Berlin brings back the 'poor but sexy'

The bad, good ol' days are here again.

It seems there is a great deal of anger and worry over massive budget cuts coming Berlin’s way. The German capital finds itself with a €3 billion hole to cover, or about 8% of its total annual spending, all because the party-hard, under-employed, sleep-till-noon, dazed-and-confused, spendthrift city-state can’t keep itself from doling out money it doesn’t have on problems it didn’t make — like the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Plus, those fucking bike lanes. Gotta get rid of those.

In an additional Teutonic twist, part of the deficit is due to a decision by the now-defunct federal government to raise the ceiling on tax-free income so that low-wage workers, in particular, can keep more of their money. A generous move by a miserly state, resulting in less money coming in, which Berlin is compensating for by slashing the cultural, social, and public-transit services that foremost benefit low-wage workers.

As we learned in our high school economics class: There’s no free lunch. …