the reverse of a movie. it lists. germany's one of our largest trading partners and we discussed out of your birthright of destroying jobs. well sure we can work well together for why years germany's economy thriving while the u.s. struggles to survive and could investing in people instead of wars be the key to economic success. like sixty thousand dollars. and the on education of america tuitions costs and unemployment rates are both soaring for young graduates with little to show for their schooling but debt so is college a smart investment or one giant scam. three million times. he's going to protect well apparently the pentagon itself the u.s.

military is preparing to treat cyber attacks as lessons of real war and they're ready to retaliate with troops and bombs so this is just keeping up with the times threatening to keep the u.s. in a permanent war of their state. german chancellor chancellor on go merkel is in washington today which is meeting with top u.s. officials as well as receiving the medal of freedom from president obama now both leaders are trying to project a close working relationship glossing over recent differences between the two countries over the u.s. led in libya invasion not to mention the starkly different approaches to tackling the global economic crisis now the u.s. economy continues to stagnate unfortunately we're dealing with bare bones approach to just one point eight percent consumer spending is down home prices are sinking jobs and wages well they're having nowhere now germany on the other hand well it's

not doing so bad take on employment for example when it comes to unemployment germany they have a rate of just seven percent thanks in part to policies that encourage companies to keep folks on the payrolls during tough times here in the u.s. meanwhile the on. employment rate continues to hover just over nine point one percent not to mention the fact that nearly fourteen million americans are looking for work almost half of whom have been unemployed for at least half of the past year and this comes to taxes germany is also one of the country's worst with the highest tax burdens across the globe now its average tax rate and this is including social security contributions is a staggering fifty point nine percent aligned that country to spend generously on social welfare programs health care and this actually to take care of those who are less well off meanwhile here in the u.s. we enjoy one of the lowest tax tax rates in the world an average of just twenty nine point four percent but despite a stagnating condom a budget deficits and staggering debt the united states is still number one in

military spending now germany spends forty six to billion dollars on defense and twenty ten just one point four percent of its g.d.p. meanwhile here in the u.s. despite the stagnating economy we continue to beat the rest of the globe combined when it comes to military spending shelling out a staggering six hundred eighty seven billion bucks last year nearly five percent of our g.d.p. now germany managed to find some way to thrive and survive despite high taxes lots of social welfare benefits and high wages now these are things that here in the u.s. many folks would scorn of business killers you know those lazy europeans they work less than we do and and get paid more than than we do and have the social safety nets i mean a lot of politicians here in the u.s. accused of socialism they say that it would destroy our economy they say that americans can't learn from their economies but we ask whether in fact germany has some lessons to offer that's in fact a question that i posed to the big picture of tom hartman first he had to say. well we've got to trade germany has some very very colorful carefully calibrated trade

policies particularly if you're a taxation that effectively work like tariffs so they're protecting their trade economy but with regard to the short workweek in the unemployment which i think is you know to the more the point of what you're talking about here they have a program called curt's arbeit kurtz's german for short it is work so it's kind of short work and what the german government did there while the rest of europe was having eight a half percent unemployment and i think still is in that neighborhood right now. through the recession germany never run the lobes seven or above seven and a half percent of it my recollection is correct and they did it with this program where they took five point one billion euros the government did they said all the employers ok you don't have so much demand for your products you know we have in a recession but don't lay anybody off instead cut them from say thirty forty hours a week down to thirty hours a week and what pay them the full forty hours a week so slow down production get people some time off and then we will pay the

remaining ten you know ten hours whatever it is per week through you so the government gives the money to the corporations corporations pass it out as pay and so the net effect of this is that the money in the pockets of workers never changed and what the germans understood in the dust and this is what by the way it's a very similar program in the netherlands although it's a little more optional it's not so optional in germany for the companies but what the germans understand is that what really drives an economy has demanded that the real job creators are people spending money and it doesn't matter where the money comes from as long as they're spending that money whether it's social security whether it's welfare whether it's crits arbeit money or whether it's actual i've got a job money if you're spending money you're creating demand in the economy so as soon as the real shock of the economic shock wave finished wiping across europe german germany had an economy where the demand was still there because all of the workers. still had money in their pockets and they were still buying things and spa

