Just another thing Germany managed to totally fuck up. I can't even remember something that was done well for the last, what, 5-10 years? All the politicians we have are a disgrace.
We legalized, this was a great success.
Don't be so negative
Which has gone down in the last 10 years. There's absolutely no indication that anything in this regard will improve. All metrics show a downwards trend. Be it homeownership, financial security or even life expectancy. So it's basically just like saying "I inherited billions and I'm still not completely broke. My financial decisions must be awesome".
That's why I fear rightwing populism will keep rising.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-...
Compared to other nations the situation gets even more confusing. The OECD Better Life index [2] places Germany consistently above average. The index is compiled from available data and surveys conducted in the corresponding country. So Germans feel everything is doomed but when asked they rank themselves in most metrics concerning quality of life above average. That does not make sense and I doubt the numbers are wrong. So why are Germans so gloomy? Is it the Mittelschicht-Problem? That's a serious question, because I don't know and it is important.
[1] https://www.gut-leben-in-deutschland.de [2] https://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/de/countries/germany-de/
especially right wingers (fuelled by russian money, as confirmed more and more) need a doom&gloom environment + some targets to direct the anger/fear to. there is a lot of misinformation spread around, to an extend that group-thinking has already kicked in and confirmation biases are already at play.
the mental gymnastics are sometimes just outright insane: people with quite comfortable household income situations living in peaceful suburbs feeling close to take up arms to revolt against the evil government and those criminal foreigners everywhere (so against hated laws that don't exist in reality, people they never experienced themselves in their hood, general developments that don't affect them or also are not true/framed badly).
the reality is that life in general is good in germany, much better than in many places of the world considering the complete picture, its not getting more dangerous (criminal statistics overall are mostly flat/sinking over the last decades). there are problems, sure, but nothing spectacularly new, like aging population and pension stuff.
could it be better? always, yes. but it seems that any party that slightly tries to solve on of the actual problems gets a devastating amount of public fire (shoot-the-messenger-style) thats nearly to impossible to defend against, nowadays amplified by social media bots to a large extend, which many people are not able to identify.
I know, saying Germany is better to live in than the UK is hardly much praise, but I will probably stay here for as long as I can just because the quality of life is just so astoundingly better here than it is back home
Same with the botched constructions projects like BER and Stuttgart21.
The government was reduced to be only a contractor because private companies are sop much better and cheaper at doing things /s.
In the grand scheme, this is (yet) an(other) elaborate scam against the public. Politicians outsource the responsibility of implementing policies to the "market" and pretend they're doing something, just to get votes. The "market" outsources what they promised to implement to the lowest bidder in some distant land with no oversight. And then they can all blame it to "China".
It's not like the industry and certain media companies lobbied for it big time claiming the market is so much better.
Just look who they voted in Germany for the EU. The same party that blocked the energy transition with faulty studies, made Germany dependent on russian resources, botched the nuclear exit leading to large compensation payments, installed a debt break in the constitution that is based on a faulty Excel calculation etc.
Seems to me like people want to get fooled. As soon you tell them the truth they listen to those who promise easy solutions for complex problems.
I can also only recommend to read "the invisible doctrine" by goerge monbiot. Sad enough that I can't think of a similar book in German. Or a newspaper that would be able to match the Guardian, for example.
Still the politicians' fault if you ask me. It's in their job description to serve the public interest. And it is granted that there will be attempts to influence them.
For this, they are paid well-above the average of a person with similar qualifications, typically granted handsome pension schemes, and afforded many other protections and benefits. All, so they are not financially insecure and susceptible to influence.
If they cave to lobby interests against the public interest, they should be held accountable, and not only on election day.
One example is the treatment of Robert Habeck, despite the other errors he made he handled the russian gas crises pretty well. He explained in detail what he wants to do, what the consequences are and why he did it the way he did.
He still gets attacked by right wing media, voters and the industry just because he had to fix what the prebious government botched on behalf of the german industry because they wanted cheap gas. That was a refreshing amount of clear communication from a politician. The result: h is made fun of because he has also written children's books.
