You said:
"Actually, the country with the least centralisation of those 3 --Germany-- happens to be the most successful (even taking into account that it's also the main net payer of the EU). "
Do you think that this may be the remains of Erhard's "Economic Miracle" - you know the one that you denigrated? You'll recall I sent a small quote (that you sneered at) to confirm there was such an event.
Here's another quote from the German News of March 1977.
Harry
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Ludwig Erhard:
Architect of the "Economic Miracle"
A Tribute on his 100th birth anniversary
by Helmut Nagelschmitz
The basic tenets of Ludwig Erhards economic policy remain valid up to the present day. What he called social market economy has survived a whole series of governments and economic fluctuations. Although the social market economy brought Germany prosperity and social equality, it has been - and continues to be - the target of criticism too, when, in the present day of globalisation and change, economic competition poses social problems.
Social market economy as established by Erhard in 1948 fundamentally changed the West German economy, and with it the whole of post-war society. It unleashed the enormous mercantile and competitive energies that brought western Germany the economic miracle of the 1950s, followed by dynamic social developments - a fact acknowledged by Chancellor Helmut Kohl at the CDU party convention in Hanover in 1996. He declared there that the task for the future was to reform security systems to safeguard their efficiency and funding.
Dictionaries define the social market economy as an economic system based on the free market economy principle, aimed at guaranteeing economic efficiency and power and social justice with a high degree of individual freedom.
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Harry Pollard
Henry George School of LA
Box 655
Tujunga CA 91042
Tel: (818) 352-4141
Fax: (818) 353-2242
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