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This week, it has brought a message to some trash, according to which the German economists defend the debt brake - contrary to the impression that may have recently emerged. That's what the Ifo Institute reported.
Which, in turn, hastened not only the "Frankfurter Allgemeine" to inform their readers, who together with the Ifo performs the appropriate survey among economists. The finding even made it to the British "Financial Times", where it was equal (probably shaking his head), Germany's "leading" economists for just that debt brake, which there is almost nowhere else, because it usually goes without as well or bad , And that has recently been criticized even in Germany more often.
All nonsense? Well. It is worth to read again.
Now we do not want to be petty - and nölen that it is of course not "all" German economists who have said that. In fact, there were 64 in the underlying survey. At 4000 members alone in the German Association of Economists, the Verein für Socialpolitik, an at least somewhat coarser understanding of substitution is needed to make the results representative.
We look over it generously
Of course, we would not even have the idea of correcting the mother of all financial newspapers, as far as the description of the respondents is concerned as "leading". In this survey also - certainly honorable - professors from places like, say, Braunschweig have actively participated, whose leadership has so far at least not yet revealed. And who have not claimed to be particularly good at financial policy. Which is not bad, but not necessarily leading.
Swam over it. Also, that the "FAZ" over-interpreted, the German economists held, as this survey shows (the majority) nothing about the fact that the state is now "indebted" debt - donated; As far as we know, this has not been suggested by anyone and was not asked in the survey. It was ascertained whether the debt brake was regarded as "expedient".
Oh, we also generously overlook it, if the Ifo Institute in its press release in the second paragraph immediately let the in-house head of the survey say that the results confirm what he has always said. If that makes a stupid journalist, clever professors would soon scold that somebody is mixing message and opinion. Rightly so.
The pitfalls of the debt brake
The thing is, even if we all this, because life is just beautiful or we have other worries, sometimes not so tight - so tell us that 64 of a few thousand are somehow representative, because it is after all, the majority of Answerer is (120) - then there is still such a strange feeling that the message of the scholarship survey could possibly be reversed somehow.
It is indeed true that one or the other ideologically unsuspicious experts have recently pointed out the pitfalls of this type of debt brake:
- because, for example, there is the concern that the strict specification will not only stifle nonsensical government spending, but also those that are urgently needed, such as those for climate protection or the arrival of schools and railways in the 21st century;
- and because according to the rather complicated debt brake regulation, despite the acute risk of recession, only a few billion euros more are currently being spent, which is crazy;
- although even critics find it hard to cite good counterarguments, where the finance minister is currently getting even more out of every given loan, and estimates show that well spent money on infrastructure or health pays off for the finance minister in euros and cents if it does leading to more economic output and thus higher tax revenues in the future.
It's not about, let's say, the increase of the inner-city parking fee, which every city council can just decide and undo, but a principle that was set with much fanfare ten years ago as supposedly eternal truth in the constitution, where something as long-lasting as the invulnerability of human dignity is there.
And after it was determined that the federal government in economically unremarkable times only debt in the amount of exactly 0.35 percent of gross domestic product, equivalent to 12 billion euros, may do - in worse something more. But for the assessment of what is normal, there are such curious formulas that this, as at the moment, sometimes leads to the dictum that after constitution just half of it should be borrowed - although the circumstances in terms of recession, climate crisis or loss of confidence is actually anything but normal. What only then, when the debt brake came into the Basic Law, no one could have guessed. Core of the problem.
The actual message
This not only makes it clear why the doubts seem to increase among the experts. And the actual message that results from the survey would have to be different. For example, with the following, admittedly not quite as crisp headline:
Ten years later, just over half of the experts say that a ten-year, ten-year majority rule for a principle that required a two-thirds majority in the Bundestag and Bundesrat - suppose, as stated above, that would be reasonably representative. And even with those, the yes only applies to the question of whether they would "basically" hold on to it. Which is all the more wrong, as the ultimate part of this rule - which will only come into force at the turn of the year - at a time when, according to the survey, not even two-thirds, but just over half of the experts that still good. Let's say: a civic coup.
So watch out, dear politicians, in constitutional ruling: You should do this only if you are really, really sure that not ten years later run away the experts who still find it right.