Silly Rabbit, Growth is for Kids!

To extend on this bit of Germany vs. India idiocy; rapid economic growth is quite a bit easier in very poor countries than in highly developed nations. Think of it in terms of human growth: a baby grows faster than you do, as does a tot, a child, and a teen. But they don't keep growing faster than you. At a point, easy growth gets tapped out and continued enlargement becomes markedly harder. In nations like India and China, where hundreds of millions live in abject poverty and the technologies that improve productivity have barely penetrated, there are a lot of easy gains to be made -- the poor work for cheap and improving their output is trivial. But once India or China or Singapore or Ireland hit Germany's standard of living, growth will slow to more earthbound rates. That's not to say Germany couldn't grow quicker, but it is to say that comparing it to India or China is like raging at your five year old for having more momentum on the height-chart than you.