>The scary thing is: worker's rights in Europe, notably including Germany, have been crushed in the last two to three decades.
Schröder's infamous Agenda 2010[1] that sought to crush unions power, workers rights and welfare programs, in order to force more Germans off welfare and taking poverty wages to pump up the economy. It pumped up the economy indeed but it didn't have the promised effect of increasing wages of living standards, quite the opposite, the rich got richer and the poor were poorer.
When they ran out of poor Germans to exploit, they turned to Eastern EU workers form Poland and Romania. As those markets are drying up of cheap exploitable labor as well, they invited workers from Africa and the Middle east to make dangerous journeys to come to Germany, hence Merkel's Germany's famous open borders "Willkommenskultur", despite backlash from other Schengen and EU members who's borders and asylum centers got overwhelmed.
The unpopular opinion that nobody is allowed to discuss is the country is unsustainably addicted to cheap immigrant labor for its exports to be competitive and to prop its over-inflated housing market. It's burning the economic candle at both ends to pump up the GDP.
> it didn't have the promised effect of increasing wages of living standards... they ran out of poor Germans
So which one is it? According to you Agenda 2010 helped Germany to run out of poor Germans. And you are right -- from the introduction of Hartz IV, German unemployment permanently fell by over 6% -- despite the mass immigration that you are complaining about.
The rich getting richer in the zero-interest-rate decade is a global phenomenon - unemployment declining by these truly immense amounts very much isn't.
I'm not assuming the victim stance, but every time this is brought up it is always actively ignored and scoffed off as nonsense. There's a lot of arrogance in German politics pushing everyone to bury their head in the sand and tell themselves everything is fine, nothing can possibly go wrong, we're the best at everything, right before the country is caught with their pants down, unprepared for the obvious issues brewing under their noses.
Remember the Wickard scandal when the Financial Times uncovered their dirt and instead of the authorities looking at Wirecard they turned at the Financial Times as if they were trying to Financially destabilize Wirecard?
The same thing repeats itself on every issue in Germany, like this topic. Just look at the top comment: "Something negative about Germany in the WSJ? It can't be true, it must be WSJ trying to destabilize Germany". Everyone keeps doubting that Germany is ever doing something wrong and assumes by default that all negative news must be incorect or have an agenda.
Schröder's infamous Agenda 2010[1] that sought to crush unions power, workers rights and welfare programs, in order to force more Germans off welfare and taking poverty wages to pump up the economy. It pumped up the economy indeed but it didn't have the promised effect of increasing wages of living standards, quite the opposite, the rich got richer and the poor were poorer.
When they ran out of poor Germans to exploit, they turned to Eastern EU workers form Poland and Romania. As those markets are drying up of cheap exploitable labor as well, they invited workers from Africa and the Middle east to make dangerous journeys to come to Germany, hence Merkel's Germany's famous open borders "Willkommenskultur", despite backlash from other Schengen and EU members who's borders and asylum centers got overwhelmed.
The unpopular opinion that nobody is allowed to discuss is the country is unsustainably addicted to cheap immigrant labor for its exports to be competitive and to prop its over-inflated housing market. It's burning the economic candle at both ends to pump up the GDP.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_2010