Poverty, unemployment and poor education in Germany lead to tougher lives and shorter life spans.
Wow. Who would have thought that? I’m sure thankful that researchers up at the Max Planck Institute in Rostock were able to finally make this major scientific breakthrough. The tons of German taxpayer money that went into this study were certainly well spent. Now maybe something will finally be done to stop poverty here. Apparently no one has been doing anything about it up until now. Thumbs up to you, researchers!
In a related story (see the link at the bottom of the same article), it has also been determined that the older the human body gets the more it weakens and – now get this – that this decline is inevitable.
Armut, Arbeitslosigkeit und schlechte Bildung gehen in Deutschland mit einer deutlich verkürzten Lebenserwartung einher.
The number of people relying on food donations has increased to 1.65 million in the past year, a 10% increase overall, and 20% increase among people 65 and older.
They need to approach this problem differently.
1) Go to Austria.
2) Throw away your passport.
3) Enter the country as a refugee from, well, it doesn’t really matter where you’re from as long as you call yourself a refugee.
You’ll get free room and board for as long as you want
“This development is alarming — old-age poverty will overrun us in the coming years.”
Within the next 45 years, the nation’s population will decline by at least 10 percent — whereas most countries, including the United States, expect the opposite to happen. Some consider that dynamic to be the driving force behind Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to take in nearly 1 million refugees this year alone.
That’s what Germans are. Or at least one out of eight Germans are these days: Disabled.
Not only are they getting more and more old and gray and in the way, they also seem to be doing so less gracefully.
Funny how the number could be so high here so quickly though, don’t you think (up 7 percent since 2009)? This couldn’t be another popular scam for some, could it? I’m so ashamed. How could I even think of such a thing?
Whatever it is, it reminds me of a German oddity I have observed here in Berlin: Oddity 168. If there were only two Germans left on earth, one would try to take advantage of the other by pulling out his “Schwerbeschädigter Ausweis” or disabled person ID. I was boarding a bus in Berlin once when two passengers got into a real argument over one of the seats reserved for the disabled by waving around their IDs and yelling back and forth at each other about who was the more disabled of the two. It came dangerously close to a real brawl. That made me wonder. Would the winner of the fight have then been disqualified for no longer being the most disabled one?
Gegenüber 2009 ist die Zahl der Menschen mit Behinderung um 7 Prozent beziehungsweise 673.000 Personen gestiegen.
Suffering from one of the lowest birth rates in the EU and xenophobic to the core (although officially in denial about this), Germans everywhere (or at least where you can still find them) are puzzled by the continued drop in Germany’s population.
Federal statistics office Destatis said Germany was expected to have between 68 and 73 million inhabitants by 2060, compared to its current 81 million.
I think it’s time for even more concentrated government intervention, don’t you? More sex education efforts, for instance.
“It won’t fall below the 2013 level until at least 2023.”
Zum Sommer gehört auch Günter Grass (Günter Grass is also a part of sommer – predictable as he is, just like those other Sommerloch monsters mentioned below).
This time the grand old man of letters suddenly felt the urgent need to attack former SPD boss (and now over-the-hill ex-Left Party boss) Oskar Lafontaine as being a sleazy traitor to the grand old SPD’s grand old cause, whatever the grand old hell that was.
I can only assume that this little outburst must have something to do with the upcoming federal elections. The SPD has ruled out ever forming a coalition government with the Left Party (one of the very few things they have managed to do right), but this is mostly because the Left Party, like the SPD itself, is already extinct (nobody has broken the part about the SPD being extinct to the SPD yet, however). Grass, of course, is about as SPD and as extinct as you can get.
And it doesn’t really matter that Grass is actually right about Lafontaine here. All it points out to me is just how much he and Lafontaine have in common. Nobody out there takes them seriously anymore.
I like old Helmut Schmidt, and we’re talking old (93). I like that he goes out of his way to smoke in front of everybody, especially there where you’re not supposed to. I also think it’s cool that he doesn’t have a cell phone and prefers writing something called “letters” with something called “paper and ink.” And I don’t even mind that he thinks the Internet is “menacing.” I mean, why should he be the only one in Germany who doesn’t think that way?
I do wish, however, that he would take that big leap and finally leave the SPD while he still has the time to do so. I don’t think he ever belonged there in the first place. But maybe that’s just me.
„Ich telefoniere überhaupt nur noch selten. Wahrscheinlich habe ich das auch früher nie wirklich gern getan. Ich habe immer die Schriftform bevorzugt, und zwar die briefliche Schriftform.“
Observing Hermann 