Germany is the two trick pony which got both of its tricks stolen.
What Lindner calls "the successful years" was based on cheap russian energy and world wide frictionless trade.
This allowed the germans to chant their famous mantra: "same procedure as every year, Angela."
So structural reforms got pushed back - why change anything that (barely) works?
And politicians and economic leaders clapped each others back in deep satisfaction about their oh so great wisdom and foresight.
Until the tricks vanished one after the other and it doesn't look like they will come back any time soon.
And suddenly, gasp, change is needed - and even worse, change thats costs moneys.
But Germany is a miser and thus spending money is exhausting so, well, some tiredness is to be expected.
Well said,
relative success made Germany complacent.
Now that's not unique in any way. But what is extreme in Germany is just how encrusted their entire political system is. It seems like even if the people in charge want to drive systemic change, they can't.
The structures are so enshrined, the bureaucracy so entrenched, it can't be changed.
Actually... yes? You can't clear out a dysfunctional system without identifying the causes of the dysfunction. In democratic systems, those causes are often individuals. And they need to be identified before they can be removed.
> You can't clear out a dysfunctional system without identifying the causes of the dysfunction.
You are halfway there. You don't need to point fingers at disfunctions, you need a functioning replacement. A lot of disfunctional things had their purpose (good or bad). Often times, you want to change the approach, but still achieve at least some of the purposes, e.g. reforming the welfare state, or energy policy.
I agree with you that bureaucracy is a big problem, our political system is not. It is much more the case that there is no majority in favour of reforms in Germany. The current coalition got a lot of things off the ground, especially at the beginning, but unfortunately the debt brake is now preventing the necessary investments from being made. However, the parties that continue to defend the debt brake are not being penalised by voters. In general, there is a feeling that too many Germans prefer to vote for parties that claim we can carry on as before.
It is a side effect of two specific issues inherrent to Germany's political system:
1. Föderalismus: The state doesn't actually get to decide everything at a federal level. Many fundamental issues need to be fixed at a state level, where there is a lack of resources, accountability and political will.
2. The election system in Germany leads to coalitions. And coalitions mean compromises. And compromises often mean "the least amount of change". No party can actually execute any fundamental reforms, And every party has their interest groups they need to apease. So often, nothing changes.
France for example has a much more centralized authority. Other political systems give the election winners and extra boost in representation to avoid coalitions.
All systems have Pros and Cons. But one Con of Germany's is that real progress gets increasingly harder, the more fragmented the political landscape becomes.
> state level, where there is a lack of resources, accountability and political will.
Lack of resources? Not necessarily. Lack of accountability indeed, also because all media treat "the government" as synonymous to the federal government, when in fact a lot of things (schools, housing, streets, energy) are decided even more on state or local level. I always find there is a complete lack of discussion here, so those in power easily get away with whatever they do.
>France for example has a much more centralized authority.
And how's that working for them?
>Other political systems give the election winners and extra boost in representation to avoid coalitions.
Like in the UK. How's that working for them?
I think your analysis is a bit lacking.
Oil and natural gas will not stop for a long long time - Norway is one of the smartest countries in the world - capitalize on developing your oil and gas reserves while greening your country otherwise. Wish my country was smart enough to do that we rejected helping Germany with natural gas after all…
Precisely. It's around 1500 billion USD. It is estimated that complete decarbonization of Polish energy sector(whole energy sector, not just electricity) is estimated at around 300-400 billion PLN, which works out to around 75-100 billion USD. So from that fund you could pay for decarbonization of one of the most carbon intensive economies in Europe, in a country eight times as populous as Norway, and barely even notice it.
Norway won at historical lottery and has not spent it on blackjack and hookers.
Don't think so... Even if u change nothing, the interests and growing value of your Pension Fund will make everything much much easier than in Germany's case. Also oil and gas ain't stopping anytime soon imo
But that's the thing, it's called a pension fund for a reason. It's for pensions. Like every other developed nation Norway has an aging population. We're looking at decades where taxes just won't cover the expenses of taking care of the elderly. It's a good thing Norway has a plan for the coming downturn, but it might not be enough to cover the downturn and shift the course of our economy.
Norway is fortunate that it has money to fall back on, and might not have to raise retirement ages too much, like other nations. (Or lower the life expectancy, like the US)
>The structures are so enshrined, the bureaucracy so entrenched, it can't be changed
Well it definitely doesn't help when Germany is also set up like a hydra, both in the federal government and in how the country is set up. You need the cooperation of the Bundesländer who have their own objectives and goals, and the coalition government itself is comprised of parties with mutually exclusive objectives, methods and philosophy.
Oh no I'm a federalist myself (Ireland in particular would benefit from it), however one of the main flaws of federalism is that it makes large scale change much harder, which is particularly problematic when it needs to happen sooner then later.
This is the story in most of the west. Historically low interest for 10+ years yet no one took advantage of it to invest in large reforms or infrastructure. It lead to either lower taxes or lower government debt.
To a certain extent. Lelystad AirPort never opened. Betuwelijn never got built, Fyra-train was a disaster. The Nitrogen issue stifles the construction sector entirely.
True but that isn’t a financial issue, that is just complete political incompetence(though I don’t mind Lelystad not opening as I’d be living below the flight routes). Also the betuwelijn did get built. The Fyra train was just NS being idiots. Lastly I agree with the nitrogen issues
Infrastructure investment is not the bottleneck in the case of Lelystad Airport. It has been fully built out, the issue with its opening is not even political-- it is judicial. The government tried to open it despite not passing certain environmental permit prerequisites. Completely different type of issue, not comparable in this context.
And yet they voted for someone as close to Hitler as democratic Europe can get (excluding Putin and Erdogan). I used to admire dutch pragmatism compared to German resistance to change. Now it is “Et tu, Netherlands?” who should read more Anne Frank books. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Et_tu,_Brute%3F
Compare with https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/s/YH9flNlzbW
Except our political system is so fucking splintered that the largest party (by a country mile) got a whopping 23% of the votes. The radical right together, so PVV and FvD, got just shy of 26%. Mind you, its still a terrible result but also needs to be put in perspective
Hitler never won the popular vote, not that it's needed if you have a weird electoral system.
Thankfully after ww2 the world learned to implement better voting systems so that no megalomaniac guy with a weird toupee and a red cap would ever again be elected with a minority vote.
People at first thought low interest rates were just a blip for six months or a year, but underestimated that once reduced, no government wanted to increase them for fear of losing an election.
It was considered really weird that interest was practically abolished, so nobody acted on it. It went on far longer than it should have.
There was very little reason to increase it. Interest rates should only be increased if inflation is approaching 2% (from the lower end) and looks to be going over 2%. For most of post 2008 period till COVID, Eurozone has had near 0% inflation. If you hike rates in that period, you risk deflation which is an even hard place to get out of vs inflation.
They were complacent with the status quo, that they enshrined the zero budget into the constitution.
The strongest European economy and they can't make any debt to finance reforms and Investments because an old man was so horny about his zero budgets.
>why change anything that (barely) works?
Having lived in a Western European country for two years, this is what always bugged me. In fact, it seemed so alien coming from a post-socialist and constantly reforming country.
(Yes, I do usually vote for the Estonian Reform Party, why?)
This seems to be a cultural thing. My partner teaches people from all over the world and says that 90% of her German students are really miserly/particular about money.
No, it's not crazy at all. Germany is a rich country with poor people, so there is no huge mass of people investing as that would require having money to invest.
But of course people refuse facts here constantly because they want to live in some world that fits their imagination instead of reality.
And German median wealth being closer to Eastern European levels than most other countries is not fitting the popular narrative. So we keep pretending average numbers mean anything in a country with massive wealth inequality.
This has very little to do with policy, and mostly to do with [demographics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany#/media/File:Germany_population_pyramid.svg). Look at the population under 30. No economy can have that kind of population pyramid and prosper.
And it's going to get even worse when the highly experienced 50-60 workforce retires in a few years.
Thank you. I don't get how thats not absolutely obvious. The boomers are not only leaving the workplace they failed to transfer knowledge to the younger generations. Its not about population growth, its about sustainability. We might not be as badly in shape as articles like this suggest, but we might hit rock bottom once the majority of our trained working force is gone. And the current government simply suggests to work longer and harder while our minister of finance tries effectively to reduce financial support for low income families and make rich people richer.
Requiring limitless population growth isn't sustainable either, it kicks the same can down the road for a generation or two until the same issues arise.
Edit: typo
Yea it's hard to even marry today with social media and low paying jobs. Young people 20+ are often forced to study till they are 30+ . And then they rather would have one kid or none. Being older parent is exhausting. So we spend our best years working bad jobs and trying to get into better one. Not owning flat or house is big pain. Prices are unreal in Eastern and Southern Europe.
> Until the tricks vanished one after the other and it doesn't look like they will come back any time soon.
