Maybe this continued drop in Germany’s population isn’t such a bad thing after all. It will open up more employment opportunities for R2D2 & Co.
A study by ING-Diba Bank indicates that in the medium to long-term, 59 percent of German jobs are directly threatened by robotics and other technologies.
“We have taken the robot out of the cage.”
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.”
The logic appears to go like this: Germans will only have children if they are paid by the state to do so.
That this money must first be taken from them by the state to only later be given back to them if they behave properly (improperly?) is the first oddity here but not really the issue at the moment – or at least not the one German politicians want to talk about. The problem now is that Germans aren’t having enough children (only 12% of families with children here have 3 or more). They are not following the German reproduction regulation logic like they are supposed to and are refusing to have large families despite regular increases to the child benefit or Kindergeld payments given here.
In an attempt to counteract what is now the German one-child-per-family-if-they-have-any-children-at-all tradition, some reproduction regulators are suggesting that families now be given higher payments for each successive child born. I’m sure this will work just great. Well, I’m kind of sure it might work maybe, I mean.
Of course more money will first have to be taken in from the Germans before some of it can be given back to some of them again but that’s never bothered legislators here before so why break with a tradition like that now?
“Die wirtschaftliche Situation von Familien verbessert sich trotz der staatlichen Unterstützung im Durchschnitt nicht.”
Germans everywhere were stunned this morning to discover that some 1.5 million of their countrymen had inexplicably disappeared the night before.
“This is just plain eerie,” one woman said. “I didn’t know any of them personally or anything of course, but just the thought that you could vanish like that from one day to the next is enough to make a body want to run away and hide first.”
The big shock came right after breakfast when those remaining of the German population were informed by the Federal Statistical Office that Germany now has a population of 80.2 million people rather than the 81.7 million who had been there just a few hours earlier.
Needless to say, the Federal Police and Bundesnachrichtendienst (Federal Intelligence Service) are working feverously to locate the missing 1.5 million Germans as soon as possible but have not been able to find any hot leads as of yet. They ask that if anyone left in the country should happen to locate this group of missing citizens to please tell them to remain where they are and call the authorities immediately.
Berlin trifft es besonders heftig. Am Freitagmorgen hat die Stadt auf einen Schlag 180.000 Einwohner verloren.
No babies. And no immigrants, either.
Each year, the German government spends billions of euros in an effort to stop the country’s ticking demographic time bomb. By 2050, it is estimated that only 70 million people will be living in the country, down from today’s roughly 82 million. Without a major change in the birthrate or a mass influx of up to 24 million new immigrants, the population could soon begin shrinking, according to United Nations forecasts…
“…Germany underestimated the importance of a culture of welcome and overestimated the attractiveness as a country of immigration,” said Ulrich Kober of the Bertelsmann Foundation which commissioned the study released on Monday.
The country could pay a heavy price for its anti-immigration views as its older workforce dies out, concludes the Foundation. “Highly qualified people from non-EU countries actively avoid moving to Germany,” added Herr Kober.
How can the German population actually be growing despite decades of negative birth rates? That’s easy. Just do it without the Germans.
It’s the immigrants, stupid.
Es sind die Einwanderer, die uns vorm Aussterben bewahren.
Germans have been dying off faster than they can replace themselves for over forty years now. It’s just what they do.
And here are last year’s numbers: 2.2 percent fewer German babies were born in 2011 then in the year before. Strangely, though, the number of inhabitants actually grew last year (them damned durn foreign immigrants again).
It’s the demographics, stupid.
Schon seit 40 Jahren sterben in Deutschland mehr Menschen als Kinder geboren werden.
Five minutes of excitement is better than no excitement at all.
A group of young conservative politicians, concerned about Germany’s catastrophic demographic development (or the lack of it), received less than a warm welcome by their very own Chancellor Angela Merkel herself today: They’re pushing for a tax on the childless, you see.
Although most politicians are normally crazy about raising taxes or introducing new ones, Frau Merkel made it quite clear that the buck (the euro?) stops here. Like practically everybody else in Germany, she doesn’t have any kids, either.
„Ich glaube, die Diskussion der Einteilung in Menschen mit Kindern und ohne Kinder ist hier nicht zielführend.“
Concerning the demographics problem in Germany, I mean. It’s official now: More and more Germans under 50 are actually “thinking” about having children.
Over 50 percent think they will most certainly have children one day, maybe. Some 26 percent think just that maybe part. Well what do you think of that? It’s the thought that counts.
Familienministerin Schröder sieht in dem Ergebnis einen bedeutenden Mentalitätswandel.
Observing Hermann 