Kühle Rechner
The Germans are notorious for being kühle Rechner (ice cold calculators). One unofficial national sport of theirs is figuring out and planning every penny they spend down to, well, figuring out and planning every penny they spend - and then wondering later why they can do this and their government can’t. Private calculations are never wrong, it seems, and their efficiency at dealing with their own money like this leads, in my view, to a certain degree of personal stinginess.
It’s another one of their secret, unspoken obsessions, in other words. And now someone has figured out (this time someone hired by the government, I think – they have obviously conceded that they can’t figure it out themselves) that the worsening demographic situation here = the pyramid turned upside down (fewer kids on the bottom, more old people on the top) is actually a good thing. At least as far as coming expenditures for German universities are concerned.
The simple lack of native students in the year 2020, for instance, could lead to savings of over 100 billion euros and nobody in the government is factoring this into their current calculations. They’re blowing it again already, in other words. Jeez, these guys can’t even seem to get it right when they hire somebody to do the calculations for them.
Sound familiar, American brothers and sisters?
Wer 1 sagt muss auch 2 sagen.