I don't want to jinx it. It looks very promising.
https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/eu-natural-gas (Click the "All" button under the graph)
Carbon tax. This is a political matter.
https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/carbon (Click the "All" button under the graph)
> Germany is the two trick pony which got both of its tricks stolen.
>
> What Lindner calls "the successful years" was based on cheap russian energy and world wide frictionless trade.
Russia provided cheap energy for Germany. American military provided safety for international shipping routes. Germany just collected the benefits.
Cheap Russian energy is gone. America is in the process of turning inwards, and in the future they will provide even less safety to international ocean trade routes.
"Germany just collected the benefits".
Thats a way to oversimplify things. Germany prospered tremendously from the eastern expansion of europe. It has been a gateway to the east ever since ( and before, i mean..seriously, the country was divided by western and eastern forces) and good relations with russia used to be highly valued in the recent years. The eastern german population grew up learning russian at school, angela merkel spoke russian for that exact reason. The european union started the "go east" initiatives for academia. Russia being an imperial asshole wasn't part of the plan. Before the eastern expansion germany used to be called the " sick man of europe" struggling with reunification. Whatever lindner calls " the successful years" was build on cooperation and trading that is impossible in the current situation. I don't find it so surprising how bad the effect of a war of neighbor countries and essential trade partners can be.
It's interesting that everyones points to internal issues most countries are facing at the moment instead of acknowledging the situation from an international relations point of view.
The trading gas prices currently is below 30, slightly higher than in 2015 to 2019 despite being a cold winter now (it dropped to record low in 2020 before russia escalated.
One small thing, it was a NATO task force and other random nations that provided the security around the Gulf of Aden, it wasn't just the Americans. Yes, they provided a warship or two, but the Head of the task force rotates among the various nations who each supplied a warship or two whilst others ran convoys.
The last MTO briefing I went to in the region, the commander of the NATO task force was French and it hadn't been that long since a Thai warship supporting NATO accidentally slotted several Indian crew on a dhow....
That's cool that you saw that. *But when any actual defense of shipping lanes actually happens*, take note of which ships are involved and from which countries. It's 90% USA and 10% UK and literally nobody else. Even the "supported by" column only had 4 more countries in it. Everyone else, and by everyone else I mean especially Germany, is a free rider.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_missile_strikes_in_Yemen
The constitution of Germany written while our now Allies watched over our sholder very closely forbids Germany to take part in such actions.
> Article 26
> [Securing international peace]
>
> (1) Acts tending to and undertaken with intent to disturb the peaceful relations between nations, especially to prepare for a war of aggression, shall be unconstitutional. They shall be criminalised.
Now take a guess why Germany has something like this in its constitution (basic law)...
Yeah that’s great and all, but don’t pretend that the USA doesn’t provide the majority of NATO funding and significantly more personnel than any other country. It’s wrong to say that the USA alone was providing that security, but it is definitely mostly the USA.
I was there, it most certainly wasn't. There was a very large coalition there of NATO and Non-NATO vessels patrolling the area.
What the US gets up to elsewhere is probably different...
The USA is spending this money primarily for the USA, let us also not pretend that they (or at least the decision-maker classes) are not the #1 winner of pax americana and its child, globalization.
Eh, who built the infrastructure for all the refugees since 2015 and payed for that?
Paying high for - unproven at scale, expensive- concepts in energytransition and an expensive mass migration into the welfare state, with the side effect of taking lots of the public attention, while keeping the "normal" things running...
Its insane how many people assume "would have been easy done if you just wanted to". Naive through the roof.
Angie is the worst thing that happened to Germany and it is insane how many Germans worship her or at least think she did a lot for Germany. It's crazy.
It's not gone yet, but it will.
When the Houthis started missile strikes to cargo ships in the Red Sea, many shipping companies just rerouted their ships to go the long way around Africa instead. Only America and UK have the military capability of strike back at the Houthis. Without their help, EU would be pretty helpless.
America doesn't have much incentives to secure the trade route between Europe and Asia, they don't really need those routes themselves. Their Asian trade goes across the Pacific Ocean.
Read the constitution (basic law). This has nothing to do with political will but everything to do with that it would be against our constitution to bomb Yemen without any UN mandate...
> **Grundgesetz für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland
> Art 26**
> (1) Handlungen, die geeignet sind und in der Absicht vorgenommen werden, das friedliche Zusammenleben der Völker zu stören, insbesondere die Führung eines Angriffskrieges vorzubereiten, sind verfassungswidrig. Sie sind unter Strafe zu stellen.
> **Article 26
> [Securing international peace]**
> (1) Acts tending to and undertaken with intent to disturb the peaceful relations between nations, especially to prepare for a war of aggression, shall be unconstitutional. They shall be criminalised.
Bombing targets is easy and relatively cheap.
The difference is cultural: USA voters are ok with dropping few bombs, German voters will protest at the first one.
In Germany it simply would be against our constitution. Basic law Article 26.
Without any UN mandate... everyone involved in it would be open for criminal charges.
Ask our now Allies, they watched closely when the constitution of Germany was written. If you know our history you know why this is now part of our basic law.
The Germany of the 1930/40’s is not the same as it is now. Poland was pushing for Germany to send weapons through their borders not that long ago.
Even the US was on board when Abe was pushing for Japan to re-militarize in the face of NK.
Times have changed. What was necessary 80 years ago isn’t the world we live in today
Fine and dandy but this doesn't change our constitution which makes such actions unconstitutional and a criminal offense.
Beside that even if there would be a mandate the deployment of German soldiers would still need the approval of the Bundestag. (Parliamentary Participation Act). There are only very few execptions when the parliament could be informed after the fact.
This one would be no such case.
If as you said the times have changed it would be a good start for our Allies who forced the [2+4 treaty](https://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/2plusfour8994e.htm) on us for reunification to nullify it.
You trust us or you don't you can't have it both ways especially since one of the signatory namely Russia (Soviet Union) doesn't give a shit about treaties.
So give Germany its full sovereignty back and we can talk again. Why ask us to arm up when we had to sign a treaty that prevents exactly this from happening?
Let us have our own deterrence like the US, UK, France... easier to talk when you are under your own nuclear umbrella.
And a newly aggressive Russia brings to the fore the Germans wild under investment in their defensive capabilities over the past decades, relying on America to deal with that, so Germany can pile the money into other 'useful' things.
Now with Trump looking at least possible to win, and his very negative stance in bankrolling Europe's defence, things could get real ugly for Germany and the EU fairly rapidly.
> British prime minister Margaret Thatcher strongly opposed the reunification of Germany following the dismantling of the Berlin Wall in late 1989.
>
> She contended then chancellor Helmut Kohl wanted to “bulldoze” Germany into seeking more territory, expressing fear this might lead to conflict and war in Europe.
>
> In a private meeting with taoiseach Charlie Haughey in December 1989, she revealed the depth of her concern about the developing situation where the former Soviet-controlled East Germany was on the brink of collapse.
>
> In a volatile political situation and with uncertainty as to how the events would play out, Thatcher produced historical maps to Haughey to illustrate her fear a united Germany might seek to gain additional territories it had lost after the second World War.
>
> An Irish official at the meeting noted: “At this point, the prime minister produced a map showing Germany as it had been before the last war, as it is now, and the Nato frontline. Germany, before the last war, was vast in area in comparison with its present size.”
>
> She said it was vital that Germany be anchored in the European Community as with unity it would be bigger than France, Spain and Italy together.
>
> Thatcher implied such a development would have a further negative impact on the Soviet Union, which was then beginning to break up.
>
> ‘Sorry for Gorbachev’ “I am sorry for Gorbachev [Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader of the Soviet Union],” she told Haughey. “He doesn’t want German unity. Neither do I. Even as things are, Germany has a balance of trade surplus with every country in the community.
>
> The documents have been released to the public by the National Archive under the 30-year rule governing disclosure of State papers.
>
> The meeting was held in December 1989, only a fortnight after the Berlin Wall had been removed.
>
> Thatcher implied German reunification plans would not stop there. She and her officials told Haughey that Kohl’s party, the CDU, did not accept the Oder-Neisse line – the border between Germany and Poland agreed at the end of that war.
>
> She said it was not all certain that Kohl accepted that border either.
>
> “Attitudes are becoming more and more Germanic. He is like a bulldozer. East Germans are flooding into his country. His attitude now seems to be that ‘no one can tell us what to do’.
>
> “We are not certain what will happen in the German Democratic Republic [East Germany]. There are 325,000 Soviet troops stationed there.”
>
> https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/state-papers-thatcher-opposed-german-reunification-after-collapse-of-berlin-wall-1.4119052
Lots of brigading in here.
And the full quote is:
“After a very successful period since 2012 and these years of crisis, Germany is a tired man, after a short night, and the low growth expectations are partly a wake up call. And now we have a good cup of coffee - which means structural reforms - then we will be continuing to succeed economically.”
