Prosperity: How politicians and entrepreneurs are destroying Germany’s recovery

Opinion

The growth of the German economy is probably at zero this year. And if things get bad, it will happen next year too. Some industries (but by no means all) are having a very difficult time. Exports, which often helped us out of the crisis in the past, are weakening. There are many objective problems, but also some subjective reasons for the current situation.

There is simply a lack of optimism for the future, without which no economy can function. Only the stock market still exudes it, as the development of the Dax 40 shows. But not the population. And neither is the economy itself.

In the past, people in Germany often read and heard Ludwig Erhard’s quip that fifty percent of the economy is psychology. Rarely lately. Maybe the saying is too worn out. Who among the younger generation still knows the “architect of the economic miracle”? And yet the bon mot actually fits well today.

A strange coalition of politicians and entrepreneurs is making the situation even worse than it already is. People constantly talk about problems and far too rarely about solutions. The government coalition is in constant conflict with itself. That’s why the Greens complain about the FDP, the Free Democrats about the Greens – and the Social Democrats about both partners. And because the opposition’s most important task is to always criticize the government, it naturally complains too. This must give the population the impression that everything in Germany is going down the drain. Which in reality is not the case.

Economic situation: Shrill complaining from entrepreneurs and associations

But many entrepreneurs and their associations also use a constant, shrill tone of complaining. This is especially true for the German chemical industry, which often uses a wrong tone and shifts all the blame onto everyone else in order to distract attention from its own bad decisions.

With the constant talk about “botches” and the “comfortable, prosperous sleep” in the Federal Republic, the industry’s grandees are not only depressing our mood, but are also damaging the country’s image abroad. The German image is already suffering from problems that were not previously attributed to us. Just think of the constant strikes at Lufthansa and the railways and the constantly congested highways. The traffic situation in Germany is now seen as a clear risk factor for direct investments abroad. We used to be admired for our punctual connections and high speeds on the expressways.

The psychological landscape is somewhat similar to that of the early noughties, when there was a similar general dissatisfaction. Even the metaphors of the time return, for example the image of the “red lantern”. At that time, the country was suffering from the exhaustion after 16 years of Helmut Kohl and the reform backlog that had spread like mildew across the entire country, despite all his contributions to reunification.

The red-yellow-green government alliance under Olaf Scholz has achieved the feat of placing a similar veil over Germany in just two years.