Star economist Sinn warns: “We are all getting poorer”
Created: 09/13/2022, 17:36
By: Nadja Pohr
The energy crisis is making life difficult for the people.
The state is hopelessly overwhelmed when it comes to this topic, says economist Hans-Werner Sinn.
© Hannibal Hanschke/dpa
Star economist Hans-Werner Sinn issues a clear warning: prosperity in Germany is in danger.
The crisis will be a stress test for the German business model.
Stuttgart - With the Ukraine war, a lot of food became more expensive at the beginning of the year, but it also became scarce.
Above all, the price of edible oil rose at a record rate.
Inflation and the energy crisis made things even worse for consumers.
During the energy crisis, star economist Hans-Werner Sinn warned that Germany's policies were ruining the auto industry.
In a long interview with
Focus
, Sinn talks about the mistakes of the European Central Bank and mistakes in climate policy.
Above all, however, he also sees our prosperity at risk.
Economist warns of loss of prosperity in the crisis - "We are all getting poorer"
The energy crisis is making life difficult for the people.
The state is hopelessly overwhelmed with this issue, says economist Hans-Werner Sinn.
He does not believe that Chancellor Olaf Scholz can compensate for the financial disadvantages for everyone.
“He can only give to some what he takes away from others.
But there will be resistance to this redistribution," says Sinn in an interview.
"The state can redistribute the burden, but the sum of the burden remains." The economist is certain: the loss of prosperity will affect all citizens.
Sinn speaks of a longer-term process that has to do with demographics on the one hand and the "massive damage to competitiveness caused by the green energy transition" on the other.
His thesis is: "If the energy that people would have bought on their own is banned, so that everyone has to switch to another energy that they would not have bought otherwise, it makes us all poorer." Inflation also plays its part at.
"The debtors are getting richer, the creditors and the weak are getting poorer," says Sinn.
Inflation hasn't peaked yet: 'There's still some bad luck ahead'
While some experts optimistically predict that inflation has already peaked, star economist Sinn is certain that this is not the case.
You can see that in the commercial producer prices, which have currently risen by 37 percent compared to the same month last year.
“So we still have some bad things ahead of us,” explains Sinn.
The expert is alarmed: The current crisis could massively call into question the business model of the Federal Republic of Germany.
"Gone are the days when money seemed to fall out of the sky like manna," he adds.