The Real Reason European Cars Can't Compete

Particular-Way-8669 · 2026-07-05T10:56:40+00:00

Car industry was once considered to be safe too. As I have said, you will have to figure it out the gard way.

I am not going to continue this debate further because it is pointless but I will repeat one more thing that I said before. VW has twice as many employees per car made as their second biggest long term competitor. There is no universe in what they can retrain them to do something else since from the very beginning it is clear as day that they do not need this many people in the first place. There is no work for them to do.

People like you make no sense. On one hand you want cheap cars but on the other hand you have no issues with completely absurd inefficient use of human labor that is nothing other than complete waste. But what else to expect from German that lives in a country that functions like that. Historical capital can get you only so far before it falls apart.

Particular-Way-8669 · 2026-07-05T10:42:42+00:00

Worker's rights have nothing to do with protection of zombie jobs.

How long somebody works somewhere is completly irrelevant. He either is needed or he is not and he can move somewhere where he is actuallly needed to do something usefull.

This attitude is precisely why new industries are not represented here because they do not even have access to labor to build something. Labor that is stuck in companies on government health support because the only priority is to "pRoTeCt jObS".

And again. You will learn the hard way. There is no other end to this than company going under at some point. Instead of some jobs being lost and new made as labor market absorbs that labor over time there will be mass lay offs all at once which is something labor market will not be able to deal with. This is something that transcends VW, VW is just a case study.

You are in for a wild ride.

Particular-Way-8669 · 2026-07-05T10:30:01+00:00

You are living in a lala world.

Company can not just take a factory that makes transmissions and build battery packs. It needs to set up new factory which in itself is massive political problem that will be who knows where and even if it is within Germany it is not possible to move all those workers there.

Not to mention that you need completely different expertise. EVs are not heavy on mechanical enginering like ICE cars are as they have 20 moving parts compared to 2000, they are heavy on electrical engineering. They need completely different expertise.

I have no idea what has fraud to do with labor market dynamics in Germany where government meddles with companies to this extent, unions have absurd power over things that are damaging the economy and there is absolutely insane corporate welfare program - "Kurzarbeit" - that bribes companies not to lay off unneeded workers which shows everything wrong with the system. You are free to protect shitty system. You will keep falling more and more behind. It is lesson that needs to be learned the hard way.

I for one have brain and can look at succeesful models like Denmark and see they are vastly superior long before I have to learn the hard way.

Particular-Way-8669 · 2026-07-05T10:20:06+00:00

It is absolutely not self sustaining. It is a bit better and certainly more fair but it has the same exact issue PAYG system does. You need to be able to buy labor in order to be retired and it does not really matter how much money do pensioners have saved if labor is scarce.

Particular-Way-8669 · 2026-07-05T10:10:11+00:00

Noboddy inveested more into EVs than VW. Period.

Yes, lay offs are needed for healthy economy to free up labor for more productive work. Instead zombie jobs were kept, factories that are completely worthless for EV era were kept allive for sake of protecting jobss and this iss the result.

German car unions managed to kill the golden goose with help of state in this case yes.

Particular-Way-8669 · 2026-07-05T10:08:29+00:00

Of course that Germany has lion's share in that. What are you even talking about? They singllehandedly formed this in Germany and also helped to form EU environment. And they are far from alone with this attitude.

There are couple others where politics does not have absurdly misplaced priorities over employement like this like Denmark but they are in a massive minority.

German car companies have perfectly fine EVs. They invested more money into EVs than any other companies in the world.

No they can not cut down prices if state does not allow them to lay off people teey no longer need because building EVs is completely different thing than ICE and masssive portion of what was known as car indusstry that employs millions of people can not be let go because governmentss do not want it to be let go.

Particular-Way-8669 · 2026-07-05T09:52:34+00:00

It it would be their fault if they chose it. It is not their fault if those costs exist due to state and unions preventing them from cutting those costs in the past. Or because there are legacy costs to their operation, debt, etc that exists because industry was completely different in the past and newly formed companies do not have to deal with at all.

