US lawyer/writer/translator in Düsseldorf. Words German & English. Hot steamy takes, charts, stats, praise of Düsseldorf, and cat content. Frank Drebin stan.
1/ Germany’s economy is now being run by Robert Habeck, a man who studied literature in college, has never run a business, and is most known (aside from being a Green party politician) as an author of children’s books.
1/ 400,000 YOUNG AFGHAN MALES IN GERMANY -- WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?
One of the many taboos in the German immigration debate is why it's mostly young males (73% males, 78% under 34) who apply for asylum in Germany -- a trend which is becoming more pronounced.
1/ I think many Germans don't realize how the energy crisis directly threatens Germany's future as a prosperous country. Germany has a huge bureaucracy and social-welfare apparatus, and provides comparatively generous subsidies for the arts.
1/ If you're wondering why news about the Solingen knife rampage suddenly disappeared from the mainstream media overnight, it's because a suspect was identified and was, predictably, a Muslim foreigner.
Immigration to Europe actually makes the impending demographic collapse worse: European social welfare states will have to support not only their own aging populations but millions of foreign welfare recipients.
It's never a bad time to remind everyone that in 1987, the German Green party opposed electronic record-keeping, digital telephony, ISDN, fiber-optic cables, *and* cable and satellite television.
1/ HOW GERMANS GET HYPNOTIZED BY RULES
A tendency of Germans and especially their bureaucrats is a fixation with enforcing rules to the exclusion of common sense and (in certain eras) basic humanity. Wait for the 2 stingers at the end of this insane tale.
For the 1,544th time, the main reason for the rise of the "extreme right" in Europe is that mainstream politicians stubbornly continue policies that *huge supermajorities* of their citizens want stopped. It's really that simple.
A new survey (carried out in March-April 2024) of people in EU countries asked:
"Do you think your country takes in too many immigrants?"
On average about 70% agree.
The questions Germans ask about new tech, in order:
1. Is it morally acceptable?
2. Is it in harmony with Nature™?
3. Will everyone have equal access to it?
4. Did/do right-wingers approve of it?
5. Is it sustainable?
...
356. Does it work?
...
952. How does it work?
1/ Here's an incomplete list of things that would be happening right now if the murder rampage at the Solingen Diversity Festival had been committed by a right-wing German:
1/ WHY GERMANY CAN'T DEPORT ANYONE
Die Welt just published an important article on why Germany can't deport anyone. Currently there are 250,000 people living in Germany who have no right to be here.
The "nuclear disaster" that caused Germany to shriek in terror, wet its pants, shut down its world-class nuclear power plants, and destroy its economy...didn't harm a single Japanese person.
4/ The German media do a terrible job conveying the basic principles of economics and management to viewers and listeners, so most Germans who aren’t engineers or executives or factory workers or otherwise directly involved in producing goods don’t really understand where…
2/ This is the person who is responsible for shepherding Germany through the worst economic crisis it’s faced since the 1970s. And he’s crumbling visibly under the pressure.
How did this happen?
1/ Die
@Welt
has an interview with a co-author of the groundbreaking Dutch study on the net economic costs of immigration, which has sparked a huge controversy in the Netherlands. The top line finding is that immigration has cost
1/ Another story from Germany's broken, collapsing immigration and criminal-justice systems: Suleiman A. arrived with 700,000 other young males in 2015 with no background or security checks.
1/ 8000 SEXUAL ASSAULTS BY ASYLUM SEEKERS IN GERMANY SINCE 2015
Back in 2015, as a million young males from the most unstable and sexually repressed nations on earth streamed into Germany without any background checks, I predicted we might have a problem.
7/ Germany has much higher manufacturing costs than many other comparable countries, and the only way it can keep competitive is through a well-educated workforce, efficiency, high technology, and high quality.
Why didn't anyone warn Germany that its plans were unrealistic and reckless? Anyone except for thousands of engineers, economists, plant managers, contractors, and physicists, that is.
3/ If you ask the typical lefty voter, they have only the vaguest idea: Big companies and the rich people in modernist villas who always turn out to be the real killer on German crime shows.
5/ …Germany’s wealth comes from.
