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Comment by ulfw | Hacker News Reader

Germany is on last place.

Here is the actual survey: https://www.internations.org/expat-insider/2022/expat-essent...

"Germany (52nd) does very badly in the Digital Life (48th), Housing (47th), and Language (49th) Subcategories. Expats are unhappy with the ease of getting high-speed internet access at home (24% vs. 11% globally) and the lack of cashless payment options (27% vs. 8% globally). Moreover, housing is both hard to afford (59% unhappy vs. 43% globally) and to find (56% unhappy vs. 27% globally). “It may take up to three months to find even a temporary accommodation,” says an expat from Poland. And everyday life is anything but easy if you don’t speak the language (46% unhappy vs. 32% globally)."

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Germany is a leading industry nation with a marked 10-15% population drop (birth rates) in the 1990, which resulted in said drop in school and high school diplomas in the 2010s, and now the same drop in academics available to the job market. this lack of workforce is exacerbated markedly by a massive drop out of qualified elders into retirement.

and brains, brains with hands, are _the_ #1 ressource of an industrialized high tech nation.

too bad immigration offices are understaffed, and foreigner-FUD is omnipresent outside big cities. and too bad some lobbies convinced rural areas that fibre optics and cell phone radiation are bad for them. I really can't be but sarcastic. sorry for the rant.

If you are in Germany and are complaining about the cashless options, you're in the wrong place. That is a cultural thing for them. [Less so since in the last few years]

Also, it's hard to complain that the difficultly for getting DeutscheKabel, DT, or 1&1 off their rear ins is a mark against the country.

When I settled in 20 years ago, it was even worse, at least now shops and supermarkets do keep open after 6pm, and afternoons on Saturdays, on bigger cities.

And like every expat, I had to at a given point having friends as "hostage" on the restaurant while hunting for an ATM, or been the "hostage" for others not yet used to the culture. Naturally we could have paid the bill and settled it later, but that is yet another matter regarding on the how to pay culture.

For info: In Belgium, it is now mandatory for shopkeepers to provide digital means of payment to customers. Covid accelerated that.

The fact Germany seems to be resistant to use electronic payment options is specially interesting given the neighbours to the North, specially Sweden, are probably the most cashless societies anywhere.

It’s an anti-surveilance thing. Between the Nazis and the GDR’s Stasi we have some concerns there.

It’s been getting a lot better with Covid and SumUp, though.

> It’s an anti-surveilance thing. Between the Nazis and the GDR’s Stasi we have some concerns there.

And that's one of the things I love your country for. It's the acceptance of personal consensual relationships/hedonism, and respect for the privacy/wellbeing. It's rather unfortunate at how you arrived at the understanding of that need.

I'm a native German, and I agree with all those points, even when speaking the language perfectly. Add high taxes and a surprisingly corrupt government when you pull back the curtains and I'm thinking about leaving again.

Corrupt government? You must be living in another Germany.

Someone could say an ex-German government leader working for the pipeline company he approved could be seen as corrupt.

And this is proof of a systemically corrupt government?

The cozyness of Auto industry with politicians is beyond anything.

Our current chancellor had, when he was still mayor of Hamburg, a private meeting with bankers after which his tax office decided not to pursue that bank's criminal tax fraud, his party received significant donations from said bank, and hundreds of thousands of Euros were mysteriously found in his right hand man's safety deposit box.

It's a different Germany. Scholz just can't remember, because his brain resets after each crime. And it's not just Scholz, it's wherever you look when the curtain is drawn back. Remember RBB?

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