Yes, it is a total failure of policy over several decades that has finally been exposed. Hence why politicians are so keen to assign the blame on "the war".

Not arguing against the political failures, but mind that the impressions of "several family members" do not yield figures reliable for any conclusions.

I hear you, but the deliberate and ideology driven manipulation of macro-economic figures and the lack of access to such data calls for the “no bullshit street perception datapoints” at times. E.g., the ECB claiming 2% inflation for decades conveniently leaving real-estate out of their basket etc. I provided the datapoints showing a 10% decline in industry production - adding that there are a couple of considerations that could change the numbers a lot and we don’t have a hell lot of transparency about. Hence backing it up with anecdotes.

As an example: if (!!) the 10% decline was adjusted by the official inflation, would you believe that it was 2% from 2015-2020 or would you rather go for 5% that reflect also real-estate and other commodities relevant for industry (e.g., if steel increased 50%, so might industry output simply because of price changes). So, the “official figures” could be vastly inflated and the situation could be a lot worse even.

I'm in Germany and can absolutely confirm these impressions. Factories are closing and moving abroad. The misguided policies are forcing them to. Publicly traded multinational companies that are beholden to their shareholders cannot stay here, even if the management would like to.

>The past 17+ years of political failure did the German working class a real solid. When the head of a state advises people to “use a sponge and not shower so often to preserve hot water” it’s almost surreal that a government charging 45+% of tax of a countries GDP is unable to ensure people have hot water, heating or keep up the electrical supply for industry.

It is only common sense. Is it surreal that central planning does not work? We know that for a long time.

I am engineer, I was born in Spain. I have a company in Europe. For me it was completely nuts what the german Government did with the money, I worked on those projects because it was were the money was. Spending fortunes on solar panels(manufactured from coal in China) where there is no sun?

I was in favor of putting gas pipelines with Russia, but it was really nonsense not creating alternatives instead of a single provider. Letting a single bomb destroy your entire economy?

High taxes does not protect you against stupidity, on the contrary.

Germans are awakening to reality, and that is a great thing. It will take some time and pain though. But seems people only learn this way.

It is not as bad as in Ukraine. I was in Kiev one week before invasion, everybody was like: "Ohh, Russians will not attack, they never do". Those guys later had to improvise Molotov cocktails against tanks because they were ill prepared, never fired a gun.

You pay a high price for stupidity.

> It is not as bad as in Ukraine. I was in Kiev one week before invasion, everybody was like: "Ohh, Russians will not attack, they never do". Those guys later had to improvise Molotov cocktails against tanks because they were ill prepared, never fired a gun.

To be fair though the government of Ukraine had been preparing since the mini invasions of 2014. Probably a situation where you can never prepare enough.