Mexico is an apparently infinite source of illegals, and also because the whole US economy is really so top-heavy it needs a constant source of underpaid labor it can exploit to even just keep existing.

Why do you think Obama is trying to make it even easier for companies to get even more H1B's so they can bring in even more cheap Indian coders with fake degrees, and for even more Mexicans to illegally cross the border and immediately get a US driving licence?

Re:Education

[Pinky's Brain]

Of course with German taxes it's slightly easier to recoup significant amounts of money than US taxes.

Re:Education

[angel'o'sphere]

Israel is not under thread by a first world army.

So what is your point?

Re:Education

[Anonymous Coward]

since when do visa'a and immigration status mean anything in this country?

Re:Education

[angel'o'sphere]

The Berlin wall has nothing to do with that.

Germany was conquered from the west by french(yes!), british and US forces and from the east by russian forces.

but isn't the US the only reason Germany isn't part of Russia right now? No?

Re:Education

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the Germans have collectively decided that the cost of the education is trivial compared to the long term gains of keeping some highly educated people around, or having its own citizens be educated.

Except... those highly educated people usually leave for the US.

Re:Education

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe, gasp, it's possible to both make profits and take care of your people -- and that it isn't an either/or proposition.

Education is not "taking care" of your people, just like a refinery is not "taking care" of crude oil. There is no point in having people around in the first place if you are not going to put them to best use. And what people are good for is not related to the amount of green paper they were born into.

The "taking care" angle is more Germany's social security system based on the premise that human dignity is to be preserved. As a result, violent criminality is not a significant source of income. Consequently there is no need to militarize police forces in order to reach a balance where fewer people are killed by criminals than by police (assuming one can distinguish police from criminals).

Re:Education

[Fire_Wraith]

Completing a college education in the USA, on a foreign student visa, in no way entitles you to stay in the US. You still have to find a job that will sponsor you for a work visa, or otherwise apply for a green card etc, just like everyone else in the rest of the world.

Now, they're certainly not barred from applying, but getting that degree doesn't specifically help them unless they've somehow made the right contacts along the way. If anything, that's one thing we really should look at fixing, because if someone has come to the US and gotten a college education here, those are generally the sort of people we should want to have immigrate here.

Re:Education

[haruchai]

Britain operated without tuition fees until 1998, the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Iraq war was started on a lie.

The USA has wasted a lot of money on war that would have been better spent on the health & education of its citizens.

FYI, the defense budget is as large as the next dozen top spenders - almost all of whom are allies. What is all that money being spent on? Preparing for an invasion from Mexico & Canada? (Too late in the case of the former)

Re:Education

[Anonymous Coward]

Only because we've made it our business to stick our noise into everyone else's. We would have likely been better off it we hadn't.

Re:Education

[hendrips]

It's hard to make a perfect analogy, but imagine how much different Germany's social vision might if they had 15 million Turkish immigrants and 12 million Jews living there. In other words, if 18% of their population were poorly-integrated immigrants from a vastly different culture, and another 15% were part of an easily identified minority with a long and shameful history of oppression and ghettoizing. That's proportionally what the U.S. is facing with its Hispanic and black populations respectively. The actual numbers of Turks and Jews in Germany is about 2 million and .1 million respectively, by the way. Sometimes, I think northern Europeans don't seem to realize how culturally and ethnically homogeneous their countries are.

Re:Education

[Eunuchswear]

Also has the lowest birthrate on the planet

Nope, that'd be Singapore at 1.28 (births/woman).

In Europe? Nope, Boznia Herzegovina at 1.28.

In the EU? Nope, Portugal at 1.32.

Germany is at 1.42, pretty low, but by no means the lowest on the planet.

(The US is at 1.97)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_fertility_rate

Re:Education

[Eunuchswear]

Only those "highly educated" people who didn't bother to read the slashdot summary.

qualified immigration is seen as a resolution to the problem as research shows that 50% of foreign students stay in Germany.

Re:Education

[Slashdot Parent]

To study in the US you need a student visa which expires after you graduate or flunk out. If you stay outside of that, without having an something like an H1B or a green card you're illegal. simple. And those are not so easy/quick to get.

I've never understood our immigration policy.

Mexican peasant who will be dependent on welfare for your whole life? Welcome to America!

Educated, ambitious, and ready to help grow the US economy? Eww! GTFO!

This country is run by fucking idiots, I swear.

Re:Education

[digsbo]

And as that's happening, the social democracy shows its weak point: virulent anti-immigration sentiment. They're perfectly happy to take care of their own, as long as it's just "their own".

Re:Education

[digsbo]

Exactly! The notion of the social democracy is great until it encounters real diversity.

Re:Education

[Anonymous Coward]

That protection is expensive and isn't paid for by Germany.

Not directly, but indirectly it is, because it means that Germany (like most other European countries) has to accept lots of meddling with internal affairs by the U.S. which ultimately costs their economy more than a proper defence would cost.

Re:Education

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would someone voluntarily live in the US?

