To the surprise of absolutely nobody, because german politics do VERY much for people of the age 60 and above, but VERY little for people under the age 40.
this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2024
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This seems to be the issue across Europe, or at least in a great part of Europe. The huge break in fertility didn't happen in a vacuum. Articles keep saying it's porn or women's rights, but I'm pretty sure that's not it. Women can work and we all can crank and still have families.
It happened because governments stopped caring about the youth and lining their pockets and the old constituents' pockets, as they got used to the baby boom and thought they could take advantage of the youth forever. The entire social security system is predicated on leeching from the current youth rather than saving up for the future.
Being young in Europe sucks. I'm with the Germans on this. I feel so unsupported and paying for everyone, even if i could afford kids, i wouldn't have them anyway. A sharp break in fertility is the only form of protest that governments will listen to in order to stop ignoring, lying to or just outright taking from the youth. Not only that, even those poor sods that still have kids, for some reason, face an absolute disgrace of a childcare and school system. Underpaid teachers and a general lack of facilities makes you wonder where does the youth money go.
Immigration is all fine and dandy, but everyone knows Immigration will not fix the issues caused by neglecting the youth. The issue is systemic. Once immigrants are integrated, their kids will also not have kids. One way or the other, the system is coming down.
even if i could afford kids, i wouldn’t have them anyway.
This and also the fact that the world doesn't feel very "liveable" (is that even a real word?) anymore. Climate change, wars, social inequality. I wouldn't want to throw a kid of mine in such a meat grinder.
I don't think the situation is likely to be much different for adults, as German mainstream politics unfortunately hardly represents the interests of the population anymore, but increasingly only those of the economic elite.
CDU politician Friedrich Merz, the candidate for chancellor of the largest popular party and, unfortunately, presumably the next German chancellor, is just one example of many: The man was head of the supervisory board of Black Rock Germany until 2020 and has always been a keen business lobbyist throughout his whole career (source).
Both the top candidates and the minor functionaries of many other parties have similar "affiliations" that can hardly be described as anything else than open corruption. The fact that the press continuously uses the trivializing PR term lobbyism in this context should not fool anyone anymore.
However, as there are hardly any credible alternatives, people still have to vote for these established parties - or worse still: they vote for the opportunistic demagogues of the AfD, who pursue the same neoliberal economic policy but hide this fact behind xenophobic and of course absolutely fictitious bogus, just like the MAGA people in the USA.
So I guess it's not too surprising that many Germans have lost faith in politics - I'm pretty sure that this is true for most age groups.
Elections have devolved into a popularity contest about who gets to scam you for the next couple years.
Just from my personal experience, all of German politics is corrupt from bottom to top and back.
Municipal politics in my small rural community consists of a bunch of people performing the nifty magic trick of transforming a barren field they happen to own into lucrative building plots through the magic of zoning legislation. Some of them even openly admit to only running for council in order to do that.
The connections with businesses run so deep that some of the people running for office are the same business owners profiting from it. It's only nepotism if there is a middle man, I guess.
On topics that aren't profiting them personally, those people will resort to a level of petty bickering along party lines that would make Kindergarten age children sink into the ground in embarrassment. Any idealists who try actually serving the population rather than their own (or their party leadership's) self interest will be put in their place and/or or bullied out by the established (party) hierarchies.
New political groups pretty much only arise from bizarre, yet well funded NIMBY organisations, of course funded by local business owners to further their (business) interests.
Yes, the "Klüngel" has a very long tradition in Germany - from carnival clubs in Cologne and Düsseldorf, to beer tent friendships or fraternities in Munich and elsewhere, to the Rotary and Lions Clubs in pretty much every German city. But I still agree that things have gotten much worse in recent years.
It's a crying shame, especially as many voters either still let themselfs be fooled by the pretended bickering of the parties or can't do much on their own to actually change anything. They don't see, don't want to see or just watch helplessly as the majority of at least the top politicians pursue the same goals despite their apparent differences: Unscrupulous self-enrichment and favoritism at the expense of the citizens and even future generations.