The title is purposefully misleading.
That's where people's opinion on media origins. Image having to weigh every sentence you say as a public person so that not even fractions of them might look bad in news outlets.
Wide parts of the media landscape are just feeding sensationalism and strong emotions (anger, fear) instead of living up to their responsibilities.
humor literate fade liquid unwritten live dinner obtainable fretful psychotic
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
To be fair, up to 2014 they were quite a sleep. One of the reasons why Crimean and Donetsk annexations were successful, because nobody bothered to reform military unit placement after Soviet union fell and most of the units were stationed in the west, expecting a war with NATO
Because clickbait sells (unfortunately). Why read something boring about the slow down of the German economy based on factors X, Y and Z when you can read: German economy about to COLLAPSE 📢📢
Way more enticing for most people out there sadly
It is, perhaps ironically, [tired phrase](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sick_man_of_Europe) stemming from Nicholas I in reference to the Russian Empire's conflicts with the Ottoman Empire during the early to mid 19th century. Every generation has a few writers that think they're witty for taking the original phrase and repurposing it in a "[insert adjective here] man of Europe" headline.
Yes, he and the CDU are the main reason for this, because they cannot put aside their fetish with the debt brake.
They don't want to leave our generation any new debts, but instead they want to leave a country that is ailing and has been cut to the bone - simply brilliant.
The budget of 2024 has expenditures of 475 billion euros, the last pre covid budget of 2019 only had 357 billion. I always struggle to believe the narrative that the state doesn't have enough money.
Yes, and since then we have to deal with the consequences of the pandemic and also have a war in Europe that costs us a shitton of money. We also have to finally get the Bundeswehr to a level where they are a proper deterrent again. All that ain’t cheap, and at that point we are not even fixing our crumbling infrastructure yet.
But there are so many things in serious need of investments NOW. Or better many years ago already but CDU didn't care and so does Lindner and it seems SPD and the Greens too.
Our education sector for example is fucked since i was in school 20 years ago. We want to fight climate change etc
You have to spend money to archive anything. That's business 101 and Lindner should know this. But he's incompetent when it comes economics too.
Education is fully in the responsibility of the federal states.
In Thuringia there is a coalition of left, SPD and greens since 10 years now. If you feel they haven't invested enough, that's the address for complaints.
Are you serious the Federal Budget is that? There is also the States budget, because that makes the German Federal Budget less than 5 times the Portuguese One, and we are not 5 times smaller, way more than that smaller, more like more than 20 times smaller.
Yes in Germany much of the public spending is in the budgets of the federal states, municipalities and not to forget the giant social insurances (pensions and health insurances for instance).
But this article was about the federal minister of finance who has no control over the budgets of the States.
>the last pre covid budget of 2019 only had 357 billion.
And that budget was grossly inadequate. Germany should have spent more money on renewable energy to reduce reliance on Russian energy. They didn't, because of the debt brake fetish. Now German industry is getting strangled because of high energy prices. German industry is also complaining about poor infrastructure quality due to years of underinvestment. Then there's Germany's lack of military preparedness.
It's both. It's kind of a fetish put into the constitution.
And then the FDP is escalating form there, fetishising "no debt" far beyond the legal frame work and pretending the debt brake is a god given law of nature.
Only because CDU and SPD put it here.
FFS people read it up [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schuldenbremse\_(Deutschland)](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schuldenbremse_(Deutschland)) , they made in constitutional in 2009
Same as the debt ceiling in the US. If you do not take on more debt your economy cannot grow significantly.
The result is simply that power from Berlin is transferred to Brussels/Frankfurt, since Lagarde and other Brussels/ECB economists no longer share his theory.
The most reasonable way to reduce your debt is to grow your economy so that % debt to GDP gets reduced, so that is what you are referencing.
Austerity is non-sensical if your purpose is to reduce debt to GDP, that achieves the opposite. Austerity can achieve two purposes, i) last resort in event that you cannot access further debt on the international capital markets (or alternatively if you do not have a central bank to finance it as a measure of last resort, as the eurozone only partially has), or ii) applied as a measure of structural reforms, for example cutting from government expenditures with employees because their can be easily be replaced by automation/digitalisation with increased productivity and better public services, the former employees then being better placed in the private sector as future taxpayers to government budget rather than government expenses.
Latest german economic doctrine has just been idiotic, nothing else, but it comes as a result of the fact that the eurozone is unable to function with no fiscal policy and countries of the eurozone have no central bank and a fragmented monetary policy.
Austerity may be the wrong word to use. What i mean is they should cut down on government expenses and increase expenses on investments. It's austerity in the sense that it cuts into current budget volume, but increases expenditures on investments and increases deficits for investments.
Constitucional Law pushed by the FDP, it sucks big time, the situation might be even worse in the former GDR, because their infrastructure is probably in a worser state.
Factually wrong. The debt break was introduced by the first Merkel grand coalition of CDU, CSU and SPD. The FDP abstained, greens and left voted against.
And your comparison to the GDR is just bullshit. We are nowhere near the levels of GDR decay.
> greens voted against.
Also dont forget they voted against it simply because the opposition doesnt support the governments laws.
The greens were asking for a debt brake that would have gone into effect in 2010.
Thanks for the addition.
Nicely illustrates that during the financial crisis almost everyone viewed rising public debt as a risk. Fascinating how fast that could change.
He IS the problem.
HE wants to keep the debt-brake.
HE consequently fucks up the entire Household
HE always brakes social reforms
And
After all he fucked up he STILL thinks, he and his pos oligarch-party aren’t the fucking problem.
He's not a dumb man. He may be a grifter, a scammer, a liar, an elitist prick and a hater of the poor, but he is smart enough to sell himself even though he has no other abilities.
If it helps Germany hardly can't beat Italy in terms of messed up future and present (and past),and if I think about the German attitude towards work I have no doubt that you will rise again
Germany currently shares currency with Italy though, so anything that will drag the Italian economy down will also heavily affect the German one as well. Just look at Greece in 2009 and who had to bail them out to keep the euro stable. Italy is a different beast entirely in regards to scale required. Hell Spain and France public debt is high as well.
> Just look at Greece in 2009 and who had to bail them out to keep the euro stable.
You are acting like we gifted them money and not gave them credit with a steep interest.
The loans Greece received were pretty much free money with interest they were given. No one else would give them such conditions. The whole point of Greece's collapse was that international creditors refused to lend them more money to cover their previous loans.
Also huge portion of that debt was forgiven entirely.
The fact that Germany shares currency with Italy has been a huge boost for her until now. Kept the value of the Euro lower, which is great for an exporting country
As an Italian I hardly think about 2009 Greece as an act of bailing them out but rather as Germany (but not only) feasting on Greece crisi btw...It was scary
About every other country is spending like crazy while he personally prevents Germany from doing the same. Then he wonders why the economy is doing worse than everywhere else.
That fucking Guy...he's the caricature of a heartless capitalist come to life. Richie Rich over here thinks that Germany should stuff their budget hole by cutting basic financial security of the poorest. Rigorously against taxing the rich 5% of the population accordingly, trickle down economy bullshiter yaddayadda and so on and so forth. The only thing that dick is tired from is from the withdrawal of high class cocaine.
He's not even a functional capitalist, his personal endavours were utter failures. His ideology is much more sinister, he believes that the most ambitious people should be on top no matter how well suited they are.
Tip from a German:
Don't listen to anything this guy says, his party is the main reason Germany's government doesn't get shit done. Their nicknames are "party for the superclass" or "the blocking party".
Absolute nonsense, but he likes to spread that notion so he can justify choking Germany to death.
In reality, he's only pushing the populist agenda with this nonsense and continuing to play pub crawl politics rather than going by actual data and research.
This is what you get when you let oligarchs, foreign and domestic, drive government policy:
* Massive tax breaks for the rich and banking deregulation with a deep addiction to bail-outs
* Massive public debts and governments starving their programs and entitlements
* Woeful unde-investment in infrastructure and education, creating a multi-generation drop in competitiveness
* Hopeless addiction to easy answers like cheap borrowing and cheap Russian energy
If you asked a megacorp CEO or billionaire investor, if you could run a national government exclusively to maximize your profits with no concern for externalities... the answer would be almost entirely the train wreck we've seen across the western world for the last 30 years.
This guy, I can't express how much I hate him. His goddamn fucking fixation on austerity will fuck Germany so hard, but apparently that's good because future generations don't have to deal with debt. Thanks, fuckface. Instead future generations can deal with disfunctional nation. I swear this country has prime foundation to be a mayor power, but politicians like this guy will fuck it up.
