This process is already underway. The crux of the question, is what will happen to the whole very significant part of the Germany economy that is currently employed in service to local manufacturing? They will all need new jobs…

If only it was just the public sector. I do agree with you, but the problem is cultural. It’s not just the government. None of the big or smaller corporations or companies are investing either.

IMHO, it missed the boat on everything to do with tech, and tech is basically 21st century capitalism. The only tech in Europe are secondary services like booking.com that ultimately depend on primary services (Google Search, Youtube, Facebook Platform, Twitter, …etc). I agree in large part with Varoufakis. Although he is “on the left” he has better investment sense than all the suits who control European capital.

Two factors that are seldom mentioned:

1. Modern people make worse parents in many respects. They might be more caring, when they actually have children, but they have less time for children, and are more distracted by other aspects of life. And overall, the general perception is that their commitment to family is much looser than in times past.

2. Standards are simply much higher than they used to be. People don’t want to have children with whomever, and they want their children to be successful compared to their peers and that’s not easy to achieve and failing that, they’d rather not have any at all.

Not planning to. I asked to try to gauge whether this was widespread behaviour.

MAGA is the party of the “just be normal”, so to them it is especially insulting to be called weird.