spec very quickly and contrast that with what we did here in the united states and in congress passed employment benefits that keep extending those you know well there's other and there's a giant hand grenade embedded in those i mean president obama this this i think is going to be a real disaster for him because in order to get a extension of unemployment benefits that's just going to run to the end of this year he gave two years of an extension of bush's tax cuts which is going to make the budget deficit worse they're cutting social programs but what's going to happen is when you know first of all you get the ninety nine er's who rolled off and now the people with the extension those people again they have money in their pocket so they're creating demand they're helping support our economy but that's going to run out of steam at the end of this year and there's no way congress is going to give him another year so he's going to be going into the election with more and more people rolling off the unemployment rolls having doubt that the economy will rebound and probably won't and i think it's going to be a real mess for him which is truly horrific but on the issue of taxes you know one of the republican talking points that we hear mentioned so often is higher taxes

that well it stagnate growth that will not be any more jobs no more our economic growth in this economy if we raise taxes that's the big rallying cry meanwhile nonsense so it's not it's a breakdown for what the what does germany have to offer these republicans in terms of the left we don't even have to look at germany let's look at what eisenhower the republican president during during the time of the america's arguably greatest growth rate after world war two eisenhower was president from fifty two to sixty my recollection is right and during that period of time we built this great country and we came and we were coming off world war two with one hundred twenty six percent of g.d.p. debt so when eisenhower came to the presidency into debt i mean we we were as were more in debt than we are right now as a percentage of g.d.p. so did he cut anything you know i mean no country has ever cut its way to prosperity and said what he did is just threw money into programs like the eisenhower highway system schools hospitals i mean look at all the buildings around in every city in america that were built in the one nine hundred fifty s. and and the g.i. . bill they sent people to school they sent people to. well schooled and they

actually paid them a stipend they have a backstop or there was a housing program or you could buy a house and the consequence of this was that we grew our way out of that debt is the basic building blocks of growth that other countries are now having in the end during that time the top tax rate in the united states was ninety one percent so you know if anybody's and corporations were paying thirty five percent of the total tax load of the total tax input into the federal government right now it's about seven percent has been paid for by corporations during the eisenhower years it was it was in the high thirty's and mid thirty's and you know very over that period and so anybody who says that high taxes kill an economy has you have to ask the question what how did we get where we are you know how did america from from one hundred forty until you know basically reagan reversed all this stuff build this great industrial powerhouse in this extraordinary country with all this incredible infrastructure that was working so well when reagan came in and kind of reversed all about but what happened to that i mean it seems like the real building block

for developing an economy is investing in infrastructure investing in innovation research and development focusing on job creation and we're not really doing that anymore what's changed what changes reaganomics reagan came along and said you know government is bad and government does is bad government is investing for example in infrastructure that's bad one of the most important infrastructures the government used to invest in the united states and did hugely in the one nine hundred fifty s. and one nine hundred sixty s. in the late one nine hundred forty s. is intellectual infrastructure we you know my dad went to college on the g.i. bill you know he was paid two hundred dollars a month to go to college and college was free and that's the kind of think that that's what built america and when reagan became governor of california california had a completely free public education system people of anybody could go to college there it was what thomas jefferson had in mind and created with the university of virginia a free education system let's invest in the intellectual infrastructure a country or reagan by. when he was governor of california and then when he became

president he put in charge of the education department bill bennett the guy who when he had in his one attempt to run for the presidency and run on the campaign platform of abolishing the department of education of course he was the guy really but charge it so we just basically stopped with reaganomics but we're almost out of time but if you could sum it up what is the biggest or. some of the biggest takeaway lessons that we can we can take away from germany's operation of its economy and well i think i mean number one the demand not supply is what drives an economy and the demand is money in people's pockets we have to figure out a way to get there whether it's unemployment benefits or or whatever number two that we need to really reconsider our trade policies which is a conversation we haven't had but it's an important one and and number three that government taxes really have no impact on whether government's going to grow and grow an economy if you like that the floor is about to open up and you're. going to look at where it was for you and you. write well a lot of great points there especially education which of course we won't be getting to you later in this program as we talk about college thank you so much

time that's tom hartman host of the big picture. well the united states and germany may have their differences when it comes to iran the leaders of both countries are speaking out in one voice following today's press conference president obama said that he and chancellor merkel both feel ron's nuclear program is a major concern and both are warning of a new sanctions against iran as a result of the results pardon me but fears over tehran's quest for the nuclear bomb are just hype that's at least according to pulitzer prize winning journalist seymour hersh who says that the obama administration is exaggerating the iranian threat and in fact include nor in its own intelligence take a look based on the notion that you know that some iran has a bomb or is going to get a bomb soon that's ridiculous because every bit of evidence they have is from their own intelligence community. that the people who talk with the very government know there's no weapons there we've known that for years we've been looking for years after years after years we support the sanctions program that's designed to stop