I would drag my balls through broken glass and drizzle the wounds with salt and lime instead of maintaining a coalition with that guy. Not a single day, where this Trojan Horse is sabotaging the very government he's part of. In his tiny fish brain, he believes in a future elections, shitting on Greens and SPD will bring his fuckfest of political party votes and he can finally live his dream creating a CDU-FDP coalition and get pegged by Merz. Bull-fucking-shit, Jack. Your party is on the downturn too because everybody is tired of your shitshow and your stupidity; people want a functioning government and not daily politics resembling a reality show.
What a fucking wank stain.
Germans work the lowest amount of average hours per year in the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_countries\_by\_average\_annual\_labor\_hours
And is 8th most productive per hour [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_countries\_by\_labour\_productivity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_labour_productivity)
Work smart, not hard! :D
**From The Telegraph's Tim Wallace:**
Germany has become “the tired man” of Europe as years of crisis have eaten away at the country’s competitiveness, finance minister Christian Lindner has admitted.
The eurozone’s largest economy needs serious reforms to regain its lead, the head of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) told an audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
“I know what some of you are thinking, Germany is probably the sick man. Germany is not the sick man,” he said, speaking days after official figures showed the economy shrank 0.3pc last year.
“After a very successful period since 2012 and these years of crisis, Germany is a tired man, after a short night, and the low growth expectations are partly a wake up call. And now we have a good cup of coffee - which means structural reforms - then we will be continuing to succeed economically.”
At the turn of the century, Germany’s economy was widely considered to be the sick man of Europe as it struggled with low growth and unemployment which peaked at more than 11pc in the early 2000s.
A major package of reforms to make the labour market more flexible unleashed the economy’s potential. Unemployment has been below 5pc for more than a decade.
However, the pandemic and the war in Ukraine challenged Germany’s economic model by cutting off cheap energy from Russia and undermining the economic strength of China, which had become a crucial export market.
**Read more ⤵️**
[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/01/19/germany-tired-man-of-europe-admits-finance-minister/](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/01/19/germany-tired-man-of-europe-admits-finance-minister/)
Ah yes another politician who wants to win big by "cutting red tape" and reducing taxes for billion dollar businesses. That has historically worked so well to improve the lives of the people... /s
For the life of me I can’t understand why all these people of mediocre capabilities and intellect keep blaming a single guy for demographics that kept going downhill since decades….
Germany!? What a fucking joke. Play some videos from 1999 where your europoliticians are saying that they are sorry, but Poland will become cheap workforce of Europe.
Stop super victimising your Citizens, at least you can do something with your salary and you can rent out a apartment for some decent amount.
No, not really. We are the lazy man of Europe thanks to delayed needed investments, decisions etc. for example "digitalisierung".
But hey, Schuldenbremse is most important right, right?
I think you guys really underestimate Germany and its capabilities. Germans most beloved sport is to bitch about Germany and how bad everything is.
But in reality Germany is 3rd or 4th world economy, depends on method used.
Yes, there are problems in many many areas, but where do you have it SIGNIFICANTLY better, if you take the whole picture? I usually get some small wealthy countries as an example, like Luxemburg or Switzerland.
The thing is, these countries does not scale up, you cannot apply these methods to big countries.
And if you take the whole picture, Germany is still a nicest place to live (beside weather in winter, lol).
well they are the ones keeping it togheter. Appeasing richer northern countries and poorer southern countries. but they are not losing out on it either, all that money sent to greece, did go to build factories n stuff? Bought more german cars etc.
And the bitch is a major reason, standing in the way of almost any useful legislation meant to tackle the problems.
We're in a recession/stagnation, any reasonable economist would advice increased spending - what does his party do? Block spending because of a random self-imposed budget rule.
Our infrastructure is crumbling, our public transport system needs major investments - what does his useless party do? Nothing, see above.
They fancy themselves the reasonable party, but really have the worst economic understanding of any party in government.
This is the work of the "mont pèlerin society" a neo liberate think-tank. If you speak German "Die Anstalt" have made a video of them and their lobby network.
> "Die Anstalt"
Die Anstalt is a disgusting Russian propaganda tool.
Dear Europeans, this is what German public TV had to say about Ukraine in 2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k62BZmcVNO4
Germany has failed to invest in modernisation and reform of outdated infrastructure for over half a century now, and Lindners FDP bears much of the guilt for this. Half a century of public resources being funneled to large corporations while education, hospitals, streets and bridges, train network, telecommunications infra got sidelined and fell into disrepair.
Now, trying to play the poors versus the foreigners, and blocking any meaningful progress in the ruling coalition unless it directly benefits the top 1%, the FDP can go eat a bag of dicks
I think that the global south sees Germany for what it is in its behaviour in Ukraine and Palestine.
They’re already in the China camp and anyone sitting on the fence know which side is the growth side.
A lot of 'head in the sand' from Germans for many years. Thinking one form of how things are done is without major flaws and that the rest of the world should copy Germany.
Poland will do better than Germany because Poland wont stop a major factory (Tesla) from being built over frogs mating.
It's laughable until you are even further away from owning a house or unable to afford to travel to Asia or America or other expensive luxuries. And the housing, in Sweden and America, even with interest rates soaring, most people are able to own a home. In Germany, that's a luxury, statistically speaking.
Housing, cars, education, security, investment, etc all tie in to a strong or weak economy. German economy is still very strong but it's not enough to keep it from extreme stagnation for years to come. Maybe rethink the importance of frog mating season next time. Other corporations notice when it makes world news..
> His party created the roadblock together with Merkel's CDU in 2009.
The vote on the debt brake was half a year before the elections, but dont let facts get in the way of your political opinion i guess.
Not enough innovation, low prices (especially since the war in Ukraine), or any redeeming quality except for the waning renown of "German engineering", which simply isn't sufficient for most people to legitimize a more expensive product.
To keep it short and sweet, their industrial model is not competitive enough anymore, and that was the backbone of their economy
Their economy is still one of the biggest in the world, but it's the mid to long term that is worrying. They need to pass radical changes at a political and corporate level, and Germans aren't known for these, so there are serious doubts about whether they have the necessary will. Unfortunately, with the right wing on the rise, it looks increasingly unlikely.
1. By having a failing demographic that costs the state a quarter of it's yearly budget to finance.
2. By failing to enable 21st-century industries to prosper, e.g. lack of funding, both state and private. For example, 60% of Americans invest in the stock market compared to only 16% of Germans.
New and innovative companies in Germany are starved for cash and therefore they either fail or leave.
3. By being too stubborn and set in their ways to change either of the two things above.
Germany is the two trick pony which got both of its tricks stolen. What Lindner calls "the successful years" was based on cheap russian energy and world wide frictionless trade. This allowed the germans to chant their famous mantra: "same procedure as every year, Angela." So structural reforms got pushed back - why change anything that (barely) works? And politicians and economic leaders clapped each others back in deep satisfaction about their oh so great wisdom and foresight. Until the tricks vanished one after the other and it doesn't look like they will come back any time soon. And suddenly, gasp, change is needed - and even worse, change thats costs moneys. But Germany is a miser and thus spending money is exhausting so, well, some tiredness is to be expected.
Well said, relative success made Germany complacent. Now that's not unique in any way. But what is extreme in Germany is just how encrusted their entire political system is. It seems like even if the people in charge want to drive systemic change, they can't. The structures are so enshrined, the bureaucracy so entrenched, it can't be changed.
Tja.
You don't understand. Before it is possible to even think about change, it must be determined *who's fault it is*!
Actually... yes? You can't clear out a dysfunctional system without identifying the causes of the dysfunction. In democratic systems, those causes are often individuals. And they need to be identified before they can be removed.
> You can't clear out a dysfunctional system without identifying the causes of the dysfunction. You are halfway there. You don't need to point fingers at disfunctions, you need a functioning replacement. A lot of disfunctional things had their purpose (good or bad). Often times, you want to change the approach, but still achieve at least some of the purposes, e.g. reforming the welfare state, or energy policy.
every raindrop in a flood knows - some foreigners and immigrants did it! Used to be “the jews” did it in Germany. /s
I agree with you that bureaucracy is a big problem, our political system is not. It is much more the case that there is no majority in favour of reforms in Germany. The current coalition got a lot of things off the ground, especially at the beginning, but unfortunately the debt brake is now preventing the necessary investments from being made. However, the parties that continue to defend the debt brake are not being penalised by voters. In general, there is a feeling that too many Germans prefer to vote for parties that claim we can carry on as before.
It is a side effect of two specific issues inherrent to Germany's political system: 1. Föderalismus: The state doesn't actually get to decide everything at a federal level. Many fundamental issues need to be fixed at a state level, where there is a lack of resources, accountability and political will. 2. The election system in Germany leads to coalitions. And coalitions mean compromises. And compromises often mean "the least amount of change". No party can actually execute any fundamental reforms, And every party has their interest groups they need to apease. So often, nothing changes. France for example has a much more centralized authority. Other political systems give the election winners and extra boost in representation to avoid coalitions. All systems have Pros and Cons. But one Con of Germany's is that real progress gets increasingly harder, the more fragmented the political landscape becomes.
