1. Big long Focus article yesterday....5,000 small German shops are on the verge of giving up...commerce is crap.
Part of this blame? Inner-city shopping since Covid has drifted down.
I would readily agree on Wiesbaden being this way....seems like less people in the shopping district.
2. Focus piece: 49-percent of Germans have marginal to zero 'trust' in daily newspapers in Germany now.
If you asked me....simply a trend (same in the US), and people are more skeptical today than 30 years ago.
3. New BSW Party (Wagenknecht leading them)....says that they are willing to talk to the CDU Party (right-of-center) in forming state governments after the fall elections (3 of them, all in the eastern part of Germany).
If you read the platform....about 75-percent of what they promise is left-of-center stuff, with a couple of centralist positions. How the CDU could reach some agreement and sell it to the voters? Unknown.
4. Piece written for WELT yesterday by Ibrahim Naber....saying that if Ukraine collapses....there would be a massive exodus (into the millions) out of Ukraine, and into Germany. His selling point in the article? Lack of US funds....makes this scenario now possible, and scaring the crap out of German politicians.
Population as of the summer of 2023? Placed at 36.7-million (I consider the source....the UN....to be moderately accurate.
Decent scenario? Part of me would assume that half of the Ukrainian population would be in serious fear, and leave....with half of them bound for Germany. So the real question....if you take this scenario serious....could Germany absorb 9-million more folks?
I give the Germans mostly positive grades for handling around 250,000 to 300,000 migrants a year. If you pressed the right buttons and put the German military reserve in charge of the chaos....yeah, they could probably handle 1-to-1.5 million with some effort. Beyond that? Nearly impossible.
So.....is this all a reasonable scenario to consider? Unknown.
I do think over the remaining months of 2024....this topic will come up a good bit.
But this one odd aspect stands out.....lets say that the 9-million come, with the nearly 1-million already here (mostly kids and women). Lets say they went immediately into integration mode, and with the present rules for citizenship....within 3 years...were German voters (figure 7-million of age). As a voting block, they could drill down and control 10-to-12 percent of German politics.
How does this dynamic work?
5. Germany is one of the lowest home-ownership countries in the EU....with only 46.7-percent (2022 numbers).
The only country with a worse record? Switzerland.
Spain at the top with over three-quarters of society owning their home/condo? Yes.
Chief reasons (at least what Germans themselves say)? Well.....banks want a real down-payment (minimum of 25-percent usually). On your taxes, they don't deduct the mortgage payments, as you might expect in the US.
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