But no, the only reason Germany can afford all these dead-weight investments which don’t yield any returns (or only indirect, generalized, time-delayed returns) is because Germany makes things people want to buy.
German Federal Police and German Navy sail to location of pipeline blasts to investigate and...just sit there because the divers didn't have equipment to dive 70 meters. Who could've known it would be that deep?! A beautiful metaphor for current German leadership.
2/ Universities are free, which means the taxpayer pays for them, and lots of vocational training is also heavily subsidized.
Where does all the money to pay for this come from?
11/ When energy costs rise to *10* times or even *15* times those of competitive countries, and the markets become convinced this is a lasting situation, Germany becomes unsustainable. It becomes impossible to manufacture high value-added products for a profit within Germany.
3/ To understand, you must understand an important feature of Germany’s political system, which it shares with some (but not all) parliamentary democracies: Cabinet ministers are appointed to their posts *without regard* to whether they actually have any experience or…
1/ I've been asked several times now why Germans are so afraid of nuclear energy (although that mind-set is now changing at light speed). It's not much of an exaggeration to say this nice old lady played a key role:
6/ That's what brings the money in. Germany doesn't have many natural resources (at least, that it is willing to recover), so those don't bring in the cash. Germany's exports are the main, nearly the exclusive, source of its wealth.
4/ But we sensible folx all know that young males cause the most problems in society and that the societies these men come from are the most backward and violent societies on earth. Case in point: Afghanistan.
12/ They may be *designed* in Germany, but they won't be made there. It will just be too expensive, period. There’s no way to make the numbers work.
And this leads to long-term erosion of the tax base.
24/ But he seems pathetically lost in this crisis, because he has no grasp of the actual policy area – the economy – that he is now responsible for. He got a Ph.D. in literature and wrote kid’s books. What more can you expect from him?
27/ *This* is why the energy crisis poses a grave threat to Germany’s future as a prosperous country. There is still a way to avert it, but certainly not with the strategies currently favored by the administration. We’ll see whether the EU can pull a rabbit out of the hat.
8/ That's what generates enough value added to make it worthwhile to produce something in Germany, rather than in Hungary or China or the US or Russia, where all input costs are cheaper.
16/ Once Germany reaches the point where it has to subsidize energy and food to prevent social unrest – something it’s about to start doing right now – then money for non-essential things dries up.
10/ When energy costs are merely three times what they are in a competitive country such as the USA or Romania or China (depending on the product), German efficiency and technical quality and brand reputation can make up for that.
2/ If you point out this fact, you will be met with feel-good moralizing ("Asylum has no gender") or puerile strawmanning ("Oh, so you're going to exclude them just because they're males. Great. Now I understand who I'm dealing with.")
1/ All German mainstream parties have worked (with differing motives and techniques) since ca. 2000 to transform Germany into an energy-scarce society: Shut down nuclear, pre-emptively ban fracking, build in permanent dependence on energy imports...
15/ Half of the time you read about riots in places like Indonesia or Egypt, the cause is the government being forced to reduce subsidies on food and energy, often by a mandate from the IMF.
13/ Gradually the money dries up for things which aren't vital to the survival of the country. And what are those things vital to the survival of the country? Massive government subsidies *to make energy and food affordable to the average person*.
19/ …train ticket. Universities will gradually wither on the vine unless they introduce tuition fees, and even then, they’ll shut down entire degree programs which don’t channel graduates into well-paying jobs.
Goodbye humanities, it was nice knowing you.
17/ Those things include generous welfare, arts subsidies, free education, generous pensions, etc. There will be even more privatizations, and many arts institutions will simply go bankrupt.
14/ Their primary expertise is in giving speeches which put forward the party’s views on various issues. Most have never run a business, designed a product, healed a patient, repaired an electricity pylon, driven a bus, or done anything else practical.
🇩🇪🇸🇾Syrian population in Germany soars
2016: 60,000 Syrians in Germany
2023: 972,000 Syrians
🔺That's a 16x increase in 7 years.
🔺Over half receive citizen's welfare = 513,534 Syrians.