Re:Education

[david_thornley]

Who has an army of 60 million? A quick look indicates that (including reserves) the Chinese army is not much less than three million, the Indian about two million, the US about one million. Germany could build up to these sizes within a decade easy, if necessary.

Re:Education

[tehcyder]

Ukraine isn't in NATO and we have less of a strategic interest there than Russia does.

Poland, Hungary, Romania and Slovenia border Ukraine, and they are all in NATO. Europe is an inter-connected network of countries. It is absurd to say that there is no strategic interest for the US there.

The truth of the matter is that the West is wary or weary of wars at the moment and won't risk starting one with Russia, especially if the ISIL situation worsens and we have to start doing something serious militarily there.

Re:Education

[FlyHelicopters]

Poland, Hungary, Romania and Slovenia border Ukraine, and they are all in NATO. Europe is an inter-connected network of countries. It is absurd to say that there is no strategic interest for the US there.

This is a classic case of reading what you think you see rather than what someone wrote.

I did not say there was no strategic interest for the US there, I said the US has LESS of a strategic interest than Russia does.

Imagine if the US decided to send the Army into Mexico to deal with the drug cartel problem, then Russia protested and said we had no right to do that. Most Americans would tell Russia to butt out and stay on their side of the world. Mexico is clearly more important to the US than it is to Russia. So why is anyone shocked that Ukraine is more important to Russia than it is to the US?

The truth of the matter is that the West is wary or weary of wars at the moment and won't risk starting one with Russia, especially if the ISIL situation worsens and we have to start doing something serious militarily there.

Don't be silly, ISIL and Russia aren't even remotely in the same dept. Wary or not, only someone insane would even consider war with Russia outside of a major event, such as the invasion of Germany or France.

Russia could invade Georgia again, invade all of Ukraine, even attack Finland... the US wouldn't go to war over it. That could easily go nuclear and none of those countries are worth it.

Re:Education

[Anonymous Coward]

He's specifically referring to the more than 50,000 US troops that are permanently deployed in Germany to provide for their defense. It's a valid point.

Drinking Age - 18 -

[burni2]

Hi,

the drinking age is 18 .. meaning .. Vodka, Barcardi, Tequilla, ..

Our national iconographic singer songwriter and essaist "Otto" described the joys of drinking in his epic song

"Wir haben Grund zum Feiern!" / "We need to party!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Drinking Age - 18 -

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot to mention: drinking beer is legal at 16 - even in public :-)

Re:Drinking Age - 18 -

[Anonymous Coward]

while we're at youtube videos... how could anyone create a boring video of a supermarket?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8cF3PmDLPc

Re:Drinking Age - 18 -

[palion]

Ape Tit Randy.

Re:Drinking Age - 18 -

[palion]

Well, drinking beer is never illegal I think. Buying beer for under 16 yo is prohibited, but if your older brôther buys it and gives it to you then you may legally drink it, and it does not matter how old you are.

Unless

[dorpus]

We count the many ISIS fighters who have studied at universities in the West and turned the knowledge against us.

Re:Unless

[OzPeter]

We count the many ISIS fighters who have studied at universities in the West and turned the knowledge against us.

I didn't know that knowledge was different at non-western universities. Please educate me on what I have been missing out on!

Re:Unless

[Anonymous Coward]

If suicide bombers are a result of that education, then it's not a very good endorsement.

Re:Unless

[Anonymous Coward]

Well to start, since the 1979 revolution universities in Iran exclude students of certain faiths. Whatever "knowledge" Iranian university officials draw on to come to the decision to exclude certain students is certainly quite different.

This country seems to be "collecting"..

[Anonymous Coward]

..reports of cops out of control.

Re:This country seems to be "collecting"..

[Anonymous Coward]

Replace "collecting reports" with "fabricating stories". If you're stupid enough to resist arrest then you deserve whatever happens to you.

Re:This country seems to be "collecting"..

[Sique]

I didn't know that resisting arrest carries the death penalty without trial. But surely there is a law about this.

An example of a larger trend

[MyNameIsJohn]

This might be an example of a larger trend for countries with a downward trend in immigration and unsustainable birth rates (ie. less than replacement rate), country vs country, or society vs society to attract talent, ideas instead of just businesses will be the new future.

The race to the bottom for corporate taxes did not accomplish lasting benefits to the societies, now countries want the people which is always where the lasting benefits were.

Imagine, for those mobile enough, to have the options of what country you would like to live, educate, work, raise a family in laid out in front of you. I imagine many countries in Europe would be up there near the top of the list. A main reason to stay where you are is familiarity, family, friends, existing work history and contacts, but in the future where connections can cross the world, the countries depending on a person's roots to stay in the country and not attracting new talent will eventually fall down the ladder.

Re: An example of a larger trend

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. As humanity accepts telepresence more and more physical location matters less and less. Grandparents that can easily skype their grandkids are going to encourage their babies to live wherever is best.

Germans == socialists country / not communists

[burni2]

(Warning: the subject is ironic)

Germanys economic system is a cross breed between capitalism and socialism. With changing ratios.