Seems like people prefer politicians like Merkel, who said and did next to nothing.
Better fail while you try than do nothing.
Scholz: Invisible
Linder: Also quite okay, since he at least seems like some kind of force against overflowing expenses. Could be a bit less invested in his clientele
Faeser: Incompetent
Baerbock: Incompetent
Buschmann: Who?
Heil: Incompetent
Pistorius: Nothing but hot air
Özdemir: Could be okay but was put on a leash
Paus: You can't be this incompetent, I bet on malice
Lauterbach: Quite okay
Wissing: Malicious
Lemke: Who?
Stark-Watzinger: Absolute disaster
Schulze: Useless
Geywitz: Useless
Yes, demanding spending cuts for others but at the same time wants billions of tax cuts.
Merkel and her finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble were stupid believers in running a country/continent like a family or factory (micro- instead of macroeconomics). If you're in debt, you gotta save. With the Euro crisis and PIIGS (anyone here old enough to remember PIIGS?) inflation problem (caused by the currency pegging masked as a single currency, btw), the continent had a lot of problems. And so Merkel as the de-facto ruler of the EU told everyone to cut social services, social benefits, etc, instead of doing stimulus packages like the Obama admin. The results were more unemployment and destitution, even suicides[1].
And when Merkel decided to show her humane side and allowed Syrians to settle in Germany, it was morally a great move which I agree (how can we call ourselves human if we refuse shelter to humans who are being shot at and bombed - well one way to do it is to not treat them as humans and classify them in our brains, all of them, as cowards (for running away instead of fighting) and lazy benefits-seekers)), but of course for the average Joe European who's been told for many years "There's no money, we have to save", to suddenly hear "We're a prosperous continent, we can do it.", this sounds like a huge truckload of shit. And the half-hearted policy of just sticking these refugees in makeshift camps and probably no budget in proper integration (and TBH, there's probably lazy refugees too, but then again, wouldn't you lose motivation against bureaucracies that don't let you work, confuse you in a language/culture foreign to yours, etc, even though you fought your way out of a warzone on a precarious journey) didn't make it any better.
The Nord Stream deal was designed to make Europe dependent on Russian natural resources and weaken position of Eastern Europe. It was opposed by Eastern European countries who saw it quite rightly as the next Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac... in disguise. But even if we discard their opinions, here's a document prepared by the European Parliament in 2008 https://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2004_2009/documents/... Nobody in Europe was fooled by Russians, but German politicians could not or did not want to hear it. Germans kept rejecting all Eastern European objections to the deal and other decisions that followed, including Nord Stream 2.
German politicians crossed the line and began implementing Russian foreign policy in Europe. In 20214 Ukraine paid the price of German Ostpolitik. Here's a good summary of how Germany played this game:
https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-inc-played-russian-r...
and here's an early summary of Germany's behaviour https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/osw-commentary/2014-04-...
And recently, this information came to light https://www.yahoo.com/news/angela-merkel-concealed-informati...
You cannot have united Europe with a significant member undermining its principles by making it dependent on energy supplies from an aggressive enemy and being an advocate of the enemy's interests. German politicians are compromised to the point where they just cannot see how compromised they are.
> If you vote for these people, then yes, you are a bad person
As a foreigner living in Germany, it’s been incredibly disheartening to become more aware of the level of political discourse here. AfD will continue making huge gains (which I’m absolutely worried about) as long as their opponents continue to reason like toddlers.
How are you supposed to reason about that? If AfD members ignore obvious scientific developments, you can't really do much more than present yet another paper saying that yes, man-made climate change is indeed a thing, just for then to ignore it, too.
You cannot reason with someone who does not want to be reasoned with.
You can claim that many policies by the AfD are made in good faith. (I don't believe that, but I'd be willing to entertain the thought.)
But once you get to something like if climate change exists, there isn't really any way you can argue with reason anymore. You are met with pure denial. Denial, which is used as a base for action that is clearly and actively destructive.
