BooNZ
Banned
I explicitly mentioned 'most' neighbours and in my preceding post identified Germany as the one A-H neighbour with superior infrastruture and education systems. Accordingly I agree Germany would have a higher average standard of living than most of the A-H empire, but I am assuming you are not suggesting the German minorities within the A-H empire were intent on ripping it apart.The economy dosnt mader when it looks like the minoratys want to rip the empire apart more then anything, and by democracy I meen everybody is going to want it eventually, the cats out of the bag at this point, also I'm pretty shere austrea dosnt in fact have higher standard of living the Germany and even then it was highly regonalised, austrea might be pretty good to live in but Galicia and dalmacia where some of the worse in Europe.
As far as worst in Europe, this measure would need to exclude the neighbouring Balkan minors (and by many measures Italy), which were even falling behind Imperial Russia at the time. In other words, comparing the worst states within A-H empire to first world powers of the day including Britain, France and Germany is scarcely relevant - IMHO.
In A-H it would be difficult to appease militant minorities, without seriously pissing off the more numerous majorites. A-H was far from perfect, but in many cases minorities enjoyed greater autonomy within the A-H empire than without. It is unlikley the Czechs would be large enough to form their own state and would not have enjoyed the same level of independence under the Germany or Russia. Similarly the Poles in A-H fared significantly better than in Imperial Russia. The Croats and Bosniaks likely preferred Austrian administation to a Serbian administration. The rural Romanians may have chafed under Hungarian rule, but widespread Magyarization had been quite successful at producing honest Hungarians among more urban populations. Again, the A-H administration was far from perfect, but most minorities could very easily imagine far worse alternatives.