It's coined as
"soziale Marktwirtschaft" / "social market economy"

or since the "Energiewende" / "energy transition" / (green energy revolution)

coined as: "Ãkologisch-soziale Marktwirtschaft" / "eco-social market economy"

Somebody tell this guy.....

[kaizendojo]

http://news.slashdot.org/story...

Law?

[angel'o'sphere]

Wow, articles about nonsense, because americans can not believe that "not being 100% capitalistic" is not the same as being socialistic or communistic.

Look at this, an extract from the german constitution:
(1) Alle Menschen sind vor dem Gesetz gleich.
(2) MÃnner und Frauen sind gleichberechtigt. Der Staat fÃrdert die tatsÃchliche Durchsetzung der Gleichberechtigung von Frauen und MÃnnern und wirkt auf die Beseitigung bestehender Nachteile hin.
(3) Niemand darf wegen seines Geschlechtes, seiner Abstammung, seiner Rasse, seiner Sprache, seiner Heimat und Herkunft, seines Glaubens, seiner religiÃsen oder politischen Anschauungen benachteiligt oder bevorzugt werden. Niemand darf wegen seiner Behinderung benachteiligt werden.

Relevant is (3) so I translate:
No one may be disadvantaged or favoured because of his gender, ancestry, race, language, motherland, land of origin, faith/religion, religious or political "ideology". [...]

There is simply no way for a university to charge a foreign student for a service a german student is not charged for. The only way would be to introduce some complex legislation e.g. requiring that a student had done a social service or military service and balancing that for foreign students with payments.

That said, ofc it was possible - and likely still is - to charge everyone after the tenth semester a fee for not finishing his studies in time. Here now you could invent "laws" how to get exempt from that obligation and make the way of getting that exempt so complicated that foreigners have difficulties to get approved.

Anyway. We also have private universities, that charge fees. Regardless if you are german or a foreigner.

We had cost free universities till roughly 2000, then they suddenly changed a lot, now they are changing back.

The treatment for foreigners was always the same as for germans. Not surprising: 90% of the foreigners are foreigners from other EU countries.

Re:Law?

[gweihir]

Making an university education affordable for anybody with the talents is like investing in infrastructure: Not only is the ROI great (while long-term, this is a genuine capitalist motivation), not doing it decreases competitive strength of a country significantly, because it lets valuable resources (talent) go untapped (again an entirely capitalist motivation). Of course, this is capitalist thinking on the level of a _country_, not on an individual level. On individual level, a small number of egoists can reap greater benefits for themselves, but a large number of egoists destroys the whole. This is also known as "tragedy of the commons", and overcoming it is a major factor in whether a society survives long-term or not. So, no, Germany is not a socialist country at all. It just realizes (to a smaller and smaller degree these days unfortunately) that investing in people pays off.

Re:Law?

[TeknoHog]

It's the same in Finland with respect to the fees. In recent years there's been discussion about charging non-EU students moderate tuition fees, but the law cannot be easily changed. This has turned out problematic in new ways as our primary and secondary education has gained some international respect. Basically, we cannot export our education by opening official Finnish schools abroad, as they would have to be free for everyone.

Re:Law?

[angel'o'sphere]

Capitalism has nothing to do with "capitalist motivation".

Capitalism as a (sub) model of society simply means: you have capital, you have power; you have capital, you may use it as you wish, to gain more power, more capital.

The idea that a free market only works under "capitalism" is an american myth, actually americans have no idea what capitalism really is/means.

Why don't you read up how the industrialization of Europe, especially UK, went from 1780 to 1830?

Child labour, 16hours shifts, no health care/insurance, pensions, no free day in the week, no safety in factories etc. etc. That is capitalism.

And obviously after the "russians" revolted and killed the nobles and merchants who tried to built up a reign over the poor population that population chose "communism" and "socialism".

However: the same power hungry idiots running the old system, exploiting the population, just took seats in the new system and continued their "gaming the system".

Ideologies are exchangeable. The people trying to game them are the reasons why some things fail harder than other things do.

Re:Law?

[penguin-collective]

No one may be disadvantaged or favoured because of his gender, ancestry, race, language, motherland, land of origin, faith/religion, religious or political "ideology".

Unfortunately, that's just a bunch of words on paper. Germany's actual record on discrimination and intolerance continues to be dismal.

http://www.spiegel.de/internat...

http://www.dw.de/european-body...

Re:Law?

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea that a free market only works under "capitalism" is an american myth, actually americans have no idea what capitalism really is/means.

You'd think that after centuries of militarism, genocide, totalitarianism, and religious intolerance, Germans would show some humility. The only stable, prosperous democracy Germany has ever enjoyed was under US occupation. Instead of recognizing this and searching for the deep flaw in German culture, Germany produces generation after generation of ignorant and arrogant people, of which you are a typical example.

Macht und Freiheit, Recht und Sitte,
Klarer Geist und scharfer Hieb
Zügeln dann aus starker Mitte
Jeder Selbstsucht wilden Trieb,
Und es mag am deutschen Wesen
Einmal noch die Welt genesen.

