Icon: enlarge
US President-elect Joe Biden (in September 2019): This brings together a lot of turning points
Photo:
Joshua Lott / Getty Images
What we have just received in pictures from Washington still has an effect in our heads.
From buffalo-hide wearers and squawking-scolding presidents.
From people who consider each other to be idiots.
And about political decisions that, shall we say, seem to have fallen out of time - such as getting out of everything that could still save the climate.
Or last minute executions.
Or presidential fondling of billionaires.
While our continuity seems to have been cast in concrete, almost everyone agrees when it comes to corona masks, we do climate-friendly things like phasing out coal, raising the minimum wage against social displeasure, and the head of government is still very popular after 16 years.
Fairytale.
Except that in fairy tales things turn around occasionally - and princes can turn into frogs.
Thomas Fricke, arrow to the right
Born in 1965, has headed the WirtschaftsWunder internet portal since 2007.
From 2002 to 2012 he was chief economist at the Financial Times Deutschland.
He is co-founder of the »Forum New Economy«, in which experts have come together to develop a new economic leitmotif.
Something like that could happen right now - even if it is still overlaid in the perception of the last Trump twitch.
It is quite possible that with Joe Biden as the new president, the Americans will soon be the ones who are doing the most impressive things that are best in these times.
And Germany looks increasingly old.
Whether this happens also depends on who the ruling CDU party chooses as the new boss at the weekend.
Inconspicuously historical.
If one takes as a yardstick what is most likely the challenges of the time, Trump does not come off well - whether in the prevention of climate crises, the reduction of social divisions, the international solution of international problems or the reversal of the trend towards an ever stronger one An economy shaped by financial instead of real values, in which shares boom lonely in years of Corona emergency.
The man dismantled climate authorities, resigned from Paris and other international agreements and pushed coal-fired power stations and oil production.
It is true that wages have risen noticeably faster again for the first time in the years since taking office (which has also been the case elsewhere).
At the same time, however, the rich were given more tax gifts - and buying stocks even more attractive without actually making the economy more productive.
All of this is only just in the final phase, and the closer the moment comes when Joe Biden will be sworn in next week, the more you can imagine how much the signs will soon change in the USA - at least since the Democrats de facto have a majority in both houses of parliament.
Which wasn't sure until last week.
It's not just about the direct billions in aid in the Corona crisis, including $ 2,000 checks for every American that the new US president has just announced.
If Biden were to implement roughly what he announced in his program, a lot of change would arise.
These include the highly symbolic return to the Paris climate agreement, as well as the planned subsidization of the exit from one or the other oil production, as well as the increase in the minimum wage to $ 15.
According to plan, Biden wants to invest an enormous three trillion dollars in the run-down traffic routes, climate protection, the expansion of state housing for the poor and many other things over the next ten years.
In addition, similar large sums of money that should go to the ailing health system or schools.
more on the subject
Merz, Laschet or Röttgen: A CDU boss to attack - or to govern by Valerie Höhne, Christian Teevs and Severin Weiland
Icon: Video Candidate Check: Who will lead the CDU in the future? By Leonie Voss, Carolin Katschak and Jonathan Miske (animations)
If all of this became real, according to Paris-based US expert Véronique Riches-Flores, the rate of public spending and investment would rise for the first time in a long time to levels that were still common in the 1950s and 1960s - before the dogma of the supposedly necessary withdrawal of the State of all sorts.
That would be like a turning point that would also give America's economic power a boost.
According to estimates by the economist, productivity of the US economy grew particularly impressively in the post-war period when the state invested properly - and vice versa.
The same applies if wages rose reasonably appropriately instead of steadily losing real value as in previous decades.
In addition, according to Biden's program, there could be more delicate projects such as raising taxes for companies, for the reduction of which Trump took on quite a lot of debt, without the relief having helped the country much in the long term.
Or taxation of financial transactions - to reverse the fatal trend that it is more worthwhile to invest in financial magic than in real values.
All in all, a change could then emerge that would be comparable to that which Franklin D. Roosevelt once triggered with his New Deal in the 1930s - at that time also including a number of programs to build infrastructure and social security or to reduce wealth gaps and financial magic .
The only thing uncertain is whether the Democrats will agree among themselves on all of this.
Even if one or the other project got stuck, the boost could still be enough to make the USA look much more progressive again after four Trump years.
Which brings us to the prospects on this side of the great lake - and the election of the new CDU chairman.
What the three candidates are planning to solve the great challenges of the time has sounded, let's say, not quite as ambitious as with Biden in the past few weeks.
That may be because everyone wanted to please everyone so that they would be elected.
But it could also be that there isn't that much programmatic force behind it.
And at least nothing that is apparently good enough to solve the major problems of the time with the verve of the new US president.
One or the other even threatens to be counterproductive - a risk that is certainly highest with Friedrich Merz.
According to him, it will soon be a question of putting everything (government spending) to the test in Germany - and doing without a lot.
In order to have balanced national budgets again after Corona 2022.
Maybe abolish solos for everyone.
And to lower taxes for companies because they supposedly can no longer.
And to rely above all on market economy mechanisms for climate protection.
more on the subject
Icon: Spiegel PlusTrump and the economy: End of a business relationshipBy Ines Zöttl, Washington
Icon: Spiegel Plus vaccination chaos endangers the upswing: How quickly is America's economy recovering? By Ines Zöttl, Washington
Big litter?
The mantra of putting everything to the test doesn't sound like it - to be honest, more like the depressive atmosphere of the German crisis in the early noughties, when the question of who should be cut now led to endless battles.
And an abrupt halt to investment projects because municipalities can easily stop them.
With the result that afterwards society drifted further apart - so much that even conservatives like Wolfgang Schäuble today complain about the division in the country and the darker side of globalization - and Germany for years far too little in infrastructure, schools, universities, digitization and climate protection has invested.
Nobody can really want that.
It sounds bizarre to want to lower taxes for companies all over the world, because that's what the USA (under Trump) did too - if the new US president also wants to do everything to get back at least some of the economically dubiously expensive gifts take back.
It also makes no sense to lower taxes for (anyway) top earners in 2021 - if, in view of the dwindling trust in politics, it is urgent to attract more people again.
Just like the new US administration is planning.
Worshiping market forces is also of little use at a time when many problems have arisen precisely because the state has withdrawn too much.
Counting on the market for climate protection is courageous - after several years in which neither the CO2 trade nor the free competition for new technologies have had a sufficient effect;
and the state now has to help with massive investments in charging stations, for example.
Just like the new US president intends to do.
Sure, Joe Biden is biologically not immediately recognizable as the incarnation of the new.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was not at the beginning either.
It is also still open how much the militant Democrats can agree on.
The new rulers in Washington, however, seem to have a lot more competence and ambition than some of the previous ones.
And they would have to lose a lot of their courage to end up with the ideal kinkiness that Germany's candidates for Merkel's successor have so far offered.
What the new US President will present in the next few months could soon make the Germans seem quite out of date - in terms of testing, measuring-and-proportioning, cuddling shareholders and hoping too much for the beautiful market economy.
Big challenges also need big investments and programs.
America has the chance to be much further ahead in a few years - whether in reducing social divisions or in the fight against the climate crisis.
How great the risk is may be decided in these hours.
Icon: The mirror
