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Is Germany once again the sick man of Europe?

economist.com

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Re: Is Germany once again the sick man of Europe?

#21

Post by eastbound »

wageslave99 wrote: post #9
the_common_man wrote: post #6

> Germany has liberalised its immigration rules, but the visa process is still glacial and the system favours refugees over professionals who might want to settle in the country. A big issue for professionals to move is they have to learn German.

I've always thought about having simple dialects of languages: limited vocabulary, only three tenses, no declinations (in the languages they have, i.e. German) and only regular verbs (in the languages they have, i.e. Spanish). Would it be possible?

Isn’t English this language? The past exists but the future barely doesn’t, there are no declinations, every noun can also be a verb. However, you have to learn every combination of “t”, “ght”, “i”, “ou” mixed up together.

Re: Is Germany once again the sick man of Europe?

#22

Post by 2-718-281-828 »

the_common_man wrote: post #6

> Germany has liberalised its immigration rules, but the visa process is still glacial and the system favours refugees over professionals who might want to settle in the country. A big issue for professionals to move is they have to learn German.

not true. i know lots of people who came here to work and none of them speaks german beyond mere basics if at all. as a matter of fact all of them explain that this is because you get by well on english.

Re: Is Germany once again the sick man of Europe?

#24

Post by n_ary »

orwin wrote: post #12
the_common_man wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The public services and service industry is particularly brutal to non German speakers. The unfriendliness is astounding if you don't speak german

Not my experience in Munich, but French are quite 'rude' too compared to southern Europeans and Anglos, so I would understand why people would think so.

Using Munich, a city entirely non-representative of the rest of the country is a bad idea. Munich in my experience feels like a modern post—current Germany entirely.

Re: Is Germany once again the sick man of Europe?

#26

Post by bgdam »

As an immigrant (and a very well paid one paying obnoxiously high taxes), I've recommended every single person asking if they should move from India to Germany to not to. The only upgrade is in cleaner air to breathe and safety from crime. If you're in the higher earning bracket in India, then you get these there itself. So then moving to Germany from India is like stepping back into 1996.

Every single thing is so obsolete. Nothing is digitized. Everything requires a giant stack of actual paperwork to be taken to an office where the whims of the clerk dictate everything. A million rules exist in the hopes that they cover all possible scenarios, but inevitable they don't and if you happen to have a scenario which is not covered, you're shit out of luck because the clerk is sure as shit not going to put their ass on the line and make a decision not explicitly present in the rule book.

You pay through the nose for health insurance, but when you need to find a doctor, none can take you because their quota of public insurance patients is done for the quarter. If I paid the same amount in insurance in India, I'd have a helicopter flown out every time I stubbed my toe.

And then there's the wait time for everything. Appointment for visa extension: 8 months. Driving license conversion: 1 year. German exam: 5 months. What, you want the results for your exam also? Better wait another year then. Honestly Germany is a shit show, and if I hadn't already invested so much time, money and energy into this god forsaken country, I'd be out of here in a heartbeat.

But the worst part of all this is - the vast majority of Germans think this is all acceptable and okay. If you go to the /r/germany or /r/de subreddits, any thread with genuine complaints will be drowned in responses from native Germans who naively believe that Germany is a great country to live in because they either don't have these problems, or they know how to work the system and get their results. So there is no voting pressure to get things to change. So long as the omas and opas get their pension, Germany will stay as it is for ever - there is no need to change in their view.

Re: Is Germany once again the sick man of Europe?

#27

Post by lynx23 »

hliyan wrote: post #11

The anecdotal evidence the author supplies: economic growth is slow, trains are late, IT investment as a % of GDP is half that of US and France, business license takes 120 days to acquire. Nowhere does it seem to talk about living standards of the population. As if the economy is its own end and the population is just an epiphenomenon.

What seems to have been missed is that almost all large projects germany tried to push through in the past 10 years or so have turned out to be a massive fuckup. Digital drivers licence, stuttgart21, the list goes on.

Re: Is Germany once again the sick man of Europe?

#28

Post by Dalewyn »

wageslave99 wrote: post #9
the_common_man wrote: post #6

> Germany has liberalised its immigration rules, but the visa process is still glacial and the system favours refugees over professionals who might want to settle in the country. A big issue for professionals to move is they have to learn German.

I've always thought about having simple dialects of languages: limited vocabulary, only three tenses, no declinations (in the languages they have, i.e. German) and only regular verbs (in the languages they have, i.e. Spanish). Would it be possible?

You've more or less described how and why English became the lingua franca of the modern era. English can be used for basic communication satisfactorily with only a passing understanding of the language.

Re: Is Germany once again the sick man of Europe?

#29

Post by nicbou »

the_common_man wrote: post #7
gsky wrote: post #4

How many outside professionals know German language. No wonder many won't prefer Germany.

The public services and service industry is particularly brutal to non German speakers. The unfriendliness is astounding if you don't speak german

Even if you do speak German, it's horrendously slow. You can't sit idle for months because this or that office has no appointments to do this or that thing.

Things that can be done online elsewhere must be done in person, by appointment. The appointments are hard to get, come weeks later, and only trigger a 2-8 week wait.

Language is just icing on the cake.

Re: Is Germany once again the sick man of Europe?

#30

Post by the-dude »

neovialogistics wrote: post #18

We should be thankful that Betteridge's law of headlines applies here because Germans have a historical trend of coming up with internationally unpopular policies when they feel like they're in an economic downturn.

Are you summoning Godwin here?
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