For people whose German is a little rusty, this is an 1861 poem that about summarizes Angel'o'sphere's attitude:

Power and freedom, justice and morality,
Clear mind and a sharp sword
Then reins in from the center
Selfishness and greed.
The German way
May yet save the world.

Germans know shit about liberty or markets.

Re:Law?

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't actually prevent them from charging foreigners. For instance Australia has similar anti discrimination laws. Universities charge the same for everyone, but the Australian tax payer foots the part of the bill for Australian citizens. So there is certainly ways for them to charge foreigners.

Re:Law?

[gweihir]

Seriously, you patronizing attitude is entirely misplaced, because you cannot support your perceived superiority. I do know very well what variant of capitalism (and it is a _variant_, the world is not black and white) was employed in the industrial revolution in Europe, because we learned all the details in school.

If you put together capitalist motivation and border conditions, then you get a variant of capitalism. That it is capitalism can be determined from the primary capitalist motivation system. But the border conditions make a massive difference.

Re:Law?

[Anonymous Coward]

And you can thank Hitler's loss for that. It was the Americans (and British and French) that wrote that. The Germans hate it but what can they do? Start another WAR?!

Re:Law?

[shutdown -p now]

Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production (aka capital, hence the name). Last I checked, you guys have that in full force in Germany just the same. You tax the produced wealth more and use it to fund public welfare, which mitigates most of the more egregious excesses of capitalism (which largely boil down to income inequality), but that is still capitalism.

Re:Law?

[larryjoe]

No one may be disadvantaged or favoured because of his gender, ancestry, race, language, motherland, land of origin, faith/religion, religious or political "ideology". [...]

But residency, nationality, and immigration status are not on that list, unless somehow the above list is interpreted in a non-intuitive way. Are all non-EU people allowed to immigrate to Germany for the purposes of study or employment? Seems like at least for employment, the above list is not all-inclusive.

Re:Law?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, articles about nonsense, because americans can not believe that "not being 100% capitalistic" is not the same as being socialistic or communistic.

Look at this, an extract from the german constitution:

Relevant is (3) so I translate:
No one may be disadvantaged or favoured because of his gender, ancestry, race, language, motherland, land of origin, faith/religion, religious or political "ideology". [...]

There is simply no way for a university to charge a foreign student for a service a german student is not charged for. The only way would be to introduce some complex legislation e.g. requiring that a student had done a social service or military service and balancing that for foreign students with payments.

Utter nonsense. You shouldn't translate what you don't understand. Of course citizens can be treated different from non-citizens, and the constitution itself does so frequently (right to vote, right to assemble, freedom of motion, ...). There are universities that do charge foreigners, e.g. http://www.spiegel.de/unispiegel/studium/hmt-leipzig-gebuehren-fuer-auslaendische-studenten-a-890850.html

Re:Law?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is simply no way for a university to charge a foreign student for a service a german student is not charged for.

That is not true. Note that the list you quoted---ancestry, race, language, etc.---does NOT include "citizenship". It's absolutely possible under German law to disadvantage people of non-German citizenship. Think of some people needing a visa to stay or work in Germany, and having to extend the visa when it runs out. That's a disadvantage right there. It's not based on ancestry or race, but it is based on citizenship. It does not apply to Germans (obviously) and citizens of many countries, but it applies to others.

You are right, though, that due to the EU treaties, EU citizens must be treated like German citizens before the law (with a few exceptions). But that does not apply to Americans.

Re:Law?

[angel'o'sphere]

Yes, if you immigrate for studying everyone is welcome, as that is not really immigration. You only need an university that accepts you as a student.

For employment it is a bit complex, but I believe if you have a job in germany before you come over you get automatically a work permit. If you come without a job it is more difficult (I'm not an expert on that).

Re:Law?

[angel'o'sphere]

The main problem of old school capitalism is that with enough money aka "capital" you can play the "market" to your favour and keep up a poor and right less exploitable underclass.

So most laws limiting capitalism is not taxes but health care, minimum wages (via law or unions), social care, pension funds, public funded housing (or even housing funded by owners of industries), limiting of rents etc. etc.

But you are right: most means of production are still existing in germany. Only mining comes to mind where you need a special permit (ofc. you need all kinds of permits for selling drugs, alcohol or driving a cab ...)

Re:Law?

[angel'o'sphere]

I beg to disagree.

The articles you link are about racism done by individuals, or groups of individuals. And if it is violence it is a crime.

The constitution is about the contract between the government and the people.

And it also defines the basic framework for every organization, like a company.

While "racism" and other issues happen inside of companies, they usually get resolved in a favourable manner.

Re:Law?

[WoOS]

Wow, articles about nonsense,...

There is simply no way for a university to charge a foreign student for a service a german student is not charged for.