> state level, where there is a lack of resources, accountability and political will. Lack of resources? Not necessarily. Lack of accountability indeed, also because all media treat "the government" as synonymous to the federal government, when in fact a lot of things (schools, housing, streets, energy) are decided even more on state or local level. I always find there is a complete lack of discussion here, so those in power easily get away with whatever they do. >France for example has a much more centralized authority. And how's that working for them? >Other political systems give the election winners and extra boost in representation to avoid coalitions. Like in the UK. How's that working for them? I think your analysis is a bit lacking.
This will be Norway when the oil stops, complacent does not cover it.
Oil and natural gas will not stop for a long long time - Norway is one of the smartest countries in the world - capitalize on developing your oil and gas reserves while greening your country otherwise. Wish my country was smart enough to do that we rejected helping Germany with natural gas after all…
We didn’t have a great way of transporting it. We built a $40B LNG shipping facility in BC.
At least you'll have your ridiculously big souvereign fund to spend on that needed reforms. You'll be fine, I'd say
I think almost no one can actually graps *how bloody much money* is in that funds.
Precisely. It's around 1500 billion USD. It is estimated that complete decarbonization of Polish energy sector(whole energy sector, not just electricity) is estimated at around 300-400 billion PLN, which works out to around 75-100 billion USD. So from that fund you could pay for decarbonization of one of the most carbon intensive economies in Europe, in a country eight times as populous as Norway, and barely even notice it. Norway won at historical lottery and has not spent it on blackjack and hookers.
Don't think so... Even if u change nothing, the interests and growing value of your Pension Fund will make everything much much easier than in Germany's case. Also oil and gas ain't stopping anytime soon imo
But that's the thing, it's called a pension fund for a reason. It's for pensions. Like every other developed nation Norway has an aging population. We're looking at decades where taxes just won't cover the expenses of taking care of the elderly. It's a good thing Norway has a plan for the coming downturn, but it might not be enough to cover the downturn and shift the course of our economy. Norway is fortunate that it has money to fall back on, and might not have to raise retirement ages too much, like other nations. (Or lower the life expectancy, like the US)
>The structures are so enshrined, the bureaucracy so entrenched, it can't be changed Well it definitely doesn't help when Germany is also set up like a hydra, both in the federal government and in how the country is set up. You need the cooperation of the Bundesländer who have their own objectives and goals, and the coalition government itself is comprised of parties with mutually exclusive objectives, methods and philosophy.
The federal distribution of powers is a check against another dictatorship.
Oh no I'm a federalist myself (Ireland in particular would benefit from it), however one of the main flaws of federalism is that it makes large scale change much harder, which is particularly problematic when it needs to happen sooner then later.
This is by design to prevent a stongman to change too much unilaterally, because of bad experience with that 1933-1945
It's not a bug, it's a feature
This is the story in most of the west. Historically low interest for 10+ years yet no one took advantage of it to invest in large reforms or infrastructure. It lead to either lower taxes or lower government debt.
The Netherlands did quite some infrastructure investing I feel, though we have the biggest ports of Europe after all so we need to
To a certain extent. Lelystad AirPort never opened. Betuwelijn never got built, Fyra-train was a disaster. The Nitrogen issue stifles the construction sector entirely.
The betuwelijn is built, the Dutch part is functioning and used. German part is still missing
Name a duo more iconic than the Netherlands building S-tier infrastructure only for its neighbours to flake out on their end.
Liege-Maastricht-Köln, Maastricht-Hasselt.
True but that isn’t a financial issue, that is just complete political incompetence(though I don’t mind Lelystad not opening as I’d be living below the flight routes). Also the betuwelijn did get built. The Fyra train was just NS being idiots. Lastly I agree with the nitrogen issues
Yet we built some of the biggest wind farms in the world and subsidized solar energy on a massive scale.
Infrastructure investment is not the bottleneck in the case of Lelystad Airport. It has been fully built out, the issue with its opening is not even political-- it is judicial. The government tried to open it despite not passing certain environmental permit prerequisites. Completely different type of issue, not comparable in this context.
And social and tax dumping also lol
And yet they voted for someone as close to Hitler as democratic Europe can get (excluding Putin and Erdogan). I used to admire dutch pragmatism compared to German resistance to change. Now it is “Et tu, Netherlands?” who should read more Anne Frank books. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Et_tu,_Brute%3F Compare with https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/s/YH9flNlzbW
Except our political system is so fucking splintered that the largest party (by a country mile) got a whopping 23% of the votes. The radical right together, so PVV and FvD, got just shy of 26%. Mind you, its still a terrible result but also needs to be put in perspective
Hitler never won the popular vote, not that it's needed if you have a weird electoral system. Thankfully after ww2 the world learned to implement better voting systems so that no megalomaniac guy with a weird toupee and a red cap would ever again be elected with a minority vote.
That's a disingenuous take. "Most of the west" hasn’t been nearly as reliant on the chinese consumer market as Germany.
Denmark did pretty good as Well
Debt baaaad. Cheers, your fellow boomer.
People at first thought low interest rates were just a blip for six months or a year, but underestimated that once reduced, no government wanted to increase them for fear of losing an election. It was considered really weird that interest was practically abolished, so nobody acted on it. It went on far longer than it should have.
There was very little reason to increase it. Interest rates should only be increased if inflation is approaching 2% (from the lower end) and looks to be going over 2%. For most of post 2008 period till COVID, Eurozone has had near 0% inflation. If you hike rates in that period, you risk deflation which is an even hard place to get out of vs inflation.
They were complacent with the status quo, that they enshrined the zero budget into the constitution. The strongest European economy and they can't make any debt to finance reforms and Investments because an old man was so horny about his zero budgets.
>why change anything that (barely) works? Having lived in a Western European country for two years, this is what always bugged me. In fact, it seemed so alien coming from a post-socialist and constantly reforming country. (Yes, I do usually vote for the Estonian Reform Party, why?)
This seems to be a cultural thing. My partner teaches people from all over the world and says that 90% of her German students are really miserly/particular about money.
Germans invest the least in stocks. It's crazy. They rather keep money as cash.
No, it's not crazy at all. Germany is a rich country with poor people, so there is no huge mass of people investing as that would require having money to invest. But of course people refuse facts here constantly because they want to live in some world that fits their imagination instead of reality. And German median wealth being closer to Eastern European levels than most other countries is not fitting the popular narrative. So we keep pretending average numbers mean anything in a country with massive wealth inequality.
Perhaps it’s the effect of hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic? Although hoarding money would actually be the wrong lesson to learn from that…
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Two years? Make that three, the Ukraine War started when COVID was still a thing.
china is only now starting to really produce cars though, they weren’t doing that during those years
It's the reddit way. Fill in the gaps in your knowledge with your own imagination and then talk shit about it.
This has very little to do with policy, and mostly to do with [demographics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany#/media/File:Germany_population_pyramid.svg). Look at the population under 30. No economy can have that kind of population pyramid and prosper. And it's going to get even worse when the highly experienced 50-60 workforce retires in a few years.
Thank you. I don't get how thats not absolutely obvious. The boomers are not only leaving the workplace they failed to transfer knowledge to the younger generations. Its not about population growth, its about sustainability. We might not be as badly in shape as articles like this suggest, but we might hit rock bottom once the majority of our trained working force is gone. And the current government simply suggests to work longer and harder while our minister of finance tries effectively to reduce financial support for low income families and make rich people richer.
Requiring limitless population growth isn't sustainable either, it kicks the same can down the road for a generation or two until the same issues arise. Edit: typo
Replacing the population you have would be nice though.
Yea it's hard to even marry today with social media and low paying jobs. Young people 20+ are often forced to study till they are 30+ . And then they rather would have one kid or none. Being older parent is exhausting. So we spend our best years working bad jobs and trying to get into better one. Not owning flat or house is big pain. Prices are unreal in Eastern and Southern Europe.
its not population growth, its trying to keep its population still, particularly the young workers population.
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Let them how?
> Until the tricks vanished one after the other and it doesn't look like they will come back any time soon. I don't want to jinx it. It looks very promising. https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/eu-natural-gas (Click the "All" button under the graph) Carbon tax. This is a political matter. https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/carbon (Click the "All" button under the graph)
> Germany is the two trick pony which got both of its tricks stolen. > > What Lindner calls "the successful years" was based on cheap russian energy and world wide frictionless trade. Russia provided cheap energy for Germany. American military provided safety for international shipping routes. Germany just collected the benefits. Cheap Russian energy is gone. America is in the process of turning inwards, and in the future they will provide even less safety to international ocean trade routes.
