By Olivia Murray
Is it just me, or do “Germany” and “socialism” not belong in the same sentence? Frankly, socialism doesn’t belong anywhere except an encyclopedia, to serve as an example of an “idiot plot” (along with communism).
Yet, it seems like if history were any consideration, Germany would make a concerted effort to distance itself from the political ideology—but alas, too many in this “information age” don’t really know much about anything. (In George Santayana’s purported words, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”)
Here’s the story, from John Cody at Remix News yesterday:
New data revealing that barely any Ukrainian refugees are actually working in Germany has the left-liberal government struggling to explain the failure, despite promises from the government that this refugee group would help fill in for the country’s declining labor pool.
For context, that number is “fewer than two out of ten” or less than one-in-five; considering the figures, Cody puts that number into the “hundreds of thousands.”
But why? Also, from Cody:
Germany’s generous social benefits [emphasis added] for the unemployed continue to discourage a range of groups from entering the workforce, as it is often more profitable to remain unemployed. Some of these groups also collect unemployment money and work on the black market, which allows them to exploit the German taxpayer while earning additional disposable income.
“Social benefits”? More descriptively, Cody means welfare, and other taxpayer-funded handouts from the government.
And, these Ukrainians have no intention of returning home—I mean, being drafted into the Russian meat grinder so Zelensky and his corrupt comrades in the U.S. can use the cover of war to launder billions of American dollars back into their own pockets is a bad deal, so I don’t blame them, but it doesn’t bode well for the German citizens footing their bills. Yet, the Germans did, against all that is decent and true, vote in the socialism consuming their nation, so I’m not exactly too grieved to see them suffer the consequences of their silly political ideas. It’s a bit of schadenfreude for me.
Weird, socialism doesn’t work. Or, maybe if you think like me, you see it working exactly as it’s designed to, transferring wealth from earners to non-earners, and delegating new political power to the state and its agents that it/they previously lacked—but nonetheless, socialist policies don’t ever play out how the powers that be routinely promise us they’re going to play out, and once again, socialism proves itself to be a failure of an economic approach.