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| Europe |
| Ranier Zimmerman - Why many entrepreneurs want to leave Germany |
| 2021-05-05 |
| [Washington Examiner] I know a 22-year-old who has been earning money as an entrepreneur since he was 15. Rather than going to university, he founded a successful company. Now, he wants to emigrate. "In Germany, you are more likely to be envied than appreciated," he explained to me. Some of his friends have already emigrated to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, and he is now weighing up whether to join them in Dubai or head for Singapore instead. Another friend of mine is a serial entrepreneur and has founded eight companies, creating lots of jobs in the process. "If a leftist government is elected on Sept. 26, I will definitely emigrate," he told me. Like many, he is afraid that the general election in September could result in a majority for Germany’s three major left-wing parties: the Greens, the SPD, and Die Linke. According to the latest polls, these three parties could well gain enough votes to form a government. Of course, the fact that so many entrepreneurs are thinking about emigrating is at least in part related to the threat of tax increases for high earners and the wealthy. Each of Germany’s three main left-wing parties has proclaimed that it wants to reintroduce a wealth tax and significantly increase income tax rates. In addition, they are planning to levy a one-off wealth tax. But the entrepreneurs I talk to are not just concerned about taxes. They feel the same as entrepreneurs did in Sweden in the 1970s. Back then, the German writer Hans Magnus Enzensberger wrote the following about Sweden: "In such a society, it would appear, the rich have little to laugh about. Yes, if only it were just the taxes! As decent citizens, they want to pay their taxes punctually, if reluctantly. What offends them more is the fact that no one seems to understand their lot." Sweden’s wealthiest citizens felt "superfluous, disregarded and excluded," explained Enzensberger. About the Author: Dr. Rainer Zitelmann has doctorates in history and sociology. In the late 1980s / early 1990s, he worked at the Central Institute for Social Science Research at the Free University of Berlin. He then served as department head at one of Germany’s major daily newspapers, Die Welt. In 2000, he founded a public relations consultancy company in the real estate industry and, having established the company as the market leader in Germany, he sold the company in 2016. Zitelmann has written 23 books, which have been translated into numerous languages worldwide. With his study into the psychology of the superrich, The Wealth Elite, he made an international name for himself as a wealth researcher. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #1 Same problem as always: Germany's full of Germans. Ditto France, England, Italy. Don't get me started on Spain. (That was humor, for those unfamiliar with the concept.) |
| Posted by: ed in texas 2021-05-05 19:28 |