Not a German. Coming from authoritarian state and following democratic processes in Germany very closely. Love to talk with older neighbors occasionally. From my personal observation I can differentiate 4 time lines. First one is West Germany after WW2 living under the skirt of Americans. This laid foundation for rapid growth in second phase and prosperity. Arrogance came in with “Made in Germany”. Third phase started with unification and millions of new citizens from former eastern states. While being Germans they had really skewed worldview (I lived there many years). And the decline started in episode 4 with Merkel and zero interest era. While pragmatic leaders would push for using interest free debt to improve infrastructure nothing happened. Instead of that she opened borders and closed nuclear power plants. This decision lead for huge tensions in the society overloading social system. Dumb right orientation parties were elected. Electricity’s definitely not cheap.

We pay more than 30000€ a year for mandatory public health insurance and more for modern treatments not covered by insurance. That’s not different than in US, except the funny salaries in Germany.

Society is not homogeneous. There are more and more elderly who will vote who promises them heaven. The young ones are ignored. There are many conflicts: young vs. old. The riches against rest 95%. The ones born on German soil and the ones arrived later mixing illiterate refugees and PhD expats together.

Interesting times. It’s nice to believe, that Germany can put the shit together. But there are too many forces at play. Let’s see. I am too old to move elsewhere.

> Your problems are political, and you are your own worst enemy. Germany has enormous possibilities as a society, if you just get your shit together.

The problem is that post-war Germany was founded on a promise of eternal prosperity, fuelled by our export industry, ever-increasing population counts, and cheap energy from coal (and later Russian gas). This engine was running so smoothly, we completely slept through digitisation, missed how China kept catching up with our engineers, and felt so reassured by the US entitlement to the world cop role that we shrunk the military further and further.

And now, all of that collapsed pretty much at the same time: Exports are staggering for a variety of reasons, people so few children our pension system costs explode, and energy prices have risen to the highest levels in Europe. All levels of the federal government are struggling with organisational problems, many have painted themselves into a corner, with incompatible silo solutions, and many still work on paper exclusively. In the meantime, the Chinese are able to produce many of the things we used to lead in at the same or better quality, and at lower prices - partly because a lot of strategic state subsidies are going on, partly due to stolen IP, but also due to a plain lack of innovation on our part. And we all know what happened with regard to the military recently.

Germans were never good with change, and right now, so many things change that most people are completely overwhelmed, oversaturated, anxious about the future, fatalistic, and angry. They get to each other's throats instead of looking ahead. Everyone is desperate for things slowing down at least a little bit, but they won't, and people know that.

There's lots of potential here, but I'm afraid on the great sinus curve of history, we're on a downward course right now. Unless something fundamentally changes, we'll see an extremist right-wing party take over power; many of its members openly celebrate Nazism.

I'm really trying to stay optimistic, but it's really getting harder every day.

I have family there and have stayed with them for several weeks at a time. Why do you think Germany is automatically better?

I had a friend working there - he didn't make that much in senior roles.

I def read that wrong originally.