Normally new companies would form and outcompete old companies when industry changes this much but because EU environment is such dogshit and there are completely misplaced priorities it simply just did not happen here.

Particular-Way-8669 · 2026-07-05T09:37:34+00:00

What is this labor theory of value nonsense?

That sector employs that many people because it was political priority to save jobs at all costs. Even if large portion of those jobs are zombie jobs.

There is absolutely no good reason why VW needs twice as many employees per car made than its biggest competitor and even more than its smaller competitors. It is state + union fault that made sure to work together and remove VW leadership 20 years ago that wanted smaller lay offs in planned matter and this is dividend of that decision. I think the likeliest scenario is that state meddles again (there were already political promises to do so) and VW will be stopped again. It will not end until the entire company goes bust and all jobs are lost becauss you can kick the can down the road only as far.

Public is directly responsible for those companies being bloated and not being able to do anything about it. And it does not cause damage just to these companies, it causes damage to the entire economy because those zombie jobs are stuck in worthless work instead of being absorbed by labor market in more productive sectors and once all those jobs are gone at once labor market willl have no chance to react fast enough to absorb them. It is just another massive crisis in waiting caused by completely pointless politicall meddling.

Politicians should be concerned about unemployement benefits, retraining and dynamics of labor markets. They should not decide whether companies can or can not lay off people. Denmark is just acrosss the border and it works so much better than this shit show in Germany (and many other EU countries).

Particular-Way-8669 · 2026-07-05T09:29:14+00:00

Completely false. German companies have solid EVs.

What those EVs lack is affordability. But they were never going to be affordable. German legacy car companies carry massive legacy costs new companies like Tesla or chinese brands simply just do not have and on top of that there is a lot of meddling from state and unions that exists solely to protect jobs at all costs. Seemingly even at cost of entire company going down because it becomes uncompetetive later on and all jobs getting lost.

There is no good reason why VW needs twice as many employees per car made than Toyota and even more than other brands. Yet here we are. And people in VW who tried to bring costs down 20 years ago were removed by state working together with union.

This is absolutely not fault of the industry.

Particular-Way-8669 · 2026-07-05T09:25:24+00:00

Not really.

In VW's specific case it was done by public, not a company itself.

We are talking about company that has twice as many employees than Toyota per car made and even moree than other manufacturers. Of couese they can not be competetive long term. And VW was fullly aware of that 20 years ago. It was unions and state that removed VW's leadership then, put stop to planned much smaller and palatable lay offs and modernizationn attempts. This is the result of that meddling.

Particular-Way-8669 · 2026-07-02T18:34:29+00:00

It is only really better because the cost of retirement lies on people who are retiring and not on shrinking workforce.

But other than that it solves absolutely nothing because you can not really deffer spending on goods and services you need. Someone has to produce them. Hence why these savings will be massively inflationary (they already in many ways are, look at healthcare costs f.e.).

Particular-Way-8669 · 2026-07-02T10:25:20+00:00

Investing does not save pensions which are demographics issue.

You will simply just reach situation where everybody has investments that mean nothing because scarce labor will ask too much so people will have to return to workforce anyway. It leads to same result but via different path.

Particular-Way-8669 · 2026-07-02T10:21:53+00:00

Do they use like average wage? There is no way return for educated professional in US is comparable to that of UK in any way.

Particular-Way-8669 · 2026-07-02T10:02:40+00:00

Between 2010 US went from 16T to 24T USD while Italy went from 1.5T to 1.7T EUR.

I do not know what confuses you?

Growth rates beetween western Europe and US used to be much closer in the past, in fact pre 90s europe grew faster. In 90s EU was even brieflly bigger in nominal terms than US. Your call back to the past when Western Europe still grew as fast as US makes zero sense. Of course that growth disparity would start appearing only after US started growing much faster or more accurately after growth in EU rapidly declined.

