The Cost of Bringing Two Sides Back Together

Today's Boston Globe included a story by Colin Nickerson about the despair that is everywhere in the former East Germany, and the struggle there between the once prosperous west and their poor brothers in the East.

"Today marks the 15th anniversary of the unification of the collapsed communist East and Capitalist West into one democratic Germany. But few Germans see much cause for celebration. Both sides are feeling pain. Westerners have seen their once-booming economny stagnate, mainly because of the huge costs of stablizing the east. Public opinion polls indicate that attitudes toward the West--and toward democracy--have dramatically soured. People want a return to the old predictability and order. This capitalism seems a sort of chaos.

"Every year, reports Der Speigel magazine, 90 billion Euros (about $108.5 billion) are taken from the productive West German economy and pumped into East Germany, where it evaporates without much effect." The mood of the people is not good. It might be compared to the Reconstruction after the US Civil War, there you saw people suffering terrible difficulties. But does anyone question that it was necessary and good to maintain America as one nation?