Let's hope U.S. policymakers have woken up to the fact that the country is in a period of sclerosis, where its economic institutions seem to be inefficient along a variety of fronts. When things aren't working, one good idea is to look around and see which countries are doing better. Right now, Japan is one such country. But in many ways, Germany looks like the most successful economy in the developed world.
This wasn't always the case. It was a German economist who coined the term "Eurosclerosis" to describe the slow growth that plagued the country from the 1980s through the 1990s. In the late 2000s, even as the U.S. economy boomed, Germany's unemployment rate exceeded 10 percent.
But almost a decade after the global financial crisis, the country has found its legs. Unemployment is down. Labor force participation has risen steadily. Wages have gone up as well, outpacing the United States since the 1990s and looking healthy in recent years.