First off, I welcome Angela Merkel as the incoming German chancellor.  She is showing a willingness to work with the United States as well as make the tough changes needed in her country.

As for Schroeder, I am not sure where this guy gets off saying anything about the U.S. and a government neglecting its people. 

Before you read the story below, consider this.  Between 2001 and 2004, Germany's GDP (gross domestic product) increased by an average annual rate of 0.6% (against the eurozone's combined average of 1.3% and the U.S.' 3.3%).  There are five million unemployed, or over 10% of the workforce (the eurozone average is 8.7%). The dole figure is as high as 25% in many eastern regions.

This has created one of the largest welfare states in the world.  How does 80% of your previous salary for 32 weeks sound?  Someone who loses their job in Germany could actually get that!  Those with jobs generally work 35 hours a week, with Friday afternoons off and six weeks of vacation. Germany has prided itself on compensating those for whom society does not have a job.

But as fewer workers support a social safety net for high numbers of jobless individuals, the system has become financially unsustainable. It also is rending the social fabric. Consigning large numbers of people to compensated idleness, without jobs and without life prospects, creates social problems.  Birth rates in Germany are far below the average of other industrialized nations, so much so that the government is proposing to pay out 50 euros per month for every child born in Germany until the child is 12 years old (more welfare!). 

In over 15 years since East and West Germany reunified, the division between the two seems to still exist and be growing. In a survey conducted earlier this year, 24% of west Germans (Wessis) said that they want the Wall put back up, compared with 12% 10 years ago; 12% of east Germans (Ossis) want the Wall back, too. Wessis resent the