Ludwig Erhard’s legacy in shaping Germany’s post-war recovery stretches far beyond his own country and far beyond his own times. His conception of the social market economy was visionary.
Chart 1: The unemployment rate was near 50-year lows prior to COVID-19 Monthly data % 16  14  12  10  8  6  4  2  0 1966  1970  1974  Source: Statistics Canada  1978  1982  1986  1990  1994  1998  2002  2006  2010  2014  2018  Last observation: April 2020  But we are also an export-dependent economy.