That's exactly how Germany got the current disastrous SPD-FDP-Green coalition, whose approval rating is down to 17% (SPD 14%; Greens 15%; FDP only 4%), the worst since that poll started in 1997. Germany's GDP growth was -0.3% in 2023 (gas pipelines inoperational and nuclear plants mothballed) and 0.1-0.2% in 2024 (stagnation, manufacturing fleeing the country).
> However, there are some political parties (AfD, NPD)... that have mass deportation of foreigners as their main goals.
If you meant "deport German citizens of foreign origin", that's unconstitutional. The AfD knows that, it rowed back from that policy. Even trying mass deportations of non-citizens would be widely opposed and would be challenged in courts (up to the ECJ). Obviously whoever the next govt is (most likely CDU/CSU), will restrict new asylum claims, and possibly enact measures to improve assimilation.
What percent of votes for the AfD are a tactical vote of no-confidence/protest against the mainstream parties? (like how many mainstream French voters tactically voted FN/RN in 2012 and then 2017 Presidential elections to signal no-confidence in Hollande's socialists, Fillon's Républicains and all the others)? (And in 2018-9 nearly until Covid, Macron was still trying to impose carbon taxes disproportionately on working-class households. That's insane. Also shows total contempt for his own electorate.)
So if many of western Europe's voters tactically vote for parties with unimplementable platforms as a message to their preferred mainstream parties to impose more restrictions on immigration, how is that not a democratic exercise in tactical voting? Just like how most parties deliberately campaign on unimplementable policies of taxing/spending/borrowing? (Sunak's current electoral antics in the UK being an example).
The weird pattern of the 2024 MEP elections is that Poland's PiS and Hungary's Fidesz lost voteshare, while many western countries tacked centre-right. The EU consensus will meet in the middle. The next multiyear EU Pact on Migration and Asylum will be more restrictive.
> If you vote for these people, then yes, you are a bad person and undeniably (very) rightwing.
Depends on which election: traditionally in many European countries, voters vote tactically or protest-vote in MEP and/or local elections (~ like the very rough equivalent of voting in midterm elections, for US readers), but then swing back towards the mainstream (or else third-way/independent) in national and/or Presidential elections.
One way to estimate the relative size of the protest vote is to look at the differential between voting in MEP/local elections vs national/Presidential elections. Normally we'd have to wait a year or two to find out, but in the case of France, Macron is rolling the dice on calling a snap national election in three weeks, so we can see those vote differentials then. Should be the most interesting comparative data on France for many decades, by issue, by region, by demographic. Worth noting that France's 2024 MEP election turnout was only 51.5% [0], national election turnouts similar, whereas Presidential election turnout in 2027 will be expected to hit ~80% [1]. So that suggests France currently has tons of disaffected mainstream voters, rather than that everyone swung to the right).
[0]: Evolution of [MEP election] voters turnout per countries and per year, 1979-2024 https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/06/12/european-elect...
[1]: Voter turnout in the presidential elections in France 1965-2022, by round https://www.statista.com/statistics/1068866/participation-ra...
This is met with denial by their rabid voter base. That party doesn't care about Germans or Germany. They care about lining their pockets. That is all. Where that money is coming from doesn't matter. They will sell out our country to the highest bidder if they could. You can't actually say you care about Germany and vote for that party, it doesn't make sense.
CDU/CSU: Scheuer, Spahn, Merz, Altmaier, Klöckner, ...
SPD: What do they even stand for nowadays?
Grüne: Totally out of touch with reality
FDP: Unfortunately I'm not rich enough for a Porsche
AFD: Just no
Heimat: Just no
BSW: Not sure what to make of them yet
Linke: They are just irrelevant
+ all the other small ones that are also just irrelevant.
I voted ÖDP recently btw. Also irrelevant but idk.
IMHO no party tackles anything important:
* Totally out of hand federalism
* Digital administration
* Education
* Controlled migration
* Climate change
* plus all the other stuff