GERMANS LIKE FREE LUNCH-- DON'T LIKE TRUMP

IT AIN'T FAIR--WE PAY FOR WORLD DEFENSE-THEY LIVE THE GOOD LIFE WITH FREE LUNCH

Angela Merkel and her government don't like our new President Trump. They decry his assault on the existing world order. (See "Assault on World Order". Der Spiegel On Line, January 22, 20170). Ms Merkel and her government fear his "America First" stance and his warning that the Germans will have to pay more for their NATO membership. They were happy with the old order of things. They do like the secure, affluent lives they lead. The Deutsche folk have set up the EU as their own fiefdom, selling their well-made manufactured goods to the other member states, maintaining high employment, and keeping positive and very profitable trade balances. The Germans have a stable Deutschmark, job-security for their workers, great health care, a top-grade education system, fine roads and infrastructure and they routinely take long vacations abroad to sunny climes. Unlike the USA, they do not have ugly pockets of poverty, rusting factories, out dated mid 20th century infrastructure, and a government squabbling over how to fund a totally inadequate health care system. What they also lack is the burden of paying for their own and the world's defense like we Americans. German citizens fork over about $ 38 billion dollars for defense, (less than one one hundredth of their --$3.8 trillion GDP in 2015) while Americans must put out way over $600 billion dollars (more than three percent of our $18 trillion GDP) or nominally about a fourth of our annual revenue. That fact makes clear why we can not live like they do. The Germans are now anxious that President Trump may change the "established world order" as if that was something that they hold as some sort of a birthright, due to their losing WWII.

The truth is that the Germans take advantage of our nuclear umbrella, and the costly thousands of troops we have stationed in Germany so they can ignore their own defense needs and concentrate their economic efforts on maintaining and expanding their infrastructure and economy and running a trade surplus with the USA each year. While here in America our tax payers foot a "world defense" budget of about 30% of GDP (when we examine all aspects of defense and remove Social Security from the budget) our taxpayers are saddled with the cost of their defense (and other nations ) so they can live the secure, affluent lives they live.

Here in the USA, the vox populi has been heard loud and clear. Mr. Tump has arrived on the scene and the circumstances for Germany and the rest of the world will have to change.

We are done with transferring well paying jobs abroad, we are tired of paying for a level of world defense we can not afford any longer. And it is not fair.

I admire and like Mrs. Merkel and the good, hard working, honest and decent people of Germany. We just can't afford to carry them anymore.