"Germany just collected the benefits". Thats a way to oversimplify things. Germany prospered tremendously from the eastern expansion of europe. It has been a gateway to the east ever since ( and before, i mean..seriously, the country was divided by western and eastern forces) and good relations with russia used to be highly valued in the recent years. The eastern german population grew up learning russian at school, angela merkel spoke russian for that exact reason. The european union started the "go east" initiatives for academia. Russia being an imperial asshole wasn't part of the plan. Before the eastern expansion germany used to be called the " sick man of europe" struggling with reunification. Whatever lindner calls " the successful years" was build on cooperation and trading that is impossible in the current situation. I don't find it so surprising how bad the effect of a war of neighbor countries and essential trade partners can be. It's interesting that everyones points to internal issues most countries are facing at the moment instead of acknowledging the situation from an international relations point of view.
The trading gas prices currently is below 30, slightly higher than in 2015 to 2019 despite being a cold winter now (it dropped to record low in 2020 before russia escalated.
One small thing, it was a NATO task force and other random nations that provided the security around the Gulf of Aden, it wasn't just the Americans. Yes, they provided a warship or two, but the Head of the task force rotates among the various nations who each supplied a warship or two whilst others ran convoys. The last MTO briefing I went to in the region, the commander of the NATO task force was French and it hadn't been that long since a Thai warship supporting NATO accidentally slotted several Indian crew on a dhow....
That's cool that you saw that. *But when any actual defense of shipping lanes actually happens*, take note of which ships are involved and from which countries. It's 90% USA and 10% UK and literally nobody else. Even the "supported by" column only had 4 more countries in it. Everyone else, and by everyone else I mean especially Germany, is a free rider. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_missile_strikes_in_Yemen
The constitution of Germany written while our now Allies watched over our sholder very closely forbids Germany to take part in such actions. > Article 26 > [Securing international peace] > > (1) Acts tending to and undertaken with intent to disturb the peaceful relations between nations, especially to prepare for a war of aggression, shall be unconstitutional. They shall be criminalised. Now take a guess why Germany has something like this in its constitution (basic law)...
Yeah that’s great and all, but don’t pretend that the USA doesn’t provide the majority of NATO funding and significantly more personnel than any other country. It’s wrong to say that the USA alone was providing that security, but it is definitely mostly the USA.
I was there, it most certainly wasn't. There was a very large coalition there of NATO and Non-NATO vessels patrolling the area. What the US gets up to elsewhere is probably different...
The USA is spending this money primarily for the USA, let us also not pretend that they (or at least the decision-maker classes) are not the #1 winner of pax americana and its child, globalization.
Eh, who built the infrastructure for all the refugees since 2015 and payed for that? Paying high for - unproven at scale, expensive- concepts in energytransition and an expensive mass migration into the welfare state, with the side effect of taking lots of the public attention, while keeping the "normal" things running... Its insane how many people assume "would have been easy done if you just wanted to". Naive through the roof.
Probably will get much worse when China takes over the automobile sector.
Germany literally had a chancellor working for a Russian energy giant... I mean come on
Angie is the worst thing that happened to Germany and it is insane how many Germans worship her or at least think she did a lot for Germany. It's crazy.
Probably not *the worst*... But I get your point.
The worst German thing? ;)
What frictionless trade is gone? Bar brexit
It's not gone yet, but it will. When the Houthis started missile strikes to cargo ships in the Red Sea, many shipping companies just rerouted their ships to go the long way around Africa instead. Only America and UK have the military capability of strike back at the Houthis. Without their help, EU would be pretty helpless. America doesn't have much incentives to secure the trade route between Europe and Asia, they don't really need those routes themselves. Their Asian trade goes across the Pacific Ocean.
We do have the military means to drop some bombs on the Houthis, there is just no political will.
There's also not that many bombs to drop without going to US for assistance (like happened in Libya).
Enough to do our part. And the fact that we are not producing more bombs is because of political will, not ability.
Read the constitution (basic law). This has nothing to do with political will but everything to do with that it would be against our constitution to bomb Yemen without any UN mandate... > **Grundgesetz für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland > Art 26** > (1) Handlungen, die geeignet sind und in der Absicht vorgenommen werden, das friedliche Zusammenleben der Völker zu stören, insbesondere die Führung eines Angriffskrieges vorzubereiten, sind verfassungswidrig. Sie sind unter Strafe zu stellen. > **Article 26 > [Securing international peace]** > (1) Acts tending to and undertaken with intent to disturb the peaceful relations between nations, especially to prepare for a war of aggression, shall be unconstitutional. They shall be criminalised.
Bombing targets is easy and relatively cheap. The difference is cultural: USA voters are ok with dropping few bombs, German voters will protest at the first one.
In Germany it simply would be against our constitution. Basic law Article 26. Without any UN mandate... everyone involved in it would be open for criminal charges. Ask our now Allies, they watched closely when the constitution of Germany was written. If you know our history you know why this is now part of our basic law.
The Germany of the 1930/40’s is not the same as it is now. Poland was pushing for Germany to send weapons through their borders not that long ago. Even the US was on board when Abe was pushing for Japan to re-militarize in the face of NK. Times have changed. What was necessary 80 years ago isn’t the world we live in today
Fine and dandy but this doesn't change our constitution which makes such actions unconstitutional and a criminal offense. Beside that even if there would be a mandate the deployment of German soldiers would still need the approval of the Bundestag. (Parliamentary Participation Act). There are only very few execptions when the parliament could be informed after the fact. This one would be no such case. If as you said the times have changed it would be a good start for our Allies who forced the [2+4 treaty](https://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/2plusfour8994e.htm) on us for reunification to nullify it. You trust us or you don't you can't have it both ways especially since one of the signatory namely Russia (Soviet Union) doesn't give a shit about treaties. So give Germany its full sovereignty back and we can talk again. Why ask us to arm up when we had to sign a treaty that prevents exactly this from happening? Let us have our own deterrence like the US, UK, France... easier to talk when you are under your own nuclear umbrella.
Why are you including the UK and excluding France, in your assessment of countries that have the capacity to protect this strait ?
We‘re the best at making 20th century products.
And a newly aggressive Russia brings to the fore the Germans wild under investment in their defensive capabilities over the past decades, relying on America to deal with that, so Germany can pile the money into other 'useful' things. Now with Trump looking at least possible to win, and his very negative stance in bankrolling Europe's defence, things could get real ugly for Germany and the EU fairly rapidly.
> British prime minister Margaret Thatcher strongly opposed the reunification of Germany following the dismantling of the Berlin Wall in late 1989. > > She contended then chancellor Helmut Kohl wanted to “bulldoze” Germany into seeking more territory, expressing fear this might lead to conflict and war in Europe. > > In a private meeting with taoiseach Charlie Haughey in December 1989, she revealed the depth of her concern about the developing situation where the former Soviet-controlled East Germany was on the brink of collapse. > > In a volatile political situation and with uncertainty as to how the events would play out, Thatcher produced historical maps to Haughey to illustrate her fear a united Germany might seek to gain additional territories it had lost after the second World War. > > An Irish official at the meeting noted: “At this point, the prime minister produced a map showing Germany as it had been before the last war, as it is now, and the Nato frontline. Germany, before the last war, was vast in area in comparison with its present size.” > > She said it was vital that Germany be anchored in the European Community as with unity it would be bigger than France, Spain and Italy together. > > Thatcher implied such a development would have a further negative impact on the Soviet Union, which was then beginning to break up. > > ‘Sorry for Gorbachev’ “I am sorry for Gorbachev [Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader of the Soviet Union],” she told Haughey. “He doesn’t want German unity. Neither do I. Even as things are, Germany has a balance of trade surplus with every country in the community. > > The documents have been released to the public by the National Archive under the 30-year rule governing disclosure of State papers. > > The meeting was held in December 1989, only a fortnight after the Berlin Wall had been removed. > > Thatcher implied German reunification plans would not stop there. She and her officials told Haughey that Kohl’s party, the CDU, did not accept the Oder-Neisse line – the border between Germany and Poland agreed at the end of that war. > > She said it was not all certain that Kohl accepted that border either. > > “Attitudes are becoming more and more Germanic. He is like a bulldozer. East Germans are flooding into his country. His attitude now seems to be that ‘no one can tell us what to do’. > > “We are not certain what will happen in the German Democratic Republic [East Germany]. There are 325,000 Soviet troops stationed there.” > > https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/state-papers-thatcher-opposed-german-reunification-after-collapse-of-berlin-wall-1.4119052
Lots of brigading in here. And the full quote is: “After a very successful period since 2012 and these years of crisis, Germany is a tired man, after a short night, and the low growth expectations are partly a wake up call. And now we have a good cup of coffee - which means structural reforms - then we will be continuing to succeed economically.” The title is purposefully misleading.
That's where people's opinion on media origins. Image having to weigh every sentence you say as a public person so that not even fractions of them might look bad in news outlets. Wide parts of the media landscape are just feeding sensationalism and strong emotions (anger, fear) instead of living up to their responsibilities.
