[0x000xca0xfe]

     I don't know if it's sheer stubbornness or they're just wired differently.

As a German I believe it's more about demographics nowadays. The country and all large companies are run by older people who only saw rising prosperity their entire life. They all have settled in a comfortable place and do not seriously care about the future anymore. They just want to keep the system running until retirement.

There is no long-term strategic thinking anymore, only feel-good policies and short-term cash burning for their respective clientele.

As a young person it infuriates me but there is nothing we can do.

[collingreen]

> there is nothing we can do

The is always something you can do. Sometimes it's hard or uncomfortable but you can still have an impact on the things you care about if you're willing to do enough.

[cucumber3732842]

>As a German I believe it's more about demographics nowadays. The country and all large companies are run by older people who only saw rising prosperity their entire life. They all have settled in a comfortable place and do not seriously care about the future anymore

However bad Germany is in this regard, I suspect the US is far worse. There is no cohort in the US who remembers living in "East US" to temper the excesses of the people who've only known ease and comfort (though of course those people will tell you they worked hard to <insert career/prosperity path that no longer exists).

[dogemaster2025]

Certain liberal cities are the “East US.”

[realo]

Do you mean places like Kansas? Very clearly becoming "East US" : https://www.npr.org/2026/02/28/nx-s1-5728969/kansas-revokes-...

[dogemaster2025]

Actually Kansas is doing the opposite of East Germany.

East Germany introduced the Transsexuellengesetz in 1980, which allowed people to change their first name or gender, as long as they provided, among other things, two psychiatric evaluations to ensure the condition was permanent, and not some decision driven by some temporary influence or fashion, but a full diagnosis of transsexualismus.

[Throaway1985123]

True, Minneapolis had the USA Stasi deployed there!

[collingreen]

Which certain ones and in which way are they like the east Germany mentioned?

Or is this just lazy bigotslop?

[dogemaster2025]

The socialist ones, which were like east Germany because they are socialist.

[wholinator2]

What do you mean?

[OKRainbowKid]

That's my impression as well. The future is being sold for the present.

[joe_mamba]

>The future is being sold for the present.

That's where the famous high European pensions come from. In France now the average pension is higher than the average salary.

[Bombthecat]

Yeah, I would call it: managing the crash.

They try to hold on to everything until retirement and don't care about anything else. In ten years Germany is like, what? 60 percent over 60?

Everyone knows it won't work, but try to hold on to it as long as possible.

[shafyy]

You are right about the issue, but wrong about the action. There are things you can do. Vote for candidates and parties that genuinely want a different future. Become politically active yourself. Run for office. Work with your local community. Every bit of action helps.

[ivan_gammel]

There is no party in German political landscape interested, capable of solving or even understanding the problems that needed to be solved. We have lost political center to groups of special interests and medieval guides. The state sponsored tool for informing about political programs (Wahl-O-Mat) is biased towards political issues of the mainstream. E.g. nobody is talking about the suffocating monopoly of notaries or increasing the property ownership by any significant margin. Running for office is an interesting idea, but in party-dominated politics to achieve anything is a decades-long adventure.

[kuerbel]

The wahl-o-mat is not biased, it's based on the respective election programs. If one party decides to put something "about the suffocating monopoly of notaries" in it, it's not enough to be mentioned. There have to be some parties at least to make it comparable.

Also feel free to peruse election programs yourself. Most parties put out short versions.

You also don't need to run for office to have an effect on party lines. I'm a member of a party. There are congresses on a regional (Bundesland) and national level. In my party the process is voting for proposals before the national congress due to the huge amount of proposals, but usually every proposal on regional level is discussed and voted on. It does not take much time to prepare a proposal, but it shapes the discourse.

[ivan_gammel]

> The wahl-o-mat is not biased, it's based on the respective election programs.

That’s exactly my point. If a problem exists or a solution to a problem is possible about which no party is willing to talk about, it will not show it. The choice of topics is based on party opinions, not on voter surveys. This is called bias.

> Also feel free to peruse election programs yourself.

I read the full programs. This is the main reason why I think German political system is in the state of crisis.

> I'm a member of a party.

You surely know some examples when a party member shaped the discourse and set the course of institutional reforms. How long did it take for that person to achieve such results?

[Bewelge]

> That’s exactly my point. If a problem exists or a solution to a problem is possible about which no party is willing to talk about, it will not show it. The choice of topics is based on party opinions, not on voter surveys. This is called bias.

It's not a bias. I think you're misunderstanding the meaning of the word. We vote for parties and the wahl-o-mat compares the opinion of these parties. It would be biased if it would give an unfair advantage or disadvantage to one or some parties. The parties' opinions not being a good representation of the important challenges we face is not a bias of the wahl-o-mat. You can question its usefulness but calling it biased is calling it dishonest.

And honestly? That sucks. You can question its usefulness but please don't call an initiative that aims to give the populace a better political overview biased for no reason. You're not helping shape political discourse for the better here. I just checked: There weren't any no google results for "wahl-o-mat bias" yet. Now there are.

[ivan_gammel]

It gives unfair advantage to incumbent parties by shaping the political agenda and manipulating public opinion. When you look at the housing crisis in big cities and what Wahl-O-Mat displays as the options on the table based on political programs, it is very easy to think that the selection of options is exhaustive. Public is effectively pushed into discussing only those options, none of which is a good solution. Yet solutions exist, the only problem: political center is dead and they do not fit into populist right or populist green/left platforms. At least half of the items on Wahl-O-Mat is feel-good populism scoring points for one or another party, not least because scoring points, not real change is for most of them the primary objective. And the tool simply reflects that, because German political system is designed to stabilize status quo, not to challenge it.

Edit: the word „Bias“ may not exist in Google search, but this topic is certainly discussed in German language space and it is easy to find:

https://www.zeit.de/kultur/2025-02/peter-mueller-bundesverfa...

[shafyy]

For me personally, Die Linke is hitting many spots. Of course, nobody will ever be 100% aligned with a political party's program, but that's ok.

[markbravo0312]

It seems to even get the compass needle pointing in the right direction would require immense personal sacrifice. This brings to mind a line I heard recently: “I burn my life to make a sunrise I will never see.”

[throwway120385]

Or a lot of smaller sacrifices by a large group of people.

[joe_mamba]

>who only saw rising prosperity their entire life.

Their prosperity has been artificially inflated and not earned for the last years, as the government adjusted their pensions according to inflation, not according to actual economic growth/fall of the nation. It's a cheat code that shouldn't be used if you wish for economic reality but it's used to buy votes.

>They just want to keep the system running until retirement.

To be fair, this is a similar issue with Boomers versus Gen-X in the US and most of the west.

[petre]

> As a young person it infuriates me but there is nothing we can do.

Spend your money elsewhere, perhaps?