Automation encourages itself. It's a compelling economic fact that can't be stopped without violence. You can slow it down by paying people wages they can't live on, and you can squeeze every turnip in sight to compete with bowl-of-rice-a-day imports, but it's coming at you anyway. 'Always has, always will.
Tawwwm's argument is one of the oldest, dumbest, and most self-serving in all of manufacturing. Luddites come in several flavors, but their arguments are always losers.
That's a good argument for universal health care. The fixed part of labor costs is a blight upon any economy. When almost all of the costs are variable, you have maximum labor flexibility. And it can benefit both labor and ownership, if handled thoughtfully.
They do. Now you can see why the arguments against debt are stupid, too. Debt is a burden on growth, but debt used well stimulates more growth than it burdens.
There are intelligent arguments against excessive debt. You just won't hear them from conservative pundits.
The weakness in Germany's economy is likely to come from an excessive mercantilism, in which they try to buy their way out of trouble with a strong balance of trade. This is something that doesn't often work well for very advanced economies, like theirs. They do have a healthy trade balance, but a negative one isn't necessarily unhealthy. And bending normal market forces to effect a better trade balance can do more harm than good.
The strength of Germany's economy is the more interesting part, and the article points out that it's the relative power of labor and ownership that's very different from out economy. There are deeper analyses around than that brief article. The telling point is that getting labor involved in decision-making at the highest levels hasn't seem to hurt their international competitiveness. It appears to have strengthened it, in fact, but I'm not knowledgable enough about Germany's economy to draw any conclusions -- except that labor involvement obviously has not held them back.
BTW, I think that John found a link to that article that isn't behind a paywall. If you can't get it and really want it, I'll download it and e-mail it to you.