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Friedrich Merz, Christian Lindner and Co .: Descent of the Super Liberals

2021-01-22T16:16:28.422Z


Whether Friedrich Merz or Christian Lindner: If it doesn't work, it is supposedly the evil zeitgeist to blame. The crisis of the old economic liberalism has real reasons.


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Politicians Merz, Lindner in Berlin: friends in spirit

Photo: Kay Nietfeld / dpa

Zoff has what it takes to become the funniest fake news of the month: Allegedly, FDP leader Christian Lindner offered Friedrich Merz, who was not elected CDU leader, to join the club immediately after the defeat.

Reported an avid media boss and friend in spirit.

Which they just did not find so good - and now tackle the man legally.

Although he always praised both of them so beautifully.

Now the lawyers are active in the brotherly dispute.

Fabric for a series. 

That's nonsense, too.

What should the FDP now with a loser?

And what is Merz supposed to do in a party that is happy to stay in the Bundestag at all? 

That's ridicule, of course.

But the farce may say a lot about how those struggling with themselves and the world who see no sun politically - although they are (allegedly) the only ones in the country with economic competence.

How can it be that the people or the party delegates do not adore them? 

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.

The answers range from »Well, the speech at the party congress was also crap« to »If he hadn't talked about his wives« and »Somewhat unfortunate positioning on the vaccination topic« to »The media« - and above all the evil »Zeitgeist «Who just thinks in the wrong direction.

It is just "in" to call for the state.

Pah.

Which has a hint of conspiracy thesis.

It is quite possible that the worldview of a rumble economic liberalism, for which Merz and Lindner's FDP stood for a long time, failed.

Such a zeitgeist is not a fashion week.

This insight could help you ascend again. 

What counts as economic competence for people like Merz is in reality a very one-sided conservative model of economy - one that has actually dominated as a leitmotif in the three decades since the beginning of the 1980s, and according to which ... 

  • ... the

    economy can

    actually solve all the problems of mankind, if only you let it free and make profit - at least always better than the by definition incapable state and its even more stupid officials;

  • ... the

    financial markets

    ensure that money always ends up with the right people - and everything that is needed is financed nicely;

    which speaks in favor of deregulating it as much as possible;

  • ...

    people

    are lazy and unproductive in themselves - and only abandon that if they are given the appropriate economic and financial incentives or a lot of pressure;

  • Economists

    therefore (unfortunately, unfortunately) always have to exude a touch of sadomasochism, because progress (supposedly) only comes through "unpleasant truths", that is, mostly through renunciation, except of course from high performers who take their money out of the country when they are displeased;

  • ... it is also best economically

    to first relieve

    the

    rich

    , because it is assumed that they ensure prosperity - which in the end benefits everyone;

  • ... otherwise everyone should

    look after themselves

    as much

    as possible

    , because that is possible if you only want (with exceptions such as frailty), so we are basically blacksmiths of our happiness, which is why it does not need so much welfare state, which of course disturbs the pressure do.

All of this is coherent, there was consensus for a long time and therefore also played a key role in how even a socialist like Gerhard Schröder once designed Agenda 2010 - with pressure, financial deregulation and lowering top tax rates.

What is seen as a success in pleasant circles, but may not have been received quite as enthusiastically by the people in the country.

Which brings us to the drama.

more on the subject

CDU chairmanship: Conservatives in the Kulturkampf A column by Thomas Fricke

If the dogma has since fallen into disrepute with us and around the world, a whole cascade of disasters, false prognoses and collateral damage could have contributed to it.

Like that ...

  • ... a

    historical financial crisis

    intervened, which reduced all talk of the rationally efficient financial markets to absurdity - and suddenly crumbled the former image of the marble gods of the banks;

  • ... then

    banks had

    to be

    bailed

    out - in a country where people had been told two years earlier that every fitter or clerk should kindly take care of themselves - what a PR disaster;

  • ...

    Economists

    were able to teach how low wages can be further reduced, but the same gods of economic truth could not explain the major financial crisis;

  • ... the panic-wreathed warning of the disclaimer turned out to be a grandiose misjudgment, according to which the introduction of a

    minimum wage in Germany

    would lead to much more unemployment - which is still not the case today;

  • ... a number of people who became

    unemployed

    due to financial, corona and other shocks

    had

    to experience that it doesn't help to just want to - when such major crises simply hit entire regions, like the one in the rust belt after the China shock USA and in many places also in Germany was the case;

  • ... in the end it is not the case that wealth seeps down from the top - and the

    inequality

    that has risen sharply in the meantime has

    not diminished again even in the long years of steady growth in Germany, on the contrary: the top ten percent now have a hundred times more wealth than the lower;

    a doubling of the gap within 25 years.

None of these are minor blemishes.

The picture of the world economy is wrong.

And also the image of people.

There is now a lot of research that shows that people are neither lazy nor terribly selfish per se - and when in doubt it is more detrimental to put pressure on them, because performance deteriorates and errors pile up when people are in need.

And that people tend to react inhumanely under market conditions.

Or that the (financial) markets can lead to absurd herd instinct that leads to disasters.

Have fun with the Bitcoin hype.

If that is true, it is absurd to try to generate wealth through pressure or deregulated financial markets if possible.

Then it is also absurd to call again in a pandemic to tighten your belt, as Merz and FDP leaders do.

It's not just out of style - it's also a reflexively simple understanding of how people function and what is good economically.

The past few years have provided numerous examples of how important it is occasionally to have a well-established state - because the economy doesn't regulate everything.

This was just as true for the financial crisis as it is now for the corona crisis.

Without a mix of private research and public aid, vaccines would not have been developed so quickly if the economy were now in a deep recession - and there will not be enough vaccine doses in the future either;

because there is not enough incentive for companies to build up much more capacity than they need in the long term, as the economists Gustav Oertzen and Moritz Schularick recently pointed out.

more on the subject

Slow vaccine production: Why we have to talk about the »war economy« now A guest contribution by Moritz Schularick and Gustav Oertzen

All of this has been dwindling the credibility of the former economically liberal model for years - and may definitely implode in the pandemic.

In surveys, almost 80 percent of people in Germany now say that politicians are too considerate of the private sector.

And a good 70 percent think that the government should protect people more if they become unemployed due to globalization or technology shocks.

Perhaps this is also due to the vague feeling that, according to Orthodox economics, it is noticeably often the rich who get away well in the end.

If one takes as a yardstick the popularity with which economically liberal catchphrases are used, the old dogma began to decline with the great financial crisis.

The time was just over.

If people like Merz and Lindner can't (no longer) manage to attract (more) people, there is no supposedly misguided zeitgeist behind it.

And then that is only partly due to the fact that Mr. Merz cites his daughters' lack of protest as evidence of his deep feminism.

Or Mr. Lindner acts a little unhappy here and there.

Or media are stupid.

All of this does not explain why the FDP has been weakening for years despite the crisis in the popular parties.

Then that's because preachers like Merz and Lindner, despite all the disasters, still stand for a kind of economic dogma - or have never really distanced themselves from it - which, in its overly clumsy version, has simply and really revealed itself as a mistake through the history of recent years .

People aren't stupid.

Icon: The mirror

Source: spiegel

All business articles on 2021-01-22

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