alt Hacker NewsAgreed. Actually - maybe no? Maybe the hourly wage is the problem. It's been too low for too long so there was no pressure to innovate. Denmark and Switzerland are big manufacturers with high wages that are continuously innovating. Maybe the Euro was a curse for Germany afteral? Without it their wages would have been higher.
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That's my point in France also: industries complain about the cost of workforce, therefore they've moved everything offshore for the last two decades and they are lobbying heavily for lowering the wages and taxes in order to "invest".
But there is nothing to invest into anymore, France's industry is dead (partly because of Germany with the Hartz agreement btw, lowering demand for italian or french goods which were already less competitive than german ones on export and domestic market because of the euro) and if they didn't care to put capital on automation when wages were high, why would they do it when work becomes cheap?
Artificially increasing wages to get a better product is like Cargo Culting. Some people see successful companies paying their employees a ton, then assume that's what created the successful company when it's so obviously the other way around. But the politicians/union heads benefit from selling it the other way. This conversation just always gets derailed by pointing out how paying substantially below market is also bad, as if it were a counterpoint.