Europe’s post-2008 depression, meanwhile, was only slightly less absurd. Once again, it was far more damaging than it should have been, although this time that’s because Germany has insisted that that be the case. More specifically, it didn’t allow any country, not even itself, to spend what it needs to on basic infrastructure out of a misplaced sense of fiscal self-righteousness. It prioritized keeping their debt-to-GDP ratios from growing, you see, over keeping their economies growing. The result was that already hard-hit countries like Greece, Ireland, Italy, Spain, and Portugal had to cut their public investment by 40 percent between 2007 and 2012, while even ones that were in pretty good shape, like, yes, Germany, also had to forgo needed repairs to roads that are strewn with potholes, bridges that are so decrepit that they are no longer strong enough to support trucks, and schools that are literally falling apart. In fact, once you taken wear and tear into account, Berlin’s investment in the economy has actually been negative for the last 15 years.

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German efficiency, in other words, has been a casualty of German austerity.

This was all spectacularly ill-timed too. Germany actually made its deepest cuts right after the first phase of the recession ended — it fully eliminated its 4 percent of GDP deficit between 2010 and 2012 — which was no small part of why Europe’s recovery was so short-lived. Well, that and the fact that Germany was trying to keep the European Central Bank from doing more to help the economy out of fear of nonexistent inflation. Indeed, more than anything else, it was this combination of premature fiscal tightening and belated monetary easing that explains why the euro zone’s economy has only grown 7.3 percent since the start of 2008, compared to the 19.7 percent that the United States’ has.

Not to mention that it’s left them vulnerable to even the slightest of shocks up until this day. Just consider the fact that some trade tensions and problems in the car industry were all it took to very nearly send Germany’s economy back into a recession at the end of last year. Which, in turn, has forced the ECB to look for more ways to support the economy just when it looked like it was getting ready to do the opposite.

It’s almost as if Germany should be spending money on things it needs. That would not only help its economy in the short-term by putting people back to work building the things they need, but also in the long-term by making it easier for people to work because they’d then, well, the things they need.