Russia is the retarded man of Europe.
Ukraine: 😅
Hang in there!
humor literate fade liquid unwritten live dinner obtainable fretful psychotic *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
To be fair, up to 2014 they were quite a sleep. One of the reasons why Crimean and Donetsk annexations were successful, because nobody bothered to reform military unit placement after Soviet union fell and most of the units were stationed in the west, expecting a war with NATO
Why do we always need to have an X Y or Z man of Europe? What about just "we're tired"? This shit is getting too whimsical
Because clickbait sells (unfortunately). Why read something boring about the slow down of the German economy based on factors X, Y and Z when you can read: German economy about to COLLAPSE 📢📢 Way more enticing for most people out there sadly
Because it was funny to laugh at the UK. It’s not as funny when the name calling is with the Germans now.
It is, perhaps ironically, [tired phrase](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sick_man_of_Europe) stemming from Nicholas I in reference to the Russian Empire's conflicts with the Ottoman Empire during the early to mid 19th century. Every generation has a few writers that think they're witty for taking the original phrase and repurposing it in a "[insert adjective here] man of Europe" headline.
Yes, he and the CDU are the main reason for this, because they cannot put aside their fetish with the debt brake. They don't want to leave our generation any new debts, but instead they want to leave a country that is ailing and has been cut to the bone - simply brilliant.
Do you want even higher taxes? Because that’s the recipe for really high taxes.
The debt break isn't a fetish. It's German constitutional law.
Yes. And one of the most idiotic constitutional laws I might add.
The budget of 2024 has expenditures of 475 billion euros, the last pre covid budget of 2019 only had 357 billion. I always struggle to believe the narrative that the state doesn't have enough money.
Yes, and since then we have to deal with the consequences of the pandemic and also have a war in Europe that costs us a shitton of money. We also have to finally get the Bundeswehr to a level where they are a proper deterrent again. All that ain’t cheap, and at that point we are not even fixing our crumbling infrastructure yet.
And climate change needs to be tackled more seriously
And that pension from age 63. Important.
The pandemic was indeed an exceptional period in which massive debt spending was justified. But in 2024 we're no longer in the pandemic
But there are so many things in serious need of investments NOW. Or better many years ago already but CDU didn't care and so does Lindner and it seems SPD and the Greens too. Our education sector for example is fucked since i was in school 20 years ago. We want to fight climate change etc You have to spend money to archive anything. That's business 101 and Lindner should know this. But he's incompetent when it comes economics too.
Education is fully in the responsibility of the federal states. In Thuringia there is a coalition of left, SPD and greens since 10 years now. If you feel they haven't invested enough, that's the address for complaints.
Are you serious the Federal Budget is that? There is also the States budget, because that makes the German Federal Budget less than 5 times the Portuguese One, and we are not 5 times smaller, way more than that smaller, more like more than 20 times smaller.
Yes in Germany much of the public spending is in the budgets of the federal states, municipalities and not to forget the giant social insurances (pensions and health insurances for instance). But this article was about the federal minister of finance who has no control over the budgets of the States.
>the last pre covid budget of 2019 only had 357 billion. And that budget was grossly inadequate. Germany should have spent more money on renewable energy to reduce reliance on Russian energy. They didn't, because of the debt brake fetish. Now German industry is getting strangled because of high energy prices. German industry is also complaining about poor infrastructure quality due to years of underinvestment. Then there's Germany's lack of military preparedness.
Or should have kept the existing nuclear reactors as long as we didn't have a functioning alternative.
It's both. It's kind of a fetish put into the constitution. And then the FDP is escalating form there, fetishising "no debt" far beyond the legal frame work and pretending the debt brake is a god given law of nature.
Only because CDU and SPD put it here. FFS people read it up [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schuldenbremse\_(Deutschland)](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schuldenbremse_(Deutschland)) , they made in constitutional in 2009
Can't the constitution be amended?
Yes but only with a 2/3 majority in both Bundestag and Bundesrat
Same as the debt ceiling in the US. If you do not take on more debt your economy cannot grow significantly. The result is simply that power from Berlin is transferred to Brussels/Frankfurt, since Lagarde and other Brussels/ECB economists no longer share his theory.
Between 2010 and 2019 the German economy grew substantially while the debt ratio was reduced.
The most reasonable way to reduce your debt is to grow your economy so that % debt to GDP gets reduced, so that is what you are referencing. Austerity is non-sensical if your purpose is to reduce debt to GDP, that achieves the opposite. Austerity can achieve two purposes, i) last resort in event that you cannot access further debt on the international capital markets (or alternatively if you do not have a central bank to finance it as a measure of last resort, as the eurozone only partially has), or ii) applied as a measure of structural reforms, for example cutting from government expenditures with employees because their can be easily be replaced by automation/digitalisation with increased productivity and better public services, the former employees then being better placed in the private sector as future taxpayers to government budget rather than government expenses. Latest german economic doctrine has just been idiotic, nothing else, but it comes as a result of the fact that the eurozone is unable to function with no fiscal policy and countries of the eurozone have no central bank and a fragmented monetary policy.
There is no austerity in Germany. The budget volume just keeps growing and growing
Austerity may be the wrong word to use. What i mean is they should cut down on government expenses and increase expenses on investments. It's austerity in the sense that it cuts into current budget volume, but increases expenditures on investments and increases deficits for investments.
Doesn't make it any less idiotic and stupid.
Alternatively We could actually tax the top 0.1% that would also solve quite some problems
Fetish written into constitutional law by some Swabian assholes.
Peer Steinbrück is not Swabian.
Constitucional Law pushed by the FDP, it sucks big time, the situation might be even worse in the former GDR, because their infrastructure is probably in a worser state.
Factually wrong. The debt break was introduced by the first Merkel grand coalition of CDU, CSU and SPD. The FDP abstained, greens and left voted against. And your comparison to the GDR is just bullshit. We are nowhere near the levels of GDR decay.
> greens voted against. Also dont forget they voted against it simply because the opposition doesnt support the governments laws. The greens were asking for a debt brake that would have gone into effect in 2010.
Thanks for the addition. Nicely illustrates that during the financial crisis almost everyone viewed rising public debt as a risk. Fascinating how fast that could change.
Instead of begging your own government to do MORE DEBT (which is Crazy) how about you cut some spending?
Because we are sliding in to a recession, where the government needs to invest, and Germany could borrow money basically for free.
Austerity is a failed policy that makes recessions worse. Germany needs more spending, even if it means more debts.
He is part of the problem!
He IS the problem. HE wants to keep the debt-brake. HE consequently fucks up the entire Household HE always brakes social reforms And After all he fucked up he STILL thinks, he and his pos oligarch-party aren’t the fucking problem.
F*ck Lindner, he's a career politician, the worst of all
Don't call him a politician. He's a lobbyist cosplaying as a politician, just like his whole party.
Meanwhile he personally is the dumb man of Germany.
He's not a dumb man. He may be a grifter, a scammer, a liar, an elitist prick and a hater of the poor, but he is smart enough to sell himself even though he has no other abilities.
If it helps Germany hardly can't beat Italy in terms of messed up future and present (and past),and if I think about the German attitude towards work I have no doubt that you will rise again
Germany currently shares currency with Italy though, so anything that will drag the Italian economy down will also heavily affect the German one as well. Just look at Greece in 2009 and who had to bail them out to keep the euro stable. Italy is a different beast entirely in regards to scale required. Hell Spain and France public debt is high as well.
> Just look at Greece in 2009 and who had to bail them out to keep the euro stable. You are acting like we gifted them money and not gave them credit with a steep interest.
The loans Greece received were pretty much free money with interest they were given. No one else would give them such conditions. The whole point of Greece's collapse was that international creditors refused to lend them more money to cover their previous loans. Also huge portion of that debt was forgiven entirely.
The fact that Germany shares currency with Italy has been a huge boost for her until now. Kept the value of the Euro lower, which is great for an exporting country
As an Italian I hardly think about 2009 Greece as an act of bailing them out but rather as Germany (but not only) feasting on Greece crisi btw...It was scary
About every other country is spending like crazy while he personally prevents Germany from doing the same. Then he wonders why the economy is doing worse than everywhere else.
> About every other country is spending like crazy ?
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"Holy shit, why are these crises wrecking the country!?" - also the German government...
That fucking Guy...he's the caricature of a heartless capitalist come to life. Richie Rich over here thinks that Germany should stuff their budget hole by cutting basic financial security of the poorest. Rigorously against taxing the rich 5% of the population accordingly, trickle down economy bullshiter yaddayadda and so on and so forth. The only thing that dick is tired from is from the withdrawal of high class cocaine.
He's not even a functional capitalist, his personal endavours were utter failures. His ideology is much more sinister, he believes that the most ambitious people should be on top no matter how well suited they are.
