Susan, this is very powerful writing and I second your ideas. My own biography is not in mythology and the maternal connections in my life have been highly dysfunctional and there is a lot transgenerational trauma involved, not wisdom, so your "grandmother" analogy (even in the black and indigenous sense, maybe because the black community is very small in Germany and the indigenous non existent) to me feels very foreign.

Nevertheless, many of the services you ask for are already implemented in Germany. Our government is consistently spending over 25% of its GDP on social protection, one of the highest rates in the world.

To give you an idea:

Universal Day Care and Pre-K: Germany has a legal right to a childcare place for children over the age of one. Starting in the 2026/27 school year, a new law grants all first-graders a legal entitlement to all-day care, which will expand to all primary grades by 2029.

Free Public Education: Tuition at public universities is free (with only minor administrative fees) for both domestic and international students. This aligns with Susan's desire for the government to "subsidize intellectual curiosity."

Universal Health Care: Germany has a dual system of statutory and private insurance. It is mandatory for all residents. While Susan laments paying for Medicare, Germans pay a percentage of their income (approx. 14.6%), but this coverage includes extensive maternity, paternity, and "sick child" leave.

Housing Cooperatives (Genossenschaften): Germany has a massive network of over 1,800 housing cooperatives managing approximately 2.2 million apartments. These are non-speculative; members are "user-owners" who pay "usage fees" rather than traditional rent to a landlord.

Baugruppen (Building Groups): This is a popular German model where individuals act as their own developers to build communal apartment blocks with shared kitchens, gardens, and workshops, bypassing the profit margins of corporate developers.

Political Funding: Unlike the U.S., German parties receive significant public funding based on their success in elections. There are strict transparency rules; any donation over €50,000 must be reported immediately to the President of the Bundestag and published.

Mail-In Voting: Germany has a robust Briefwahl (postal vote) system. In recent federal elections, nearly 50% of voters cast their ballots by mail. It is highly regulated and widely trusted. We also have a system where voters are registered automatically because everybody has the obligation to register your place of residence with the relevant local authority within two weeks. If you are eligible to vote you are registered.

Wealth Caps: Germany does not have a wealth cap or a current wealth tax (Vermögensteuer), despite some party time and again asking for it. Germany has a higher top income tax rate than the U.S. and a strong "social obligation of property" written into its Constitution (Grundgesetz Art. 14).

And still, we have very much the same general challenges and problems, just still on a lower level, than the U.S. because no founding assembly ever questioned the general foundation (which lies in the 17th/18th century Prussian authority and obedience culture, and of course patriarchy, strict hierarchy amongst other ideas). The main difference is that our philosophical background is already communal and communitarian, relational. That creates a positive duty for our government. It HAS TO provide all those services. That is constitutional.