A Right Wing Op-Ed piece that says we need to be more like Germany but only if you look through his time machine

One of my FB friends posted this article:

WOLF: ‘German Miracle’ Barack Obama doesn’t see

Blinded by big government, the Obama Depression is no accident

By Dr. Milton R. Wolf - The Washington Times (Dr. as in a diagnostic radiologist)

http://goo.gl/ynlTf

Wherein Dr. Wolf says we need to be more like Germany, since they are bouncing back much more rapidly than we are from this Great Recession. He goes on to say: "The real lessons from the Germans, however, comes not from the 21st century, but from the 20th." And he goes into a somewhat distorted recount of Germany's rebuilding after WWII.

Wouldn't it make more sense to compare what Germany is doing now to what we are doing now? Since his point is that they are recovering faster than we are now?

Well I though so! So I responded to my friend's FB post with the following:

What?! Is this dude crazy?

"Barack Obama cannot see a way out of America’s current economic malaise?!?!"

More accurately he should have said "Progressives have been pushing an agenda that would make us more like the current day Germany but the GOP have been fighting against it."

Let's start with taxation:

Capital Gains tax- US 15%, Germany 30.5%

Raising the capital gains tax is been promoted as one of the best ways of cutting the deficit by Democrats.

Top Income Tax marginal rate: US 35%, Germany 45%

Again, Democrats have been trying to get a rate increase (or even to let the Bush temporary cuts to expire) for the richest classification, but the GOP says no to that.

Corporate Taxes are similar: US 35%, Germany 30%

But Germany adds Trade Tax: 14% of profit and Value-added tax (VAT): 19% on purchases.

The US does not have an analog to the Trade Tax. Our sales tax is similar to VAT, but our rates are much lower and have more exclusions.

Health care: Germany has one of the oldest universal health care systems in the world. 85% of it's population are covered by this state sponsored system. This takes a huge burden of of both it's citizens and businesses to pay for insurance.

Unions: Percentage of worker in unions: US 12%. Germany 20%

And Unions have much more far reaching power in Germany than they do in the the US.

The GOP has been aggressively trying to bust our unions.

OK, lets move on to the author decrying the evils of "big government".

Lets compare US and Germany, shall we!

Tax burden as a % of GDP, Government expenditures as a % of GDP

US: 26.9%, 38.9%

Germany: 40.6%, 43.7%

Not only does the German government collect more taxes as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product than the US it spends more as well.

So either way you want to slice it, Germany's government is "bigger" than ours.

I can keep going for a very long time like this! I would love to make our country more like Germany! The author just cherry picks what things he likes about Germany's post WWII recovery and says "We should do these things now!"

He ignores the Germany of the present, because he really does not like it's polices. But it is those policies that have actually enabled Germany to recover now, from this economic crisis. He is purposely comparing apples to oranges, even when there are two perfect apples to compare right there on the table!