I'm German living on the US west coast for close to 15 years now. What you are describing sounds a lot like the problems we are having here. I do wonder if that's how it now is in most countries. I always thought of Germany as having lower pay but higher quality of life. Very disappointing that that's eroded. I'd be very curious to hear where you end up, since it sounds like we are sharing similar criteria.

I guess, many people share our current point of view, and yes, it's not only the german society which is affected. From a german perspective looking at the US or UK makes me feel very sorry. The leading countries of the free world seem to be on a decline, and that makes me very sad. However, the situation I describe, is only what I personally perceive. It's in no way objective, so Germany might still be in a "good shape" seen from whatever angle. It's just that we're looking for a better place to live, but did neither consider the US nor the UK for above reasons. Dank und Grüße

> which to us especially means escaping crazy black/white discussions,

But the decision to leave instead of trying to engage and improve things is pretty black and white mentality in itself, isn't it?

> But the decision to leave instead of trying to engage and improve things is pretty black and white mentality in itself, isn't it?

You've got a point here. Yes, it's giving up. And to be honest, we both gave up. But since we're responsible for our little one, we still try to make the best of it, hence want to restart somewhere else. But I get your point. It's just that we both spent all of our energy over the last 25 years to improve things in all sorts of different dimensions and simply ran out of "mana".

Can you be more specific about what status quo political position you are against? I do not want to render any value judgements.

I am just thinking, because I grew up in Southern Europe, I have the opposite opinion to you regarding this. I think Germany is much more open to "skepticism" than you believe. Where I grew up people differentiating from the mainstream view are labeled as idiots and are in a very tiny minority, whereas in Germany, they go parading in the streets every other month and make up 25% of the population...

I am not the OP however I think he means that there are certain topics which place you in an either "with us" or "against us" group. In many cases, you're either AfD or a Green (kind of). I don't think he is talking about gay people, which clearly in the north Europe have more rights. It has more to do with the public tv telling you how to think.

Out of experience, it's only about the people you meet, however foreigners will be the ones giving you the less politically correct opinions: they'll just share their opinion. But again, it depends on who you meet and in which context you speak about things.

For me this has unfortunately to do with the fact that there is not a healthy debate about things, there is always this fear of being a Nazi or whatever shit they did in the past, which frankly I don't care about.

If that's the case then maybe instead of emigrating (which comes with a new set of problems) you may want to consider simply scaling back your ambition to 'improve things in all sorts of different dimensions' because you and your s.o. are just two individuals against an immense backdrop with huge inertia.

The people we look up to because they are typically painted as the agents of social change tend to be the ones who were there at the right moment: they were catalysts rather than major forces and their relatively small contribution caused a much larger force to become unlocked. But for that to happen that force already has to be there, for each and every one of those there are thousands (millions?) who tried the same thing at a different point in time and failed.

I admit, I like your point of view very much. If you are not already, you'd make up for a very good leader. In the end we did not yet make a decision to leave. We're juggling different ideas and that thread here opened up a new pathes to think through. The unknown unknowns so to say.

Thank you.

The decision to leave is a decision to leave. It is not a ‘discussion’, black and white or not. What is your point exactly? Could you spell what you are insinuating here?

I feel you, but I'd recommend taking a step back, breath in, breath out, look at the government budget, and realise that the plans you may not agree with your government only add up to 1% of those "hard earned taxes".

Somehow, in the era with universal access to raw data discussions seem to never have been so polarised. But I'm afraid that's the same anywhere :-(

I still there's a few places better than Germany to live, even more if you've started a family.

> and realise that the plans you may not agree with your government only add up to 1%

I wish, I could afford your optimism. :) IMHO Germany is getting deconstructed rapidly, and if one of the leading European countries suffers the breakdown I expect, I see nothing but dark clouds on the European sky. Europe and especially Germany as part of the free, western world need to be leaders trying to solve the ecological and economical challenges ahead of us. But when you want to solve such a huge number of problems, it's not wise to burn down your whole country beforehand.

I'm not sure where would be a good place. It seems most places have some degree of us/them mentality, media biases, and most definitely wasteful spending. One place to maybe check out is Switzerland.