It's the difference between Trinkets and Trash and Heilige Kunst. Germany, a country the size of two Wisconsins has 83 opera houses with a season the same length as the Metropolitan Opera. They also have world class Avante Garde Festivals and more than their share of world class orchestras. All delivered by the Marshall Plan after WWII and in the Cold War to convince the Germans not to take the cultural overture of the Russian system. They made their own with our money and then those same Americans came home to America and invested in Trinkets and Trash. The German (and Austrian) governments also makes German culture available to everyone and not just the elite at reasonable prices.
In America after the 1929 crash the wealthy completed the steering of the lower classes into Vaudeville and eventually the cheap automated movie system. They created the "vulgar" language of Black comedy in the Black Vaudeville run by rich whites (the Loews and the Albees, etc.). Today, the wealthy in America now have what the average German citizen has as a meaning and significance of life. Don't get me wrong. American singers who go to Germany don't like the strictures of the union. We don't buy American because we buy cheap. We don't like unions because we can't stand authority. And especially the neighbor worker that we are trying to outcompete. We feed our children McDonalds and Faith Hill and pay the highest artist wage in the world to a French Canadian pop singer in a Casino. Our tastes give us what we deserve from our sense of discipline. As Beverly Sills said: We get what we deserve. Culture has to be developed and if it is the ideal culture (rather than junk) then you get a better systems design for everything. If it is junk, what you get is hokum and hicks. The key is that Germans pay for quality and interestingly, they come to America for the Metropolitan Opera while going to church in Harlem where Metropolitan Opera Tenor Gregory Hopkins directs the choirs at Convent Avenue Baptist Church. Americans pay that pop singer 1/3 the budget of the Metropolitan Opera in a year and that budget at the Met is more than all of the other companies in North America combined. (No spreading the cultural wealth here.) It was the concept of Heilige Kunst that made the Germans outcompete every culture in Europe and America in the 19th century for production of high quality musical goods. Literally thousands of Art composers of complex Art Songs. But today they don't just sit on their Laurels. They outcompete everyone for multicultural products always translated into German and they have a thriving contemporary Arts business and have stolen the title of Art Capital for Graphic Arts from NYCity. Only the Asians seem to understand the German answer on this. In America we are trying to deconstruct the Art products in our religious institutions as well. The last place where Classical Complex culture has a venue for teaching all of the classes. But in Europe, it's not about Leisure as the Brits claim. The root word in Italian for Opera is "service". They call their "Opera Houses" "Lyric Theaters." It was always about culture and service and the Church made the Aristocracy provide it to the commoner to create the finest "service." Once trained, the commoner took the intellectual capital and immigrated to America but something was missing and still is. The Germans say it, the Asians say it but always in their own language so as not to be offensive. Only the Americans are mono-lingual and don't have a clue as they listen to that pretty blond country western Faith baby brae on about her unfaithful lover in a Scottish folk formula. REH -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mike Spencer Sent: Tuesday, December 27, 2011 1:40 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [Futurework] [FW] More cars made, higher pay in Germany How Germany Builds Twice as Many Cars as the U.S. While Paying Its Workers Twice as Much In 2010, Germany produced more than 5.5 million automobiles; the U.S produced 2.7 million. At the same time, the average auto worker in Germany made $67.14 per hour in salary in benefits; the average one in the U.S. made $33.77 per hour. Yet Germany?s big three car companies?BMW, Daimler (Mercedes-Benz), and Volkswagen?are very profitable. How can that be? The question is explored in a new article from Remapping Debate, a public policy e-journal. Its author, Kevin C. Brown, writes that "the salient difference is that, in Germany, the automakers operate within an environment that precludes a race to the bottom; in the U.S., they operate within an environment that encourages such a race." http://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2011/12/21/germany-builds-twice-a s-many-cars-as-the-u-s-while-paying-its-auto-workers-twice-as-much/ IIRC, when I got my first after-uni job, auto workers were making about US$10 an hour. Since then, cumulative inflation has been about 6-fold so they should be making around US$60/hr now. But they're making half that or less -- $15 to $33. Huh. Stumbled across this on the rec.crafts.metalworking news group, where around 50% of the posts are ignorant right-wing extremist rants, 10% fairly reasonable political commentary and the remainder more or less related to metalworking. (I usually skip the political stuff but caught one about this URL by happenstance.) - Mike -- Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~. /V\ [email protected] /( )\ http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