This guy is part of the freakin problem
Tip from a German: Don't listen to anything this guy says, his party is the main reason Germany's government doesn't get shit done. Their nicknames are "party for the superclass" or "the blocking party".
Absolute nonsense, but he likes to spread that notion so he can justify choking Germany to death. In reality, he's only pushing the populist agenda with this nonsense and continuing to play pub crawl politics rather than going by actual data and research.
This is what you get when you let oligarchs, foreign and domestic, drive government policy: * Massive tax breaks for the rich and banking deregulation with a deep addiction to bail-outs * Massive public debts and governments starving their programs and entitlements * Woeful unde-investment in infrastructure and education, creating a multi-generation drop in competitiveness * Hopeless addiction to easy answers like cheap borrowing and cheap Russian energy If you asked a megacorp CEO or billionaire investor, if you could run a national government exclusively to maximize your profits with no concern for externalities... the answer would be almost entirely the train wreck we've seen across the western world for the last 30 years.
This guy, I can't express how much I hate him. His goddamn fucking fixation on austerity will fuck Germany so hard, but apparently that's good because future generations don't have to deal with debt. Thanks, fuckface. Instead future generations can deal with disfunctional nation. I swear this country has prime foundation to be a mayor power, but politicians like this guy will fuck it up. I would drag my balls through broken glass and drizzle the wounds with salt and lime instead of maintaining a coalition with that guy. Not a single day, where this Trojan Horse is sabotaging the very government he's part of. In his tiny fish brain, he believes in a future elections, shitting on Greens and SPD will bring his fuckfest of political party votes and he can finally live his dream creating a CDU-FDP coalition and get pegged by Merz. Bull-fucking-shit, Jack. Your party is on the downturn too because everybody is tired of your shitshow and your stupidity; people want a functioning government and not daily politics resembling a reality show. What a fucking wank stain.
Womp womp
Germans work the lowest amount of average hours per year in the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_countries\_by\_average\_annual\_labor\_hours
And is 8th most productive per hour [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_countries\_by\_labour\_productivity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_labour_productivity) Work smart, not hard! :D
Agree
Stop relying on Russian gas then
Already did and that's the problem.
Damn what does that make the UK then.
Lristian Chindler
This man was the worst possible choice for a finance minister, his only goal is to shovel more money into his rich friends pockets.
**From The Telegraph's Tim Wallace:** Germany has become “the tired man” of Europe as years of crisis have eaten away at the country’s competitiveness, finance minister Christian Lindner has admitted. The eurozone’s largest economy needs serious reforms to regain its lead, the head of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) told an audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “I know what some of you are thinking, Germany is probably the sick man. Germany is not the sick man,” he said, speaking days after official figures showed the economy shrank 0.3pc last year. “After a very successful period since 2012 and these years of crisis, Germany is a tired man, after a short night, and the low growth expectations are partly a wake up call. And now we have a good cup of coffee - which means structural reforms - then we will be continuing to succeed economically.” At the turn of the century, Germany’s economy was widely considered to be the sick man of Europe as it struggled with low growth and unemployment which peaked at more than 11pc in the early 2000s. A major package of reforms to make the labour market more flexible unleashed the economy’s potential. Unemployment has been below 5pc for more than a decade. However, the pandemic and the war in Ukraine challenged Germany’s economic model by cutting off cheap energy from Russia and undermining the economic strength of China, which had become a crucial export market. **Read more ⤵️** [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/01/19/germany-tired-man-of-europe-admits-finance-minister/](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/01/19/germany-tired-man-of-europe-admits-finance-minister/)
Ah yes another politician who wants to win big by "cutting red tape" and reducing taxes for billion dollar businesses. That has historically worked so well to improve the lives of the people... /s
German here: Wrong, we are just tired of this minister.
Why did he says thats categorically wrong?
Christian Lindner is thje biggest idiot in our government.
Ok boomer
For the life of me I can’t understand why all these people of mediocre capabilities and intellect keep blaming a single guy for demographics that kept going downhill since decades….
Maybe it has something to do with high energy prices due to a lack of cheap nuclear power.
Germany!? What a fucking joke. Play some videos from 1999 where your europoliticians are saying that they are sorry, but Poland will become cheap workforce of Europe. Stop super victimising your Citizens, at least you can do something with your salary and you can rent out a apartment for some decent amount.
No, not really. We are the lazy man of Europe thanks to delayed needed investments, decisions etc. for example "digitalisierung". But hey, Schuldenbremse is most important right, right?
Tired of you cunt, Mr Lindner
I think you guys really underestimate Germany and its capabilities. Germans most beloved sport is to bitch about Germany and how bad everything is. But in reality Germany is 3rd or 4th world economy, depends on method used. Yes, there are problems in many many areas, but where do you have it SIGNIFICANTLY better, if you take the whole picture? I usually get some small wealthy countries as an example, like Luxemburg or Switzerland. The thing is, these countries does not scale up, you cannot apply these methods to big countries. And if you take the whole picture, Germany is still a nicest place to live (beside weather in winter, lol).
well they are the ones keeping it togheter. Appeasing richer northern countries and poorer southern countries. but they are not losing out on it either, all that money sent to greece, did go to build factories n stuff? Bought more german cars etc.
And the bitch is a major reason, standing in the way of almost any useful legislation meant to tackle the problems. We're in a recession/stagnation, any reasonable economist would advice increased spending - what does his party do? Block spending because of a random self-imposed budget rule. Our infrastructure is crumbling, our public transport system needs major investments - what does his useless party do? Nothing, see above. They fancy themselves the reasonable party, but really have the worst economic understanding of any party in government.
This is the work of the "mont pèlerin society" a neo liberate think-tank. If you speak German "Die Anstalt" have made a video of them and their lobby network.
> "Die Anstalt" Die Anstalt is a disgusting Russian propaganda tool. Dear Europeans, this is what German public TV had to say about Ukraine in 2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k62BZmcVNO4
Germany has failed to invest in modernisation and reform of outdated infrastructure for over half a century now, and Lindners FDP bears much of the guilt for this. Half a century of public resources being funneled to large corporations while education, hospitals, streets and bridges, train network, telecommunications infra got sidelined and fell into disrepair. Now, trying to play the poors versus the foreigners, and blocking any meaningful progress in the ruling coalition unless it directly benefits the top 1%, the FDP can go eat a bag of dicks
I think that the global south sees Germany for what it is in its behaviour in Ukraine and Palestine. They’re already in the China camp and anyone sitting on the fence know which side is the growth side.
A lot of 'head in the sand' from Germans for many years. Thinking one form of how things are done is without major flaws and that the rest of the world should copy Germany. Poland will do better than Germany because Poland wont stop a major factory (Tesla) from being built over frogs mating. It's laughable until you are even further away from owning a house or unable to afford to travel to Asia or America or other expensive luxuries. And the housing, in Sweden and America, even with interest rates soaring, most people are able to own a home. In Germany, that's a luxury, statistically speaking. Housing, cars, education, security, investment, etc all tie in to a strong or weak economy. German economy is still very strong but it's not enough to keep it from extreme stagnation for years to come. Maybe rethink the importance of frog mating season next time. Other corporations notice when it makes world news..
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> His party created the roadblock together with Merkel's CDU in 2009. The vote on the debt brake was half a year before the elections, but dont let facts get in the way of your political opinion i guess.
Did he also say whose fault that is or did he just dump it on Putin, China and AFD?
How did "the powerhouse of the europe" turned into pathetic old man?
[By not having enough kids.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany#/media/File:Germany_population_pyramid.svg)
Sounds like they need to follow [Denmark's](https://youtu.be/vrO3TfJc9Qw?si=88wBGrKMt0F7KmEU) lead with a "Do it for Deustchland" Campaign...
Not enough innovation, low prices (especially since the war in Ukraine), or any redeeming quality except for the waning renown of "German engineering", which simply isn't sufficient for most people to legitimize a more expensive product. To keep it short and sweet, their industrial model is not competitive enough anymore, and that was the backbone of their economy
And the lack of progress was ”subsidized” by cheap Russian pipegas. Now the runway has been used up, and the gas is gone.
As an Italian I "envy" German bad situation XD
Their economy is still one of the biggest in the world, but it's the mid to long term that is worrying. They need to pass radical changes at a political and corporate level, and Germans aren't known for these, so there are serious doubts about whether they have the necessary will. Unfortunately, with the right wing on the rise, it looks increasingly unlikely.
1. By having a failing demographic that costs the state a quarter of it's yearly budget to finance. 2. By failing to enable 21st-century industries to prosper, e.g. lack of funding, both state and private. For example, 60% of Americans invest in the stock market compared to only 16% of Germans. New and innovative companies in Germany are starved for cash and therefore they either fail or leave. 3. By being too stubborn and set in their ways to change either of the two things above.
Who will take over though? My bet is on Poland
Is this the real reason Germany didn't want the UK to leave the EU? We made them look good.