the punishment is it's aimed at stopping the iranians from doing something you know we know they're not doing for me and as i wrote in the article they analogy between what they're doing with obama's doing with iran is very close to what goshen dick cheney the vice president then did to iraq no evidence about weaponization there's no evidence anywhere i went you go to london you go to you go to you go to the french you go to the germans they all say the same thing we thought we still think they might want to go but we don't have anything it should be open and shut we should move on but we're not instead what you're seeing is their mom mowing me and what i wrote and they're ignoring it up to a point there's always a group that doesn't ignore stuff but the mainstream press basically they have their narrative has the united states taken the right course i'm responding to the so-called arab spring look if you're an iranian and you know middle east and you know what's going on in bahrain and you see the white house down with. iran.

and criticize the run at the same time. everybody in iran and everybody in the middle east is watching what's going on in bahrain and we say nothing how high would we think that index going to be a park or see there's nowhere for us in the middle image not my gulf anymore because we certainly betrayed the trust and in the streets of egypt when obama finally came and support him there was there was who did you know they were done with us they wanted him so it's a board early and so we've missed the boat on that those movements were probably the best tools we've had certainly better than the use of force that we've been using the night raids and all that stuff and it has been you know the way renditions and yet he's you know we've bought that up and you can always watch my full interview with seymour hersh has got to r.t. dot com or statement later in the program. now if you thought that traditional warfare was scary then be afraid be very very very afraid of cyber war that's at

least according to the rhetoric that many here in washington including president obama tend to say take a look but our defense and military networks are under constant attack al qaeda and other terrorist groups have spoken of their desire to unleash a cyber attack on our country attacks that are harder to detect and harder to defend against indeed in today's world acts of terror could come not only from a few extremists in suicide vests but from a few keystrokes on the computer a weapon of mass disruption well the new u.s. response to these so-called weapons of mass destruction may be real weapons real bombs real troops now according to the wall street journal the pentagon has a new plan to respond against cyber attacks but military actions perhaps some speak so it's actually a wise policy change or a saber rattling intended to unseat governments and make people little bit more nervous than they should be that's a question i posed to benjamin friedman is a research fellow at the cato institute and here's what he had to say. feeling in

the pentagon in the government is that we have to have some sort of policy on paper given all the excitement and hoopla right now about cyber war and cyber attacks and i will say that i don't think there's anything inherently wrong with the policy as outlined yet i'm just worried about what it could be just said under some circumstances we might respond to cyber attacks with military force and to me the trouble with that is just that the vast vast majority of cyber attacks have nothing to do with the military that criminal attacks people trying to steal information or what not and we need to be careful that we don't group that in with the real high and cyber attacks which luckily we have never seen in the united states and which remain largely hypothetical but that's the thing i mean we're not talking about writing a nice little screenplay for a hollywood movie here and you know pentagon policy even if just on paper can have potential severe consequences both for this country and other countries across the globe so if this is just supposed to be some sort of a deterrent effort that just doesn't really make sense to me it's sort of

a bad idea in advance that i try to tie the hands of future presidents and congresses in terms of what response we have to cyber attacks and seems to me that we risk of saying you know overly specific way what we're going to do i think that other countries understand now that if they do something with cyber not that kills americans they're going to be subject to retaliate usually i mean we say that you know harboring terrorists is bad and yet there's plenty of allies that we have pakistan case in planes that potentially harbor certain people that we're not necessarily from friendly relations with and don't see consequences so i don't know if the threat of something is necessary for our for what i think deterrence times to work and there are certainly cases where countries choose because of their own internal politics to take that risk but i do think countries understand that if you kill americans using some cyber whatever it is that you're going to you're taking a big risk in terms of retaliation so what's the point of making it official people's hands so to me it's just

