They stood clearly and simply for good moral judgment, fair systems and looked at the bigger picture to carry most people forward. They also based all their decision in facts, truth and science. They learn't their trades (economics & politics) over time and weren't afraid to adapt as times changed.
Their slow and steady presence did more for equality and fairness than many others. We will need to find these values again after the current times have played out.
Feh, Merkel created conditions for the rise of right wing fascism... IMO.
She and her finance minister championed austerity uber alles, squeezing the middle and lower class across the EU, and then she said refugees were welcome. I agree with the idea of helping people fleeing bombs and bullets, but after decades of saying there's money, we need to watch our budgets, suddenly there's money? Nooo fucking wonder the populist right managed to grasp on to the disillusionment of the lower/middle class.
Apparently mistaken faith in austerity and the invisible hand of the market is comparable to the color of one's skin. One is born with it and can't change it...
I cannot believe that there are people praising Merkel with a straight face. She is literally a laughing stock in Europe, I put her as the poster boy for immigration crisis together with the energy crisis. The only thing she did was shove problems further in the future not caring about the consequences.
I think you have a strange definition of "laughingstock". Germany went from an economic powerhouse of Europe to factory shutdowns and a bunch of bumbling sniveling elites who are afraid of the people they are leading and want to ban them from having a say.
Buffet was "carrying most people forward" how exactly? Squeezing companies he had shares in to be as efficient as possible, leading to poorer quality and outright dangerous working conditions isn't bettering anyone other than shareholders, which aren't most people.
> They stood clearly and simply for good moral judgment
Merkel has severely underestimated Putin. She played a role in the continuous betting on Russian oil. Merkel has called the internet “neuland” and wasn’t her government also the one starting with hydrogen subsidies. I donno about you but to this day I only hear lots of talk about hydrogen but near zero results. So all the wrong bets.
Also I don’t know whether you noticed but Germany is expected to be in a recession for three years in a row now.
About equity and fairness okay I guess you are right. Everybody in Germany will be poor if things continue like this.
She shut down nuclear power because of extreme pressure from the population. Tens of thousands protested around her office. Nuclear is complicated (and mostly fear driven) in Germany. Oddly enough the first exit was done under Schröder who is a russian asset. Makes you think.
Germany has a population of 84 million people. 10,000 should not be able to dictate a policy decision of this magnitude, regardless of how loud they are.
> Nuclear is complicated (and mostly fear driven)
The politics of nuclear are complicated, the science (more engineering) of nuclear are complicated, the imperative is clear and simple. You are correct that it's mostly fear driven, but stoked by "green" advocacy organizations and/or manipulated by people with a stake in the continued use of fossil fuels (and largely the latter funding the former).
True leadership would stand up to both of these pressures, making people understand that the voice of 10,000 (or even 100,000) people can not dictate policy alone and educating people on the reality of nuclear power, while also fixing some of the real issues with nuclear power (an aging power plant fleet and an inability economically build better replacements).
The protestors were not a very vocal minority, but representative of the majority opinion. At the time well over 80% of Germans wanted an end to nuclear power. (Although now following the Ukraine invasion and rising energy costs the opposition has significantly softened.)
In a democratic system it is simply difficult to maintain such extremely unpopular positions. Governments which do so don't last long. Merkel flip-flopped and maintained her Chancellorship.
Sure, NRX and NRU were research rigs running experiments far outside normal reactor envelopes. And I think it's amusing that it's considered INES-5 when very little actually happened and there was...no..wider...events... literally. If the worst we can cite is a 70 year old research accident that killed no one and ultimately produced design fixes we still use, you have a the strong case for nuclear safety...Anyway: The Walrus needs to find some new civic interest story around Barrie to write about or something, it's an awful rag. We could decarbonize our grid completely with 15 new reactors, if I was PM we'd be popping them up like it was CANDU Christmas.
She finally agreed to shut down nuclear because Fukushima happened just a few days before the state elections of Baden-Württemberg. She was afraid of a rout so she agreed to do the above, and her party lost to the Greens anyway.
Measured governance. I feel the same, although I'm sure the Europeans and Germans not at all, but they also talked Angela out of nuclear, so one might argue the Germans are a bit too measured compared to their Chancellor.
Don't forget the climate-change-decision-accelerating decision to mothball all their nuclear reactors. This was a monumentally poor strategic decision from multiple angles.
"The current times" are a direct result of decisions like that of Merkel to throw open the borders of Germany to a million unchecked foreign men. If there's one reason that the AfD is the largest party in Germany today, it's because of that decision Merkel made a whole decade ago. How was that "based in facts, truth and science", or "slow and steady"?
The million unchecked foreign men (and women) are presumably propping up the German economy as we speak.
There will always be people that dislike change, but it may ultimately be better to start integrating them earlier rather than later. If you make it through the bad times (e.g. now), at the other end is the outcome you desire.
> The million unchecked foreign men (and women) are presumably propping up the German economy as we speak.
The refugee crisis didn't appear to have a significant impact (positive or negative) on the labor market based on a recent study by the IZA and ZEW [0] - "Our estimates suggest that those migrants have not displaced native workers but have themselves struggled to find gainful employment. We find moderate increases in crime, and our analysis further indicates that while at the macro level increased migration was accompanied by increased support for anti-immigrant parties, exposure to asylum seekers at the micro level had a small negative effect." [0]
There are systemic issues with the German economy that aren't related to immigration. A lot of the current malaise can be attributed to the economic slowdowns in Russia (with the Russian Invasion of Ukraine) [1] and China (due to Zero COVID and the subsequent indigenization) [2], due to how tied German industry was with both markets [3].
>The million unchecked foreign men (and women) are presumably propping up the German economy as we speak.
How many of those unchecked are women? What's the point of having borders then? Or law enforcement putting criminals in jails, when they could be out there propping up the economy. As long as your illegal activities are putting money into the state coffers, you should be allowed to continue unchecked, screw the laws.
Yeah sure, they might cause some trouble for the lower and middle class living amongst them, but think of the economic gains for the top 1%! Their real estate and stock portfolios have never looked so good. And if people vocally disagree with this you call them fascist and put them in jail for threatening your "democracy".
How does Poland's economy manage to grow faster than Germany's without illegal immigration? Maybe they can send some researchers there to find out.
They stood clearly and simply for good moral judgment, fair systems and looked at the bigger picture to carry most people forward. They also based all their decision in facts, truth and science. They learn't their trades (economics & politics) over time and weren't afraid to adapt as times changed.
Their slow and steady presence did more for equality and fairness than many others. We will need to find these values again after the current times have played out.