The (very elaborate) nonsense is actually in your article. As pointed out by ttsai there are other things than race or place of birth. The relevant here is
Citizenship
Only German citizens can vote in federal or state elections. That is a discrimination.
Only German citizens can demand to be let into Germany at a German border. That is a discrimination.
Only German citizens can demand welfare without having ever worked in Germany. That is a discrimination.
Only German citizens are entitled to diplomatic support by a German embassy should the need arise. That is a discrimination.
.......

The law you quote prevents in no way demanding a tuition fee from non-German-citizens (or rather non-EU-citizens due to the EU freedom of movement act but that's not a German law and its under significant discussion within the EU due to e.g. the migration of German student to Austria overloading the Austrian universities while there were general tuition fees (about $1000 a year) in many German states).

Re:Law?

[angel'o'sphere]

Only German citizens can vote in federal or state elections. That is a discrimination.

That is no discrimination as that is "normal" all over the world.
A german can not vote in your country either.

Only German citizens can demand to be let into Germany at a German border. That is a discrimination.

That is wrong. Every EU citizen can enter freely.

Only German citizens can demand welfare without having ever worked in Germany. That is a discrimination.

That is normal and not a discrimination as the whole world is run like that.

Only German citizens are entitled to diplomatic support by a German embassy should the need arise. That is a discrimination.

No it is not, as the whole world is run like that. What have embassies outside of germany to do with that anyway?

Re:Law?

[tehcyder]

Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production (aka capital, hence the name). Last I checked, you guys have that in full force in Germany just the same. You tax the produced wealth more and use it to fund public welfare, which mitigates most of the more egregious excesses of capitalism (which largely boil down to income inequality), but that is still capitalism.

No one in Europe (whether pro- or anti-capitalist) would say otherwise. It's only really Americans who think that Europe is some sort of federation of extreme socialists.

Re:Law?

[WoOS]

Great, so you acknowledge that the German constitution allows different treatment of foreigners (i.e. non-citizens) in many areas which BTW has nothing to do with "done like that everywhere" because law does not work that way.

Why, then, do you think that the constitution prohibits different treatment of foreigners with respect to tuition fees?

Re:Law?

[qaz123]

Next time you'll say that an American citizen can even be elected as the Chancellor of Germany because of this line in their constitution!

Re:Law?

[angel'o'sphere]

As soon as he becomes a german citizen: he can.
Unlike as in the US where you need to be BORN in the US.

Sorry, was that a trick question or are you that retarded?

Re:Law?

[angel'o'sphere]

Why, then, do you think that the constitution prohibits different treatment of foreigners with respect to tuition fees?
Because it is clearly written in the constitution!
Should I copy/paste it again?

Re:Law?

[qaz123]

So without a German citizenship you can't be the chancellor of Germany. Even with their constitution saying "No one may be disadvantaged or favored because of ...". (citizenship is not listed in that list by the way) They could apply the same rule to students if they'd want.

Re:Law?

[angel'o'sphere]

No, they can not apply the same rule for students if they wanted.

You make no sense.

There is an extra law that defines who can be elected by whom, it has nothing to do with the constitution. But I would not wonder if that is in another paragraph of the constitution, would be the most logical.

And obviously electing and being elected is a prime privilege of a citizen.

I wonder why you want to compare citizen privileges with inhabitant privileges.

With your argument every bus ticket, cinema ticket or what ever could be twice as expensive for blacks, or amercians or what ever ... obviously it is illegal.

Headline Incorrect

[Sir Realist]

To get a "free"degree in a German university, a US-educated high school graduate would have to be able to pass a course in a university system that hasn't yet been devalued by a pay-for-degrees mentality. So not likely, really.

Re:Headline Incorrect

[gweihir]

Well, in theory it is that way, but in practice University funding depends on number of students, so the same rot has set in quite a while ago. Still, especially STEM subjects are far more difficult at German Universities than at regular US ones and these are the degrees worthwhile taking.

Re:Headline Incorrect

[nehumanuscrede]

Perhaps, but for those students who CAN pass said course, THAT is a student that German Universities are most interested in anyway.

Unlike the US, they realize that not everyone is cut out for college. They only want those who will make the education worth while.

Elsewhere

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only Germany - other European countries play the same turf. I had a great time in Finland and I can warmly recommend it to anyone not scared of long dark winters and heavy metal music. Both is well set off by generally very nice and hospitable locals. But look at other countries too...

got my masters in Germany

[bkmoore]

I got my masters degree at the Technical University in Ilmenau. Ilmenau is a small university with very good reputation in central Germany. I did my degree and thesis in German, full immersion. Before that, I got my B.Sc. at the University of CA in Irvine (UCI). I had the GI bill and could have attended any U.S. public university tuition free. I went to Germany because I wanted to. Even without tuition, I still had to pay for living expenses, books, supplies, etc. and had a work permit so I could work part-time to make ends meet.