a bureaucracy. trying to deal with something that really we don't need to deal with right now i think it would be better just be silent and not put something down on paper and of course the bigger issue is that it's not contradictory that more often than not that carry out cyberattacks it's individual hackers you know if a bunch of kids in a cyber cafe in china or in moscow or you know in israel do something how do you prove that it's the hackers and not the country i mean it seems like you're sort of going down a slippery slope there how do you prove intent and who's really behind that and is the pentagon even capable of outlining that properly yeah absolutely i mean we've seen situations with russia in a stone you know where it's no use of nato and there was allegations of the russian government was involved in hacking a variety of stone and web sites but we don't really know what the relationship between the government the hackers one of those united states want to say we're going to for the true russia with nuclear weapons because of some hackers in the moscow internet i'm not sure i don't think that's really seems like an overly bellicose threat to me so i think we need to be careful that we don't. invent

something we can sort of let it let it develop with us and at the same time with the launch of the cyber command you know our own cyber warfare against resources are getting more and more developed we have this sort of cottage industry that has sprung around the threat of cyber warfare and cyber attacks and there have been some experts that have alleged that for example the stuxnet virus that attacked that crippled iranian reactors was somehow potentially develops media in collaboration with the u.s. government whether that's true or not it does raise the question if the united states is one of the more developed countries it's capable of launching a sense of cyber operations i don't know is there a shift in policy fair well it's only depok or see if you don't get away with it so i think the united states being the most powerful country in the world can get away with one stuff and i was ben friedman a research fellow at the cato institute. you know america's recovery is still far.

the horizon and college graduates are certainly feeling the pinch and many are finding their hopes for a bright new careers shattered my mountain debt and unemployment artie's moreno or r t correspondent part of the marina partner reports on the college kids who forked over huge dollars for the future but they getting very little on return on their investment. america is home to the world's most extensive and prestigious university yet pain for them has created a nation where the majority sign on to life kind payment of loans i probably would like fifty thousand dollars didn't. go over like ninety thousand easy. yet i make you nervous yes' said make the terrified every american graduate is launching into a dwindling job market saddled with at least twenty four thousand dollars in student debt that really led to a great job or start a great company are going to be seriously in the house according to the economics holocene institute the us economy currently has one job for every size applicant

meanwhile business for bankruptcy attorney gennady litigant is surging half of his clients are unemployed degree holders drowning in debt anyone going to college essentially is cameron once again from an investor's point of view right now the way the dollar is the way inflation is going off and the way the job market is a college education just isn't a good investment and not a good return on your money even economics professors on the inside like richard walls say in sleeping students to banks is a disaster for america's economic viability the future of any country in the world economy these days depends first and foremost on the quality and the quantity of skilled craned new young workers and the major institutions that produce that of the colleges and universities you're pricing them out of being able to do that today i took home i no longer serves as

a guaranteed for prosperity for america in the meantime the number of foreigners studying at u.s. colleges and universities has reached record high according to leave it to six nearly seven hundred thousand international students flown in from all over the world study you know. and the majority are transplanting from america's economic competitors according to the institute of international education chinese students studying in the states surged thirty percent in two thousand and nine most foreign families reportedly bypassed financially and paid full tuition since one nine hundred seventy eight the cost of u.s. colleges and universities has reportedly increased more than nine hundred percent while household income rose just one hundred fifty percent what you're seeing is american universities particularly the elite are happier to have foreigners who

tend to a their own way because they come from the very top so those societies. will forgo the americans who can afford it much in the way anyway according to the pew research center fifty seven percent of americans say college is not worth the price but with a widening workforce and an educated many wonder with the u.s. economy will eventually be worth marine upward ny artsy new york well as you just saw college may be costly and of course the economy is in the dumps but better to suck it up and get let's agree than risk getting left behind in a dust right well not according to mike snyder of the economic collapse blog he says it's a graduates are nothing but invention of servants and here's why take a look. today's students that are graduating here at this time of year two thirds of them are coming out with student loan debt and the total amount of student loan debt in the united states today is actually more than the total amount of credit

card everyone always talks about what a credit card but americans are hereto are known hundred billion dollars in student loan debt and for critical the students coming out today with forty eight hundred twenty thousand dollars there you are in slowly until right before they even get started with their groups if we had all of these factors that we have against students why do they continue to sign up for the escape incredibly expensive schools. well big part of the problem goes back to high school when i was in high school and same today all the guidance counsellors teachers. missions counselors they all tell people to go to college don't worry about her going to worry about how much is going to cost you need to go to college she did it just a job or go to the best school that you can and they never tell them to take a look at how much food how saudi students go how do they but they're going to get a job what might you know but the truth is there's a report stated it's a big gamble almost some people are able to do jobs when they get out but

