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I have to tell you something from personal experience. My wife's family are all from the former GDR. One cousin in was visiting here and told me this. "I worked all my life until the reunification. Since then I have not had a job or worked a single day. The money I get from the government for not working is much more than I used to make while working full time. I would very much like to go back to the old days under the communists. They always had work and jobs for everyone. I like working and I want a job not these handouts. Although we did not have much in the way of material things we had a great spirit of community. Now it seems everyone is isolated and the new god is money. Everyone's life is dedicated to chasing after money and the community spirit is gone".
My mother's side of the family are all from the GDR as well. They say the same exact things
I guess it takes a compromise. At the end of the day, you can't eat freedom, nor is it pleasant to eat in jail.
Most people don't need utmost freedom at any cost, which is very unnatural to begin with. It does not exist in nature, either, living in any society automatically means a limitation of freedom. Even in the West we are much less free than we are made to think. The illusion of freedom often serves to hide flawed politics and put the blame on the people.
How free are you if you're living paycheck to paycheck and lack extra money. You want to go there but you can't, no money. Eat there, not enough money. Take a vacation, can't. Go to a big sporting event etc... and a million other things you can't do without disposable income.
The well off and rich are certainly very free. But the poor and the one paycheck away from disaster crowd are very much not free. In this society you need two things to be truly free: Time and money. Some people have one or the other. Very, very few have both. Usually if you have the time you don't have the money/ not working or you have the money and not the time/working all the time to bring in the money. That's where vacation comes in. The truly free are the retired and independently wealthy. Everyone else is various level of slave.
Seriously, if Germany doesn't count as "prosperous", what country does? Or is it one of those "I will compare imperfect reality with my vision of a perfect utopia and feel vindicated if reality doesn't match up" scenarios?
Last edited by Dane_in_LA; 12-11-2013 at 10:50 AM..
I heard that in Bundeswehr there are a lot of guys from ex-DDR. But I guess it's typical, that people from the lower classes sometimes go to army, where they can earn some money.
Only my mom's girlfriend who's a member of Hungary's MSZP romanticizes about the Kadar days, when the Balaton was polluted from State run industry waste and tourists were frightened away. Near the end of the GDR, industry was spewing immense levels of pollution. Ironic that the liberal end of the spectrum would be so indifferent about environmentalism, eh?
It's what the Berlin Wall represented that I don't like. Now that I think about it, it might at least help curb the human trafficking problem between eastern and western Europe, but not much. So Berlin Wall, out.
It's what the Berlin Wall represented that I don't like. Now that I think about it, it might at least help curb the human trafficking problem between eastern and western Europe, but not much. So Berlin Wall, out.
It wasn't used to keep East Germans out. It was an "anti-fascist protection barrier" to keep the peaceful GDR folks from being attacked by the West. The government told me this, so it's definitely true. What are you, some sort of tin foil wearing teabagger who believes it kept East Germans in?
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