For most of this century, Germany racked up one economic success after another, dominating global markets for high-end products like luxury cars and industrial machinery, selling so much to the rest of the world that half the economy ran on exports.
Jobs were plentiful, the government’s financial coffers grew as other European countries drowned in debt, and books were written about what other countries could learn from Germany.
No longer. Now, Germany is the world’s worst-performing major developed economy, with both the International Monetary Fund and European Union expecting it to shrink this year.
On your 6th point: there are more than enough people in STEM. Just the biggest technical university has over 50k students. And there are plenty of other universities around. The truth is that Germany just doesn’t pay enough to have these people actually stay here. That’s because you have a bunch of old greedy fucks run the economy. Source: me, an engineer. It’s easier to just move abroad or work remotely for a foreign company, or move even to one of the neighbouring countries, and make almost double the salary in the field. France, Denmark, the Netherlands all pay me better than Germany ever did. Germany doesn’t innovate because it is owned by old greedy fucks that make it next to impossible to start a company. In the UK it costs under 100 Euros and one hour to register a company. In Germany it costs thousands and A LOT of precious time of your life. I say this as someone who TRIED to start a company in Germany :) This is cultural. Germany has an obsession with being cheap. And it shows.
Anyway, your other points are full of flaws. There are around 4 million people living off of welfare. There are almost 25 million pensioners living off of what you probably don’t consider welfare, but in fact is welfare. There’s your problem. Not only that, but there are less people that live off of welfare now than ten years ago. The numbers have been going down slightly over the last decades. Also take into account the fact that many of them actually work and need welfare to stay afloat.
How would you go by doing that? What do you propose? Funnily enough, almost all students in Germany come from families with an academic background.
This sounds like eugenics already. I see you have a big obsession with “the educated class” here. That is… interesting to say the least. Your so called “educated class” won’t produce your goods, keep that in mind. You need everyone to have a healthy prosperous economy.
I see you speak from a very unbiased position here. What is this said “green ideology”?
Long story short: Germany has always been unattractive to foreigners and will stay so. The only people that ever migrated to Germany did it because they didn’t have any other choices. It’s the same with the turkish workers that came here half a century ago. Germany treated them like crap, refused to integrate them for many years, even sent their kids to schools to study in Turkish and didn’t want them to learn German. It’s the same story with arab refugees. It took years for them to get work permits here. The government paid teachers to teach in arabic and refused to teach them German because they feared they would settle here. Many of them have to fight the government to get a work permit and actually be able to contribute to society. This is what the german mentality has to offer.
Older generations aren’t ready to accept people from other countries and cultures here. They want quiet, little slaves ready to work for cheap. Even better if they’re highly educated. This just feeds back into the german cultural aspect of being cheap. That’s why educated people like me work abroad. Germany is mediocre at best. My mates in Eastern Europe make the same as the Germans in my field in Germany. It’s hilarious honestly how much they tell themselves how superior they are, but they work on EE wages. Germans expect everyone to flock to their country and learn their language, but Germans can’t even order at McDonalds in English when they go abroad. They don’t even bother integrating the people that come here, yet they keep saying how they want more skilled, educated immigrants lmao
Look at the people Germany is importing and the conditions they live in. Even people from Eastern Europe get treated like cattle. They get brought here by the corrupt political class to work in meat factories. They barely get any money, they are tricked into living in miserable conditions, they get to sleep in a small room with six other men that are also working in similar conditions. This is how Germany stays afloat. By taking advantage of people and being cheap. This will not work forever. Being cheap and taking advantage of people doesn’t work indefinetely. I just find it hilarious how German society has to wake up to that realization now.
I can’t say much more other than what you’ve already said, but I have something to add for the last one. Being Eastern European myself, not being brought to work in Germany, but for working for several German companies inside Eastern Europe, such as ThyssenKrupp and Bosch. It’s true they like their workers cheap, obedient, and educated. I can count on one hand how many times they raised the pay from 2019-to 2022, and even then they argued within themselves so it’s just the bare minimum wage provided. I could scream into the void about how much more education I had, or what other skills I possessed, or how I did some of my superior’s work even, no one cared enough to pay more for it, instead I got a slap in the face reminder with an upper leader’s visit, saying how I should just shut up, and be grateful that I could work there, because I could be replaced by a machine anytime soon. If people were sick too much, or they could not endure the constant rotating shifts and 12 hours of standing work, they laid them off instantly, and hired new people. Once the local populace was less and less likely to go there due to working conditions known as the ‘meat grinder’ and the ‘lemon squeezer’ then they started hiring foreigners with a temporary place to stay in, like you said often a shoebox with multiple people living inside, which were mostly just shipped containers, with terrible isolation, no heating, or running water. With all of this being said, this is not just slander against Germans specifically, other countries do this too, other corporations do this too. As long as line go up, people are just a resource to be exploited, numbers on a screen for those juicy quarterly reports, so investors can feel good about themselves, and we can all have that nice extra 00.1% GDP growth that will ultimately do nothing for your average citizen.
Sadly this is in my opinion also cultural. There’s a cultural aspect to being obedient and loyal to a company. Working there for decades and RARELY being showered with a bit of gratitude in the form of a lame pizza party or some stupid company gathering. This is true for the older generations. They really fall for that shit and don’t question one thing. Younger people aren’t as willing to sell their souls to a company, which makes me a bit more hopeful about the future.
But yes, overall people are being treated like shit. I am sure that soulless capitalism is a big part of the problem, but at least in other countries tehre’s a more collective will to unionise and hold companies accountable for the shit they’re doing (just look at France). This is rarely the case in most german companies. There’s a saying “if a revolution was happening, Germans would line up to buy tickets for it”
With that being said, I am also eastern european. I have lived in Germany for a long time, I am a german citizen by now, I finished my school here and graduated at one of the best universities in the german speaking world. And at the same time, Many of my peers made me feel lesser because of my ethnic background. And here I am purely talking about the most concrete of examples. Like, a colleague randomly talking to me about the small/petty crime some people from my country commit here. Or randomly asking me stuff about the seasonal agricultural workers from my country, because of course I’m an expert on it. And MANY, many more examples. Or back when I used to have an indian flat mate, being asked about “the indian hygiene standards” as if I was living with an animal or something. And these are “educated” people I am talking about.