🔺Many of the rest receive housing, medical, etc. through the Asylum Seekers’ Benefits
14/ This is where much of the budget of many developing countries goes right now: to subsidies on diesel and wheat and rice which enable ordinary people to be able to pay their (artificially reduced) bills.
4/ …competence in the area they will run.
Here’s how it happens. There’s a federal election, and Party A gets 22% of the vote, Party B gets 19%, and Party C gets 7%.
23/ And then Germany will find itself in the trap many developing countries find themselves in: It will lack the productive industries needed to support the subsidies which it must continue paying to avoid social chaos.
1/ In case you're wondering why so many Germans are terrified of nuclear energy, it's because the German media and some politicians have consistently published misleading information on the technology, including gross exaggerations of the harm caused by Chernobyl and Fukushima.
20/ Sorry regional symphony orchestra, we can’t afford you anymore. Bye-bye small museum, you’re becoming an Aldi. And sorry 2nd-oldest church in Hepperhausen, there’s no money to maintain you anymore.
13/ These seats are given out as rewards for popularity and rhetorical gifts, not knowledge of the subject matter.
Most German politicians are career politicians: They’ve worked their way up through the party ranks, giving and receiving favors.
Back in 2015, when 1 million young males from the red countries entered Germany, ppl said "Not a problem -- they'll see how nice it is to live where women have equal rights & they'll change their values." These tweets and op-eds are still there, but somehow nobody mentions them.
26/ And that is very bad for a country’s psyche, since humans regret what they have lost much more bitterly than they regret losing a chance to get something they’ve never had. Deaths of despair will increase, as they did in Russia in the 1990s.
5/ Together, that adds up to 48% of the vote, which under Germany’s complex and bloated parliamentary allocation system, is enough to form a majority government. Barely.
18/ Train travel might become something reserved (even more) for the well-off, since (1) subsidies which keep the Deutsche Bahn (even remotely) affordable will disappear; and (2) the average German consumer will not have enough disposable income to pay for a *non-subsidized*…
25/ Which Germany won’t be able to do without plunging millions of people into genuine, real, not-enough-food-to-eat poverty.
Germany will survive, of course, but it will keep getting steadily poorer and poorer.
12/ The thing to remember is that they are almost never selected based on competence alone. If they happen to know something about advanced weapons systems, or hospital management, or forestry, that may put a tiny thumb on the scale. But usually not.
9/ Who can blame them, when there are masochistic countries like Germany willing to pay to clothe, house, and feed murderers like Suleiman until the end of their lives?
6/ After the election, the three parties – which may have very different ideologies – spend weeks or months hashing out a complex bargain called the “Coalition Agreement”.
3/ If you press the point, open-borders supporters will revert to further lines of defense, including "There's compulsory military service in country X" (so?) or "Young men are the only ones strong enough to make the journey".
27/ between large-scale illegal immigration of young males from the world's most violent and chaotic societies and double-digit increases in crime. Of course, nobody could have predicted that outcome. Unless they were...paying attention to reality.
21/ We can just barely afford the 1st-oldest church, which we have to keep up because it’s a tourist attraction, and we are desperate for every tourist dollar.
10/ The old Latin saying is "Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus" -- Let justice be done, though the world perish. The German version is "Let pettifogging regulations dreamed up by 'experts' a thousand miles away be rigorously enforced."
22/ So that is why Robert Habeck is Germany’s Vice-Chancellor and economy minister, despite the fact that he’s never run a company and seems unfamiliar with basic aspects of business management, such as the fact that businesses which are forced to stop selling products for…
11/ Or maybe they are married to, or close friends with, a party bigwig (never underestimate this). Or maybe they ran and lost in a hostile district several times, earning the reputation as a “team player” (also never underestimate this).
22/ And all those state-funded “streetworkers” and “night buses” providing basic assistance to the growing numbers of homeless? Sorry, you’ll have to find money elsewhere.
4/ 3. We would have seen unpixelated pictures of his face, as was the case for partygoers filmed chanting a politically-incorrect song earlier this year. Several were doxxed and fired.
