Someone correct me if I am wrong. But my understanding is roughly the following:
This isn’t for the soldiers, but civilan stuff like cleaners, handymans and so on. The US bases are substantial and probably the largest employer by far in their respective region. So if there is an issue it has substantial knock-on effects for the whole region. Not just the people working there, but also restaurants, shops and so on.
Eventually this would get very expensive for Germany regardless, because if this would go on for too long all these people would need to be taken care of by the welfare system.
So it is likely cheaper to just pay a few salaries and through that avoid permanent changes plus their associated costs, and hope that the US gets their shit together at least somewhat. Even if they don’t pay the money back it might still come out cheaper than the alternative.
Someone correct me if I am wrong. But my understanding is roughly the following:
This isn’t for the soldiers, but civilan stuff like cleaners, handymans and so on. The US bases are substantial and probably the largest employer by far in their respective region. So if there is an issue it has substantial knock-on effects for the whole region. Not just the people working there, but also restaurants, shops and so on.
Eventually this would get very expensive for Germany regardless, because if this would go on for too long all these people would need to be taken care of by the welfare system.
So it is likely cheaper to just pay a few salaries and through that avoid permanent changes plus their associated costs, and hope that the US gets their shit together at least somewhat. Even if they don’t pay the money back it might still come out cheaper than the alternative.
That makes sense.