Germany's Brain Drain

This article details the brain drain hitting Germany, a phenomenon that is prevalent in many European countries and around the globe due to the strangling of economic vitality. The article seems to attempt to pin some of the hopelessness on Angie Merkel's government, but while she has clearly disappointed by backtracking on early, positive sounding rhetoric, Germany's problems have been a long time in the making over successive governments. Sadly, Germany is now in an unenviable spot, where dependency on the state in so entrenched that it represents a political hurdle too high to dislodge. Half the country wants reform to restore economic vitality, which would be painful to the other half that wants to preserve and expand its cushy state-supported existence, and so there is a political deadlock.

Places like the US and the other countries mentioned in the article benefit from the brain drain that afflicts Germany, France and other nations, scoring a win for Smithian capitalism over statism, but still, it is a little hard to relish this gain against the backdrop of hopelessness in formerly dynamic places like Germany.