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State financial equalization: The whole of Rhineland

2022-01-20T18:55:43.909Z


Suddenly, Rhineland-Palatinate is one of the donor countries - after decades of cross-financed affluence. It owes this to just one company with a meaningful address.


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Mainz city center with cathedral

Photo: Claudia Nass / iStockphoto / Getty Images

It was the domestic financial news of the day that Rhineland-Palatinate has recently become a donor country.

donor country!

How beautifully these three syllables roll over the tongue, soft and round like Morrowland, Neverland or Doggerland.

There are not too many donor countries in the Federal Republic, which is made up of recipient countries.

Part of the federal idea is that the states help each other out.

Those who are short of cash automatically receive substantial sums.

From countries that are fortunate in that profitable companies have settled there.

Traditionally, these are Baden-Württemberg, Hesse and Bavaria - North Rhine-Westphalia used to be one of them, but is always threatened with relegation.

Baden-Württemberg, with its "hidden champions" on every green field, is a medium-sized paradise, and people have not been stingy here for a long time.

But thrifty – and from experience: »But don’t spend it on train stations!«

Hesse has Frankfurt, its airport and a couple of skyscrapers, of which nobody knows what exactly is going on in them, here you discreetly say: »Don't tell anyone that you got it from me!«.

Bavaria is Bavaria and has Bavaria, the muscleman among the donor countries, at the same time still a little newly rich because after the war it was one of the poorest regions for a long time, here people say with a gnashing of teeth that can sometimes be heard as far away as Berlin: "That was the last time clear?".

Abba no hinne out

All other federal states just hold out their hands, don't get any green light and take, take, take.

Berlin for example.

From a Bavarian perspective, it's something like the drain from a bathtub whose plug has been lost.

It just rattles out.

So does Rhineland-Palatinate.

For decades, the land of forests, backwoods, meadows and fields indulged in cross-financed affluence. Well on its borders, on the Rhine, a few large companies are snuggled up like cats to a warm stove, BASF in Ludwigshafen or Boehringer Ingelheim in Ingelheim. Added to this is wine, a happily babbling and largely leveled-off branch of the economy for around 2000 years.

Abba no hinne naus (Palatinate for: "But out the back"), south-west, there is only wood and potatoes.

Roughly speaking, as they speak there.

Maybe one or the other cow.

Julia Kloeckner.

Okay, the US's largest air force base outside of the US, but then again just potatoes and wood.

cows.

Kurt Beck, the SPD variant of Helmut Kohl, Saumagen, höhö.

Mark Forster, well.

Trier, after all the capital of an empire, never made it to Berlin.

But behind it: closing time.

At some point there will only be France, and it looks even bleaker there than on the Palatinate side.

Zone border area.

But now this historical tide has turned.

"The markets" will decide whether it is final, as they have already caused the tide to turn.

It all depends on how the shares of a single company develop in the future, in the state capital on the Rhine, based there at an address that the whole of Germany, tss, tss, tss, has smiled at and shook its head: An der Goldgrube 12, 55131 Mainz.

more on the subject

Mayor of Mainz on tax billion plus thanks to Biontech: »The most successful horse in the stable always gets the most sugar« An interview by Alexander Preker

Biontech made a profit of around seven billion euros in the first three quarters of last year.

The company is, if one may say so, one of the winners of the corona crisis.

Mainz alone, with its dilapidated streets and steppe-like green spaces, will benefit from the trade tax blessing in the foreseeable future.

But also the country.

When the city tub is overflowing, the money spills out into the country, so to speak.

And that will then become donor country.

The editors of the "Titanic" in Mainz have already initiated or fictitious the "Wisereor" campaign, i.e. asked the citizens whether they don't want to give some of their sudden wealth to neighboring Wiesbaden.

The reactions were rather so-so, at least not characterized by exaggerated giving mood.

More important is and will now show how Rhineland-Palatinate will act in the next negotiations on the financial equalization of the federal states.

A certain generosity would be advisable.

Because no one knows if the boom will last.

It cannot be ruled out that Rhineland-Palatinate will once again be dependent on the favor of Munich, Stuttgart or Wiesbaden in a few years.

Dusseldorf rather not.

With the transformation of the Ruhr area from an armaments factory into an amusement park, NRW will hardly ever find its way back into the premier lignite league;

Experts are already talking about Versaarlanding.

There is earned until dottenaus

What is often forgotten when cheering about the bubbling source of money at the gold mine is its origin. Biontech is what is called a spin-off. People, in this case Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci, do research at the university until one day they think: »Hey, this idea could get me onto the 50 euro note one day!«. And then they start a business. Not to get very, very rich. But to convert your idea into a reality that needs it.

That was the case at Biontech, share price or not.

A hen with pretty good eyes found not only a grain, but the whole feed silo.

Chance certainly played a trembling hand here, as did the existence of a university founded in 1477, by the way.

But that doesn't change the fact that Rhineland-Palatinate is now a donor country.

Ge, over, land!

more on the subject

Biontech bosses Türeci and Şahin on their fight against Corona: »Germany will get enough vaccine« A SPIEGEL interview by Steffen Klusmann and Thomas Schulz

Which brings us to the second thought, which at first glance might seem absurd.

Businesses pay taxes.

Crazy, right?

Trade, income, the full program, whatever has to be paid for.

Anyone who is brooding over their own tax return knows the feeling.

It's not a good feeling.

Şahin and Türeci know it too.

And yet they pay their taxes.

So much so that Rhineland-Palatinate suddenly became Ge,ber,land.

Recently, and usually, companies with bizarre sales cough up at the states in which they make those sales.

There is earned until dottenaus (Palatinate for: »as far as out there«), but then there is an address in Dublin, loopholes or intimidating law firms.

And all profits go to California for the production of Mars rockets.

Germany is not that far yet.

Germany is, and that would be the good news, in Rhineland-Palatinate still at the level of a pre-neoliberal economy.

And it works, apparently.

You can then drink a Pinot Gris, preferably a cuvée, biodynamic, maybe from Sprendlingen or Oppenheim north or south of Mainz, they're supposed to be quite good.

If you've been vaccinated and boosted with Biontech, you can also do so in a cozy Wääähstubb (Palatinate for "wine bar").

Source: spiegel

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