Having experienced both systems, I would say that the academics were comparable. I think the choice of where to study depends on whom you want to meet and what kind of career you would like having afterwards. The U.S. is closer to a lot of the innovation in computer science, so if striking it rich at the next big thing in Silicon Valley is your ambition, you could probably get better contacts at an American University. Germany has a more traditional industrial economy, a lot like the U.S. was before about 1970. Germany designs, develops and makes a lot of their own stuff. Studying in Germany helped me gain a lot of invaluable contacts in the German "Mittelstand" or mid-sized industry. Germany is one of the few places that still combine product development and manufacturing under one roof and there are a lot of advantages to the 'old-school' way of doing business. It might not be as sleek as "designed in California, made in China" but it's the best way to ensure consistant quality, especially in more complex, safety-critical industries.

Re:got my masters in Germany

[Erikderzweite]

Funny, just today an intern where I work told me that she wants to go to TU Ilmenau to study electrical engineering. This university has indeed a good reputation.

Otherwise, my story is similar to yours except that when I've started 2002 to study for Dipl.-Inf. (comparable with M.Sc. in computer sciences) there were no tuition costs. They were introduced later, but my university has adopted the approach of charging long-term students only. So I could get a degree with no debt which is nice. After the university I've decided to stay in Germany. Sure, the taxes are somewhat high. I pay them gladly though so anyone willing and capable can get top education like I did regardless of how much money the parents have.

In the US college degree is now what high school was earlier: bare minimum required. The system where you basically force a great swath of your generation to take on a debt to be able to achieve that minimum is utterly broken given that they cannot even default on this debt. I was offered more pay in the US, but I won't be going. I'd rather not be supporting such a system and becoming part of the problem.

Show some courtesy to the locals

[perpenso]

For instance what does she do when she needs to ask about/buy something in a store or whatever?

For my travels in Europe, including Germany, I made sure to at least know how to say hello, thank you, please, water closet and beer (the essentials) in the local language. I never really needed any more than hello. Whenever I walked into a shop or restaurant and said hello in the local language the other person smiled and started speaking to me in English. Exceptions were rare, although admittedly I was generally in the larger cities. And for the exception, a very small clothing shop near my hotel in Paris where I needed a belt (forgot to pack one) hand gestures worked just fine.

My understanding is that many Europeans speak English to each other when traveling. And that there is a bit of a generational component to it, the "younger" generations being more likely to speak English to some practical degree. I suspect that an American traveling in Europe needs only to show the some courtesy to the locals -- ex saying hello, please and thank you in the local language -- and they will find plenty of English speaking employees willing to offer their products and services.

Personal observation: if a bar is not terribly busy the bartender may be a valuable resource in getting the pronunciation of key words and phrases correct. A bartender in Prague was of great help to me with Czech.

Re:Show some courtesy to the locals

[Anonymous Coward]

Advice on speaking English to Germans: Give us something to work with. You're not making yourself easier to understand if you just point at things and say a few nouns, like I've witnessed numerous times. Speak in complete (but short) sentences.

Explain what you want, provide context. This is particularly important where concepts don't translate directly. Think of it as playing Pictionary: Don't get upset or give up, explain it differently: They don't understand "station"? Maybe they know "trains".

Enunciate clearly and start off speaking a little slower than you're used to. We're not daft. Almost all Germans under 50 know enough English to understand you. We just don't get enough practice to feel comfortable in an oral conversation right away.

Native german here

[Anonymous Coward]

... and I'm strongly and loudly opposed to this idea.
Let us natives have it for free (paid by taxes our parents pay) but anybody else shall pay handsomely for our Universities.
Why? I'm sick and tired of Germany being the well-fare country for the world.

Re:Native german here

[Anonymous Coward]

Du bist einfach nur ein Vollidiot der nichts verstanden hat. Bestimmt einer aus den suedlichen Bundeslaendern, was?

Why does it sound too good to be true?

[Anonymous Coward]

because the U.S. is very slow to realize that the same types of people who artificially drove up the housing market last decade have also artificially driven up the price of higher education in the U.S. It's a bubble that will burst. There is NO VALID REASON that our tuitions and other costs are so high. We're a bunch of suckers.

It was already low before

[aepervius]

I mean i recall paying like something 500 DM for a year ? And that was in the end of the 90ies. Same in France a bit earlier, mod 90ies. Tuition fee /admin fee have always been very very low in west Europe, so we never really can grasp how you, living on the other side of the pond, can be buried in student loan. I had more cost staying in a low rent flat (25 m^2 on my own for 200 DM, later in a university communal apartment for student 12 m^2 - 150 DM about 75$ + 5 or 10 DM per month for university high speed internet) than in tuition. Heck food was higher cost than tuition.

When in Rome, learn Roman (lol)

[TiggertheMad]

I hears something similar about the science community in the 1920s and 1930s. Germany had a lot of brilliant scientists at that time, and supposedly a lot of people in science were learning German, since it was the center of the community at the time.

People will stop learning English and start learning Chinese if they become the most powerful and influential country, its how things work. I'll bet that two thousand years ago everybody was learning Latin.

Re:When in Rome, learn Roman (lol)

[morgauxo]

Even 2000 years ago Latin wasn't very popular on this side of the Atlantic.

