Isn’t this funny? Berlin state “workers” take on average 36 days of “sick” leave per year. If almost two months is the average, there must be people taking several months per year. How is that even possible? Why is obvious fraud not sanctioned? And then people who don’t even show up for work vote for leftists screaming “tax the rich.” Berlin is so dysfunctional.

I met good friends from Germany for a glass of wine in the late summer sun today. At some point we somehow started talking about last Sunday’s Berlin election, won by the far-left party, the renamed East German communist party. You will simply not believe what they told me the lefts have done to Berlin’s real estate market: 1. They introduced a rent cap. As I said in the post below, apartments available for rent immediately dropped 60%. The left was seriously surprised. 2. A rental apartments building in Berlin cannot easily be converted into owner-occupied apartments, it is nearly impossible and takes at least a decade. As a result rental real estate prices dropped 30% versus owner-occupied property, and nobody builds rental buildings anymore. The left was seriously surprised again. 3. The lefts now have two more brilliant ideas to fix the severe Berlin housing shortage their absurd policies caused: nationalize residential real estate and legalize illegal occupation of privately owned properties. With that, nobody with even three brain cells left would build new housing in Berlin, regardless if for rental or owner-occupied. The left will be most probably surprised again. Isn’t this simply mind-blowing? Each of the left’s policies makes the Berlin housing situation worse, and they really keep inventing even worse ones. Don’t they have even basic economics understanding or at least some common sense?