Boiling away...

Mike Plaiss sent a link to this article, about emigration from Germany...

..."People say things aren't getting better in Germany, and nothing's going to change any time soon,'' said historian Simone Eick, director of the German Emigration Center in the northern port city of Bremerhaven. Indeed, "some indicators suggest that this may be the start of mass emigration.''

That's reflected by the 630 postings recorded since Aug. 10 on an Internet forum on emigration hosted by Germany's Spiegel magazine. Germany doesn't have much of a future, a 40 year-old German teacher who moved to France said Aug. 26 in a typical posting. The teacher, writing under the alias "Kritischer Leser,'' meaning Critical Reader, said he's working fewer hours and making more money than his sister, a doctor in Germany...

...Other German expatriates cite what they say is the over-regimentation of the labor force. "Life in Germany is totally over-regulated,'' said Christian Kaestner, 38, an attorney who moved from Munich to Cape Town, South Africa, in 1997. "There are hardly any freedoms left, and you keep bumping into regulations and prohibitions.''...

I would agree that "Germany doesn't have much of a future..." Partly because the very people who are likely to demand change are the ones who leave. It's sort of like the way a pot of boiling water stays at 212°. Because every time a molecule gets hotter than that, it turns to gas and emigrates!

This is also a good example of what Tom Friedman pointed out a few years ago, in The Lexis and the Olive Tree, that with globalization countries are becoming like US states have long been. That is, they don't have much freedom to pursue bad economic policies, because it is too easy for money and capital to flee elsewhere, and because bond ratings react very quickly. You can still do it, but you can't insulate yourself from punishment as countries once did.