Any predictions on the future of Education ?

[nehumanuscrede]

When this catches on and the United States starts losing enough college age students to Germany, what to you think the American reaction will be ?

A) Match what Germany is doing with education in an effort to get folks to stay local
B) Make it illegal or somehow f!ck it up for everyone trying to take part in the offer

My money is on the latter over the former :|

I would think that while the student is in Germany getting said education, they may find that, contrary to US Media points of view, there really are decent places to live outside of the United States. Odds are pretty high they will be fluent in German upon graduation, so I don't foresee a lot of incentive to return to the US at all for many of them. Especially if German companies start poaching potential talent. ( I certainly would )

It may also be an interesting means to solve a localized aging population problem.

I went to school in the US

[Taco Cowboy]

And guess what? I didn't take any loan

I simply had enough of the whiners who can't do anything but whine and whine and whine all day long

Yes, all my uni schooling I did in the United States of America - and I paid all of it by working multiple jobs, on evenings, weekends and on summer 'holidays'

I was a refugee. I was all alone in America. Every single penny that I spent I had to earn it by working

I never applied for any welfare nor loan nor any kind of 'assistance' - I made do with whatever I had, that was all to it

While I was slaving away day and night working and studying my classmates were having a lot of really fun time of their lives. They partied hard and fucked furiously --- I didn't have any of that

Do I regret missing out of all those 'fun'? Nope. Why should I?

And you guys who signed up with the student loans --- hey, you guys gotta own up to whatever you've signed up for

Bitching and whining all day long ain't gonna earn you any extra 'bonus point', you know?

Re:I went to school in the US

[dave420]

You are not everyone. Learn some compassion. Or not, I guess, and die alone and detested.

You need to be fluent in German

[Darkling-MHCN]

I was there in 2005-2008 and I'm pretty sure it is the same now as it was then. You have to pass an entrance exam, which includes a Deutsch (German) fluency test

Basically if you can speak Deutsch you're one of them.

Untergangers and Untergangerins

[Anonymous Coward]

Please - someone - post a Downfall parody on this?

Language problem?

[jpkunst]

"Keeping international students who have studied in the country is the ideal way of immigration," says Sebastian Fohrbeck."They have the needed certificates, they don't have a language problem at the end of their stay and they know the culture."

I doubt it. As far as I can see, in my country (not Germany) international students live in an English-only expat bubble, don't learn a word of the language of their host country, and they usually leave after finishing their studies.

There are good programs in English (not free...)

[zmahk31]

Various German universities also offer study programs in English with the possibility of learning German on the side. Arguably the most systematic and broadest choice of options is at Jacobs University (http://m.jacobs-university.de/). (Disclaimer: I teach there.) These programs are typically not free (ours are not), but they still provide very good value as compared to out-of-state tuition or tuition at private universities in the US.

It should be mentioned that American students tend to struggle more than others, especially in the theoretical science and engineering disciplines, even though enthusiasm and motivation is high. Still, for students prepared to work hard, a very good alternative to some of the top-ranked US universities. And studying in Europe will provide a perspective on the world unlike any one would get at home...

Freedom and shit, and other slogans

[luis_a_espinal]

Which do you prefer? Freedom, Higher risks and higher reward? No risk, less freedom, but a lower standard of living?

Socialism has made many promises it cannot keep. Capitalism promises nothing, but can generate much more wealth.

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. And to in my experience end up giving up liberty AND security.

What a load of bullshit. See, here in the US, sadly we have waaaaay too many freedom-fries folks who think they are Daniel Boom or some shit, but in reality they are just some variant of Beavis and Butthead.

Any argument they make, they drop the word "freedom" and voila, in their minds, that makes it valid. They don't even know what the fuck freedom is, or whether they truly have it. What comes out of their mouth are not reasons, but fucking slogans.

They go about their lives building these black-n-white, freedom-or-else as if the world operated in that way, because, according to their experience that's how it is (and one has to wonder what type of first-hand experience they have on the subject.)

Germany is not socialist

[luis_a_espinal]

Socialism has made many promises it cannot keep. Capitalism promises nothing, but can generate much more wealth.

1. Germany is not socialist. If you bring socialism in the context of comparing Germany with the US, you are an ignorant ass.

2. Socialism, capitalism, blah blah. You don't know what the hell you are talking about.

Seriously, get the hell out of whatever hole you live in, travel the US, and then travel the world. Then talk.

The tuition fees were never that high anyway.

[Ihlosi]

On the other hand, you'll have to deal with German, Germans, Germany and their respective quirks.

Germany doesn't have a minimum drinking age.

[Ihlosi]

Drinking beer and wine (unsupervised) is legal in most of Europe for kids aged 16 and above.

Actually, drinking is legal in Germany regardless of age. The youth protection law in Germany just regulates sale of alcohol, or serving alcohol in public, or letting underage people consume alcohol in a public bar/restaurant.

