Man i occupy macroeconomy 30 years, you wrote so much Text, when where enough just few: i was wrong...The difference is the production quality. Keep in mind that our minimal wage (at 8.50 E one of the lowest in the EU) is a relativly new thing (and also just a tool to cut social spendings instead of actual providing more money). For years Germany was producing high quality products for lower wage costs then the UK, France, Italy &c. Now think about where the majority of our product is exported to - the EU market. This resulted in french, UK, italian, spanish manufactorers not being able to compete with our prices and finally - for example - France taking over that dreaded austerity politic from us (when for decades they went for higher wages, eralier pension entry &c). At least the french citizens stand up and fight.
Poverty is a realtive term, meaning i can't compare someone living in for example Rumania with someone living in Germany. But just one fact: Even if u take the lowest assumption, every 5th homeless person in the EU is a German.
We have the second highest tax-rate in the Eu, our economy is booming, but our comunal areas have a debt of over 140 Trillion Euros (meaning that the tax money is not getting to the places where state and citizen actually meet). Our infrastructure is crumbeling, our railway-system lies in shards, our schoolsystem becomes a tool for creating unequality, our healthcare-system starts to fall apart and while we created 3 million new jobs last year most of them were tiome-limited, low wage contracts while we lost over 1 million unlimited, high wage contracts in the same time.
wanna talk about connectivity? the average wireeless broadband accessability is under the OECD average and for example behind Moldavia.
Trust me when i say: This country is on its way down the drain.
And all our media and politicians can come up with is scare tactics and creating scapegoats: Blame the refugees and muslims. We live in an idiocrazy.