For anyone having a hard time imagining this...I live in Germany and will give it a fair portrayal.
Germans dislike changing jobs. Germans have gotten into the habit of not asking for pay-raises. Germans readily accept fifty-percent or more of their salary going toward social security, healthcare, taxation, etc. Germans accept taxation on just about everything as the price to pay for the infrastructure around them. Germans don’t ask questions when 250 million is spent on a regional airport (Kassel) that will never have any regular air traffic or potential for revenue.
German companies can’t really compete against other countries except when you have some new technology developed which they hold the initial advantage over. German banks are saddled with lots of debt. Germans whine and complain about a lack of affordable housing in major urban areas, but politicians can’t entice real estate people to build housing which pays minimum profits. German EPA-related rules are such that lots of production is now done in Eastern Europe.
Germans would like to fire various political parties but accept the fact that things will change once the established thugs are fired. Germans complain about heathcare options and cost, but there is no plan B or way to fix this except to lessen the number of hospitals in existence (which what they are now doing). German doctors whine about their pay scale....enough that they occasionally pack up and leave the country...thus forcing hospitals to recruit in third-world countries and bring their doctors into Germany.
The whole gimmick that makes the immigration episode acceptable? You get a bunch of new people in....who will accept lower pay than the typical average German.
They’ve really had the socialistic concepts pounded into them for a long time, haven’t they, even since Bismarck’s time. They can’t conceive of private enterprise building infrastructure anymore.
A few years ago I was in southern Germany. At a meeting I struck up a conversation with a woman who was a manager at a manufacturing company. She told me that she could never work in the US because in Germany she was given “free health care and three weeks of vacation”. I said, “do you realize that each week of your free vacation costs you about 2% of your pay?” She said, “no it doesn’t” I said, “yes, it does” and then thought that I had better quit before I was any farther behind in the being-pleasant department.
Sounds very familiar. Stagnant wages for lower income earners and lots of immigrants. Couldn't possibly be related.
Lived there a long time. First time I took my pregnant wife to the doctor, I went down the hall to the toilet while waiting in a common area and saw a room full of people. The receptionist kept telling me to sit in different places for some reason. I asked the wife wtf? afterward and she told me they didn’t want the people waiting there for hours for “free” healthcare see us come in and go out before the others. Take a guess...we paid cash! No commie kommisar will ever change that fact!