Now, at some point, the German version of CPS might raise an eyebrow if a childs health is in danger, but that's another issue.

fake argument

[Anonymous Coward]

"You can pay $10,000 in taxes or $20,000 in the marketplace for a year of school"

Because out of 3 taxpayers, 1 goes to college, 2 don't. The 2 pay for college but don't get it.
You'll say but that makes 30,000 - well, 10,000 must be funneled to cronies, because this is how governments work.

How can Germany afford to educate student for free

[nhat11]

So how can Germany afford to educate foreign students for free? The submitter didn't even answer the question he posed to himself...

Going to Germany

[pebear]

I took German in High School and College and I was told back then you had to pass a national board test on German fluency. Of course that was when Germany was called West Germany and not the East has been incorporated and more people not as fluent in German as they are in Russian. So maybe Germany is looking to align their process and business more and more in English. I don't know but I wish I could have gone to Germany to go to school and not have to pass that pesky National German Proficiency test.

Education Is NOT Important for the American Econom

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the hidden truth is that in a society like the US, which relies so heavily on the Immigration Pipeline, the smart people know EDUCATION isn't so important for the economy. That's just a lie they tell us to keep us focused on the wrong things.

Just stop being so STUPID, andymadigan

[Anonymous Coward]

"Besides, uBlock is using 33MB of RAM" - by andymadigan (792996) on Friday June 12, 2015 @10:31PM (#49902053)

Inefficient: Hosts @ 6mb here only w/ CURRENT data vs. threats + ads (& things a bloated browser addon can't do by a longshot & you RAN FROM IT http://apple.slashdot.org/comm... )

---

"1) Will it run on my iPad (and no, I'm not jailbreaking)?" - by andymadigan (792996) on Friday June 12, 2015 @10:31PM (#49902053)

Sure hosts can: jailbreak it (like on ANDROID via ADB use).

---

"2) Can I use it to block annoying "toolbars" that sites cover 20% of their content with (e.g. Wikia)?" - by andymadigan (792996) on Friday June 12, 2015 @10:31PM (#49902053)

Sure - don't load toolbars dumbass (or use hosts or firewalls to block their content they pull in) OR DON'T USE SHITHOLES LIKE 'EM (I don't - they're blocked due to what you said).

---

"3) Can it be used to defeat modal boxes" - by andymadigan (792996) on Friday June 12, 2015 @10:31PM (#49902053)

Stopping javascript does it - using what you already HAVE natively (for more speed too) - only FOOLS run that crapscript indiscriminately everywhere! Opera allows it via "by site" preferences in 12.17 64-bit for instance.

---

"4) How about the auto-playing video" - by andymadigan (792996) on Friday June 12, 2015 @10:31PM (#49902053)

Easy - block a source if not the same site (ads served on the same site don't pay, admen don't trust webmasters "alleged" hitcounts & I don't blame 'em) or use better sites.

---

"I can even use it to block the stupid "videos" feature on the Slashdot" - by andymadigan (792996) on Friday June 12, 2015 @10:31PM (#49902053)

Again - Stall javascript (or cut video sources via hosts).

APK

P.S.=> You fail - You do STUPID THINGS "bolting on 'MOAR'" increasing overheads & doing LESS off a slower mode of ops vs. using what you NATIVELY HAVE THAT'S MORE EFFICIENT & DOES MORE TOO...apk

General consensus = andymadigan's stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

"uBlock is using 33MB of RAM" - by andymadigan (792996) on Friday June 12, 2015 @10:31PM (#49902053)

Inefficient: Hosts @ 6mb only w/ CURRENT data vs. threats + ads (& things a bloated browser addon can't do by a longshot & you RAN FROM IT http://apple.slashdot.org/comm... )

---

"my question is, which blocks more ads? Answer: uBlock/Adblock" by andymadigan (792996) on Sunday June 14, 2015 @12:04AM (#49907001)

WRONG - "Almost ALL Ads Blocked" is PAID OFF to NOT block all ads by default, dumbo -> http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/...

&

ABP too http://finance.yahoo.com/news/...

---

"your system blocks fewer ads" by andymadigan (792996) on Sunday June 14, 2015 @12:04AM (#49907001)

See above & a 'shitty idea' does MORE BY FAR with less & you RAN from it bitch - see 1st link above!

---

"I'm more than happy to spend an extra 1% of my computer's power to block far more ads than your shitty idea does." by andymadigan (792996) on Sunday June 14, 2015 @12:04AM (#49907001)

Ah, so you're 'happy' being illogical & stupid? LOL, ok!

AdBlock's 4++gb & 100% CPU usage flooring inefficiency -> https://blog.mozilla.org/nneth...

+

ClarityRay defeats it - it can't do that to hosts (since clarityray dumps what browser addons you use so addons are EASILY DETECTED via native browser methods & YOU'RE BLOCKED STUPID).

AdBlock adds complexity/room for breakdown/exploit + from a slower mode of operations (usermode = more messagepassing overheads vs. hosts in kernelmode).

APK

P.S.=> You've GOT to be the MOST STUPIDLY illogical moron I've *ever* met on /. ...

... apk