alt Hacker NewsWell, yeah. I get that being the stupid backwater of a huge capitalist union is still better than communism. However, it's not working out so well for (now mostly ex-)factory workers in Germany.
Entire cities are emptying because of this. Leaving the old behind, of course.
> However, it's not working out so well for (now mostly ex-)factory workers in Germany.
I fully agree with this, the whole EU enlargement/post-Cold War thing is insanely complicated from a societal pov, there's no silver bullet, for ever positive you can instantly find a negative just as big etc etc, that's why I find this obsession with EU funds quite besides the point, i.e. because the reality on the ground was, still is, in fact, a lot more complicated.
For example in our (Romania's) case EU accession came with even a larger increase in PPP value compared to Poland, but that also came with a huge, huge depopulation problem (neighbouring Bulgaria suffers from the same thing), which cannot be put into PPP numbers. Like I said, positives and negatives.