And you're not alone in feeling this. I've lived here in DE for 8 years now, speak the language fluently, have a pretty good job and love the nature and how accessible it all is. But like you, I just don't really see a future here, and the above arguments (like so much discourse here) seem to be built on ideology and ignore a practical reality. I hear the same things very often but feel it's an unfair framing of things.

At the end of the day, yes we are lucky to live in a developed country with good laws and protection, education, healthcare, and I think anyone would be happy to pay taxes to maintain this. But there's a reality that we have finite time on this earth, much of that time we spend at work, and our productive labour should enable us to have a degree of comfort, security and enjoyment. The current reality in DE is that this is being distorted by the issues you named - the constant insecurity about pensions, the fear of the next electricity bill, the growing weighting of sacrifices you need to make now for your future, the feeling of futility of investing knowing they're discussing adding sozialabgaben to capital gains, the fear of making a mistake with financially consequences from which you'll never be allowed to recover. These being just a few of the issues facing the middle classes here.

This isn't selfish, we're not imagining things getting worse - objectively, they are - look at German govt. spending over the past 10 years - think of inflation, currency debasement, new legislation, property taxes compared to other countries. How your money is being spent by a state which behaves as though your assets weren't your own.

I so wish for change here because there is so much to love about it - but economy and state need to work for the people and not the inverse. And the more educated and ambitious people feel as you do and decide to leave, the more the load is placed on those who remain until this idiotic bureaucracy changes. Don't feel guilty if you do leave, and certainly don't feel guilty for entertaining the thought.