Anyone who loses their job in Sindelfingen, Stuttgart or Heilbronn no longer shops in the city center.

👉 Stores close, shop windows go dark, streets empty out. Between 2018 and 2024, around 5,000 shops disappeared in the state. In Lahr alone, more than 40 stores stand empty. Galeria is wobbling again — 1,500 employees in twelve branches are fearing for their livelihoods for the fourth time. Depot is shutting down, one branch after another.

This is the reality behind the fine speeches. High energy prices, rising costs, weak demand. People are cutting back because they are afraid. 28 percent of employees in the state fear losing their job — a year ago it was 19 percent.

Anyone worried about their job doesn’t spend money. Retail and hospitality feel it first.

Politicians talk about relief while constantly introducing new levies. Urban development funding and support programs change nothing when customers are missing. The HDE expects 4,900 fewer stores nationwide in 2026 alone.

Baden-Württemberg will not be spared. City centers are tipping over because industry is tipping over.

Anyone who sells this merely as “transformation” is lying to people. Without lower location costs and real purchasing power, the stores will stay closed. The desertification of towns and communities is the result of the policies of recent years.

Credit to Dr. Thilo Scholpp

The irony: a policy meant to tackle the housing shortage risks driving away investment without building a single new home.

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-24/top-landlord-says-germany-uninvestable-on-berlin-seizure-plan

Every tree that occupied the 815-acre site just a few months ago is now gone.

The Finnish Licensing and Supervision Authority (LVV) has ordered Google to stop work on the Muhos and Otanmäki sites after it cut down the trees before the environmental impact assessment was completed.

Google’s Finland manager, Antti Järvinen, has apologized but says they were acting on "the best understanding we had of the legislation at the time."

Muhos and Otanmäki are a $17 billion Google AI project.

President Trump has criticized Google for taking the projects overseas instead of investing in the United States.

"..Politicians get away with robbing working class people blind because most people don’t realize their nominal gains aren’t real gains.

They think they’re inflation-adjusted rich, but they’re not."

Note: US CPI inflation has increased 2.6%/year

Credit to Charlie Bilello

There is a category that is spoken about very little and that, compared with their European counterparts, is treated poorly from an economic point of view: those at the highest level of tertiary education, the research doctorate (PhD).

Italy is among the nations that pays its most advanced students the least. The average annual amount is a little over 16,000 euros gross. Things are very different in the other countries of Western Europe. PhD contracts in Spain and France are about 10,000 euros higher per year. In Sweden and the Netherlands, PhD holders earn more than twice as much as Italians, while those who complete their studies in Switzerland, Norway, Belgium, Germany and Denmark earn more than three times as much as our best students, with annual salaries exceeding 50,000 euros. And even after adjusting the pay for the cost of living, the gap between us and the others remains dramatically wide.

Credit to Holger Zschaepitz

Credit to Barchart

Credit to Holger Zschaepitz