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Paul Johnson on Germany's Dismal Future

An object lesson for us all is the present deplorable state of Germany. It shows what happens when a society is encouraged by its leaders to turn its back on freedom and opt for security at any price.

A generation ago Germany, thanks to its great postwar leaders Konrad Adenauer and Ludwig Erhard, had an exemplary economy--one of the world's best in quality and performance.
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Today the German economy is a model--especially for the rapidly expanding nations of the Third World, such as China and India--for what not to do. Stagnant production, static or falling productivity and appalling levels of unemployment are the salient factors. Unemployment figures have recently been revised upward to 4.5 million but could be as high as 6 million when the "hidden unemployed" are taken into account. These figures are close to those of 1932, at the depths of the Great Depression and just before Hitler came to power. So many being unemployed was one reason Hitler's bid for power was successful.
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The Germans agree they're in a mess, and many see the obvious way out. The country needs to make the kinds of structural changes in its economy that Prime Minister Thatcher carried out in Britian 20 years ago, changes that have completely transformed the performance and expectations of the British people. But though most Germans know this, they lack the will--and, of course, the leadership--to carry it out. They stay inert, supine, transfixed by fear and angst, paralyzed by the thought of painful adjustments in their safety-first society--and thus coast toward a disaster comparable to Hitlerism.

Germany's demographic structure reinforces all the weaknesses of its stagnant society and economy. It has one of the world's lowest birthrates, a rapidly aging population and a calamitously expensive social security system, all of which combine to project a dark and dangerous future. Germany faces not merely a net decline in population--from 80 million to 60 million--by midcentury, but a lowering of living standards and the unrest that will surely follow.

More by following the link including the way they are being jerked around by the Frenchies and the EU.