The German government is aiming to get the country back on track with a wide range of reforms. However, the latest Deutschlandtrend survey shows that the public remains unconvinced.
What isn’t bad about it? It’s an attack on social security and government transparency. e.g. the Informationsfreiheitsgesetz was instrumental in uncovering corruption, the new rules basically make it impossible for almost any case to make use of it (e.g. high costs, need to prove that you have a berechtigtes Interesse (“justified interest”?) which is guaranteed to be prohibitively hard).
Well, if implemented fully, the package could raise Germany’s long-run trend growth from roughly 0.4% to around 0.7% per year. That’s not bad. Pretty impressive actually since this would only be the contribution by this package by a government to growth. (Not counting business cycle, global demand or firms’ contribution to growth)
What’s the point of 0.3% more growth if almost every citizen has less money and fewer rights as a direct consequence of this reform? Our problems are rampant corruption and runaway wealth accumulation of the superrich to the detriment of wages, housing costs, social security, the environment and many more issues of the not-wealthy, not a lack of economic growth.
Well, the problems you point out (corruption and superrich) are real. And this package does not address them at all.
But there is another problem, too, which is adressed. Some parts of Europe do not bring enough new goods and services to market. One big reason for that is that Germany has not had a capital-based pension system and is not business friendly enough.
Economic growth should never be the only goal. The good part of this goal is that it comes hand in hand with better and new goods and services that make life better.
What isn’t bad about it? It’s an attack on social security and government transparency. e.g. the Informationsfreiheitsgesetz was instrumental in uncovering corruption, the new rules basically make it impossible for almost any case to make use of it (e.g. high costs, need to prove that you have a berechtigtes Interesse (“justified interest”?) which is guaranteed to be prohibitively hard).
Well, if implemented fully, the package could raise Germany’s long-run trend growth from roughly 0.4% to around 0.7% per year. That’s not bad. Pretty impressive actually since this would only be the contribution by this package by a government to growth. (Not counting business cycle, global demand or firms’ contribution to growth)
What’s the point of 0.3% more growth if almost every citizen has less money and fewer rights as a direct consequence of this reform? Our problems are rampant corruption and runaway wealth accumulation of the superrich to the detriment of wages, housing costs, social security, the environment and many more issues of the not-wealthy, not a lack of economic growth.
Well, the problems you point out (corruption and superrich) are real. And this package does not address them at all.
But there is another problem, too, which is adressed. Some parts of Europe do not bring enough new goods and services to market. One big reason for that is that Germany has not had a capital-based pension system and is not business friendly enough.
Economic growth should never be the only goal. The good part of this goal is that it comes hand in hand with better and new goods and services that make life better.
Are you an AI bot? You sound like an AI bot, especially because those are known for saying dumb shit confidently
Nope. I just don’t pride myself on being cynical and dramatic. I try to point out commonsense but difficult patterns.
What use are “better and new goods and services” if you can’t afford them?