a lot of people are today in that speech there are three hundred seventeen thousand waiters and waitresses that have a college degree and terms of if you look at all retail sales persons across nine states one of them twenty four percent of them have a college degree message up for a college degree is not require so we have a lot of college graduates but there are not enough jobs for or what the role of lost in all this because really it does boil down to debt and lending. well. the financial institution they love to get people into debt and so that's been a big part of this all the all of the years and since. most folks that don't you can just declare bankruptcy but with student loan debt it's almost impossible to discharge the bankruptcy and so it leaves young people there in flames with no way out for decades to come our way that was mike neither take but what about those young college bound americans themself but we spoke to one of them earlier on the

show well stephen smith only nine years old and he's so short a college is a total waste of time that he started the so called an college movement to spread the word to listen to his views on why a degree is no longer worth it we've got people warning too little and paying too much the cost of college is increasing about twice the rate of inflation and academically adrift a report that was released by richard armitage you found in fact thirty. percent of college students over the course of four years so don't group in critical thinking complex reasoning or or writing which may be true but at the same time in this society we value our college degree as you know if you don't have that prestigious little piece of paper and employers not even to look at your resume so how do you overcome that obstacle though i think that's changing and increasingly in the tech community here in silicon valley. hiring has just come to be much more about what you can do not where you went to school dropping out of school is not going to to relegate you to a life of asking what do i it's perfectly possible to the. happy man your life

between work was october working at mcdonald's where you can earn a respectable income and contribute to society by being the failure talking about you know these articles and these books and you know just you need an education to even be interested in picking up articles on both i mean isn't that what traditional education is for one could argue that if we didn't have these forms of schooling people would be i don't know partying and playing ball and and running around i mean school teaches you discipline how to read things that you may normally not necessarily be exposed to how do you sponsor that school teaches you how to how to follow directions how to meet deadlines and interactions people short but those are things that can be learned over the course of a number of years not nearly two decades of our laws i believe that people are naturally curious and if you give them the freedom to go out and learn a lot more of the find something that they're passionate about and be able to take that subject to much greater detail than if you're giving them material i prescribe

what they learn but what about the theory that people just settle for the easiest thing i mean if you look for example at mainstream media right we had this discussion in our editorial meeting so much why is there so much talk about celebrities and pop culture and and fluff essentially instead of the real serious issues that matter to the world and and one of the things that we've come to realize is that because that's what sells advertising that's what people gravitate to so it's easier to pay attention to the fluff in the society what gives you confidence that the folks will seek out the more complex ideas that if if that's not easily accessible. and i guess what i have to go back to is this point out there maybe that's not for us maybe maybe there's more value in what we consider fluff than we traditionally give all of our educational options are based on the idea that we need to be doctors and lawyers and engineers. professions that are better technical and and well regarded to actually make an impact and you know

maybe it's ok if people want to listen to me. about celebrities i guess yeah who knows maybe the next great american invention will be in between lindsay lohan's writes i guess we'll have to wait and see and figure that one out but again what about why you think college is so expensive apology is so useless as the alleged why do people continue to shell out this money go into debt and continue down the path that eventually don't necessarily bring in the kinds of benefits of a dead i don't know thirty years ago it's it's because no one has told or told people that but there's an alternative there's been no homes when you've been on school and i came out of that movement but still assumed that going to college was the requisite power to professional success. and what i came to understand is that i wasn't learning anything to college i was learning how to turn in my homework assignments that i'd already mastered about years and years ago i wasn't being able

to take my ideas and there were people at college with world changing ideas but they weren't taking those out and execute it and i just think that if we could get people out of the classroom into the world i imagine the human potential that we get unleashed being squandered on hard work is like that's trite and that was they'll even sleeker of me on college movement and unfortunately that does it for now for more on the stories that we've covered this at r.t. dot com slash usa and check out our youtube page at youtube dot com slash r t america if you want to share your thoughts on tonight's show or tell me what stories you want to see here in r.t. and please follow me on twitter it's at lucy craft another one word that's where i try to stay on top of the latest news that you're not getting elsewhere and thank you so much for watching this evening and stay tuned to our tease for stories that are going to help you question more i think. you know something or see a story to see so you think you understand it and then you learn something else here see some other part of it and realize that everything you saw.