Primarily, however, Germany is actually a modern, high tech country that is now very much like the United States. The Autobahn, a national highway system like America's freeways and turnpikes, allows drivers to traverse the country easily at high speeds. Started in the 1920's, construction carried on in the 1930's and even during World War II under Hitler's rule and beyond. This type of public works project always creates jobs, although Hitler also conscripted some workers who were essentially slaves when he ran the projects. Famously, there is no speed limit on the autobahn, but in general most people drive about the same speed as on US freeways, but with noticeably fewer notoriously slow drivers and traffic jams.
When the Roman Legion arrived a couple thousand years ago, they found fierce barbarians who fought hard to keep those foreigners out, but by the time America was being settled on the other side of the world, those German barbarians had transformed into a highly sophisticated, educated poplulace. This is not to say they were pure descendents of those hordes, as being in the middle of Europe, the Germans are, much to Hitler's assumable chagrin had he realized, a hybrid with many who arrived from other parts of the world.
Based on their many scientific breakthroughs and the number of syllables in their words, Germany has one of the most educated cultures anywhere, and yet during the twentieth century, they infamously became enemies of the free world. World War II in particular showed how barabaric a sophisticated culture could be.However, these are friendly people, and while the next generation of Germans rebuilt modern structures from the ashes of their hubris, many remnants of history remain, some having been restored to exactly what they had been before bombs destroyed them. That is a valuable lesson. Governments come and go, but the cities and people carry on.
In the German ruins of World War II, the greatest laboratory of economic theories was set up, using two essentially equal random poplulation samplings of people sharing a common culture, language and heritage. It seems so few people receive a balanced education these days that we now as a culture have forgotten the lessons of this experiment, though it has only recently ended. The defenders of our freedom, the government, need to stop thoughtlessly spending money and study what happened in divided Germany.
Germany was split in two at the conclusion of World War II, theoretically to stop them from becoming an evil empire again. West Germany would be a free market capitalist society, while East Germany would be a centrally planned economy, where the government made all decisions about what the people would be allowed to produce and be. The government would control the means of production to best serve the people by providing jobs and products the government deemed acceptable.In a few short years, capitalist West Germany became an economic powerhouse envied by other European countries, including those who had defeated them in the war. Volkswagon and Mercedes became known for quality, as did German electronics. On the other side, East Germany languished in poverty; the centrally-planned economy produced chintzy, crappy cars like the Trabant that nonetheless were still not very affordable to the impoverished citizens of East Germany despite the fact that no on else in the world would want them. That's just one product, but you get the point.
When the United States under President Reagan stopped appeasing the Soviet Union in the name of peace, subsequently forcing the USSR to cease propping up East Germany, all the walls came down. The former neo-slaves of the communist paradise became the low-wage immigrants in what had formerly been their wealthy neighbor separated by what had previously been an impenetrable wall. It is not that much different than the way impoverished Mexicans flee to the United States seeking the fruits of a free society, most hoping to eventually assimilate and live the American Dream.
In a capitalist society, we are free to become who we dream of being rather than who the government tells us we must be. And by the way, it seems some people point to Hitler's reign as somehow being an example of the evils of capitalism, but in fact, NAZI stands for what would be translated to be the National Socialist Party. That obviously led to a harsh military state, which is the only way such a system can survive. By contrast, capitalism and freedom live hand in hand.