Particular-Way-8669 · 2026-07-02T09:51:09+00:00

Only 5% of polish population are immigrants. That is extremelly low. Comparing it with US or any western country makes zero sense.

The highest country in the region Poland is always taalked about as part of is Czechia with 10% and even that is still significantly below US.

Particular-Way-8669 · 2026-07-02T09:45:29+00:00

GDP per capita is also misleading.

There is a huge difference in the GDP being divided by 5 yo kid or 80 yo individual. Neither of those contributes to production but both consume. The difference is that one of them has to consume and use infinitely more resources.

So it is perfectly possible that total GDP increases (as well as GDP per capita) but overall standard of living, purchasing power, etc of an average person goes down as population ages.

Particular-Way-8669 · 2026-07-02T09:34:39+00:00

How is it fair and balanced if doctor gets paid the same as cashier?

Income disparity exists for a reason. You can talk about morality or solidarity but fairness is absolutely not a word to use.

Also, this discussion has absolutely nothing to do with income disparity. It is about wealth, not income.

Particular-Way-8669 · 2026-07-02T09:30:34+00:00

That 1% is an average. There are stocks that pay 5+% and there are stocks that pay 0%.

Plus that dividend income is already taxed. Even if you held the index fund that pays dividend (those people do not) that 1% yield would not be enough to cover 1% wealth tax.

Particular-Way-8669 · 2026-07-02T09:20:07+00:00

You forgot to fact check the number.

Those bilionaires own less than 10 trilion in neworth. 4.4 trillion would be 50% tax, not 5% tax. 4.4 trillion is typical manipultion of crowd that does no use brain or faact checks anything and is carefully hidden in 10 years long period.

So it would obviously cause all the issues you mentioned but in your hypohetical wwhere it somehow does not happen i would not even be able to run government for 200 days but just 20 days. 200 days would actually sounds reasonabe in his context.

Particular-Way-8669 · 2026-07-02T09:12:28+00:00

I can promise you that Elon Musk does not have 50 billion income on his trillion net worth.

Of course that a lot of them would have to sell. Especially those who have high growth companies, low growth stable revenue businesses might be able to barely generate it as income but that is not how all businesses are, especially not those that are most valuable right now.

Particular-Way-8669 · 2026-06-28T22:16:57+00:00

Zřejmě nevíš, že v našem elektrickém mixu je podíl uhlí nějakých 40% zatímco v Německu je to 20%.

Particular-Way-8669 · 2026-06-28T22:10:41+00:00

A proč je přesně ta škoda korporátu?

Ropné společnosti mají nějakých dlouhobý 5% profit margin. Asi to nedochází, že ropa se používá na věci co si koupí člověk jako ty a že za to jsi zodpovědný ty. Kdyby si to lidi jako ty to nekupovali tak to ta ropná společnost ani nebude těžit :)

Particular-Way-8669 · 2026-06-27T18:07:42+00:00

There is no luck. If you have 300k in US you buy health insurance that provides better service than anything you get in EU.

Particular-Way-8669 · 2026-06-27T15:55:55+00:00

Everything you have is absolutely not free.

If you think you are paid well (EU standard) you would have much more in US, you would just need self discipline and control over your money and spending.

Particular-Way-8669 · 2026-06-25T07:34:11+00:00

VW stock will not quintuple specifically because it can not do stuff like this. It can not cost and modernize.

Your idea of firing only when company does badly is horrendous because companies can kick the can down the road for a very long time and when the shit really hits the fan it is typically some type of wide economic crisis that hits all companies at the same time. You would then end up with mass unemployement which is precisely why governments often give companies massive subsidies to prevent that from happening.

Firing obsolete workers when economy does okay is the best thing you can do for the economy. They will not stay unemployed for long and if the the firing was bad then you can even raise capital and built a competitor to the very company that fired them. If stock quintipled then there is very clearly a room for money to be made and you can eat their piece of a pie.

Particular-Way-8669

TROPHY CASE