I'll never forget the astonished faces in my German-language classes when teachers explained the German welfare system. One Pakistani guy said incredulously: "You mean the nation of Germany will actually give you free money for nothing, just so you can continue to exist?!"
Many newcomers’ understanding of first world state services/charity is akin to a dog’s understanding of an unattended plate of food on a table; it’s just there to be consumed, with no genuine comprehension as to why or even how it exists in the first place.
24/ It will go further and further into the red, and will need help from outside entities. And those entities will point out that the only way out of the red is to cut the broad subsidies for basic survival.
7/ In this agreement, they assign cabinet posts to the various parties: Party A gets to name the Chancellor, Party B gets the Vice-Chancellor, Party A gets commerce and defense, Party C gets environment and youth, Party B gets natural resources and education, etc.
10/ Well, maybe because they’re telegenic and seem convincing on Germany’s many different political talk shows. Or maybe they built up the party organization in some hostile backwater.
Over 200K people got German citizenship last year, the most from Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Romania, and Afghanistan. This is the highest number since the turn of the millennium, and it's *precisely the opposite* of what most Germans want. This is why people vote for the "far-right".
1/ Warren Buffett once said: "We get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That's the only reason to build them." If you look at the numbers, you quickly find that Europe's wind industry has been a zombie for decades, limping
1/ Believe it or not, asylum-seekers in Germany can *return to their home countries* for vacations, fly back to Germany, and continue pursuing their asylum claims. They use travel agencies who are willing to use a trick called "double-entry visas".
8/ Now comes the exciting part: Which specific people occupy these posts? This is also subject to haggling. If Party C nominates someone who’s said something controversial or been involved in a scandal, Parties A and B will object, and vice-versa.
20/ He or she won’t fire them, because that’s impossible. German civil-service posts are more secure than geological formations. But he or she might re-assign the existing helpmeets, and install his or her own.
17/ These people have names like “state secretary” and “parliamentary liaison officer” and “assistant for policy coordination”, etc. German journalists don’t understand what these titles mean and have no interest in the people who do these jobs, so Germans, in general, have no…
9/ But generally, the parties allow each other to nominate their preferred candidates.
And what the parties do is give the cabinet positions to people they consider deserving. Why are they deserving?
Living in Germany, I for one can't wait for the wave of denunciations of "irresponsible" neighbors for using too much energy. "The people on the 3rd floor of 24 Goethestraße are *watching television*. No, I won't give my name. [click]".
17/ Whenever you contemplate why more and more Germans are drawn to populist parties, it's helpful to keep in mind that this utterly broken system was designed over decades by every German mainstream party, and none of them has any coherent plan to fix it.
I have watched dozens of East German movies and TV shows, and never seen one as politicized as many recent American productions. And I mean that literally, no joke.
18/ …idea how important these functionaries are. But they are important.
If you’re thinking this is all very “Yes Minister”, you’re 100% right. But the thing to remember is that the UK has gotten a bit better at actually naming people with genuine expertise to Cabinet posts.
16/ The Afghan special forces soldiers constantly raped one another. There were cries of agony from their barracks just about every night. When the Americans tried to report the problem, they were told to simply accept it as an ingrained component of Afghan culture.
23/ …months on end and become unable pay their creditors must declare insolvency.
He’s handsome, smooth, articulate, and can score points effectively in political debates.
15/ They carve out a name for themselves in political debates on talk shows.
Now, this is not necessarily a recipe for disaster, for a simple reason: German cabinet ministers don’t actually run affairs in the post they were given.
6/ 6. There would already have been 78 news articles and opinion pieces with titles such as "Right-wing violence: A German Scourge" and "Have we Learned Nothing from History"?
7/ The verdict of the American officers was different. The officers first noted the staggering backwardness of Afghanistan. Fewer than 1% of Afghans had birth certificates, most didn't know how old they were.
5/ His clothes are still stained by the victims' blood. Issa al H. is a 26-year-old Syrian who arrived in 2022 and, like all Syrians, was granted immediate residency with no background check.
26/ As I've pointed out before, large spikes in crime rates in Germany in 2023 finally forced German officialdom, kicking and dragging and screaming, to reluctantly, hesitantly admit that there is, in fact, a close connection