![]() ![]() The conservative Republicans that voters in many of our former industrial regions have sent to Congress and the White House have fanned resentment over efforts ranging from expanded health care insurance, to social welfare supports, to investments in clean energy and economic development, despite the fact that their communities arguably have the greatest need for extra government stimulus. federal government has no such shared consensus to aid residents of regions struggling with economic change. As one example, Germany is working to update its social insurance system and celebrated occupational training programs to better support adaptation for a fast-changing workplace, including lifelong retraining and re-credentialing. One result is that conservative German politicians and their constituents in the country’s rural and formerly industrial regions remain supportive of federal and even EU wide-economic adjustment policies and programs. This has set up a durable, above-politics, non-partisan consensus that government should purposefully do what it can to aid adjustment in regions undergoing economic disruption and change. Those efforts emanate from a more politically aggressive commitment to “balance” growth in the German Constitution, which explicitly sets a goal of ensuring equal living conditions and quality of life for the nation’s residents, wherever they live. government, however, the German government actually makes significant efforts to address its similar regional divides. There is increasing concern in the United States about growing regional economic disparities, especially between our large, coastal, and university cities pulling away economically and socially/culturally from smaller former industrial cities and rural communities. economic regions currently being “left behind” could benefit greatly from Germany’s longstanding experience. Our newfound interest in revitalizing U.S. I was struck by two realities: The economies and cultures of our industrial regions are quite similar but our countries’ approaches to dealing with dynamics of economic dislocation and transition are radically different. We traveled to the Rurhgebiet to examine Germany’s approach to facilitating structural economic change, a topic of particular interest to our own industrial Midwest The manager spoke to a group of international leaders participating in a Public Diplomacy Visitors program sponsored by the German government. ![]()
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