September 14, 2024 - 8:00am
Free-market economies experience boom and bust cycles. The hope is that after every recession there will always be a period of renewed economic growth. Some economists think this business cycle has the regularity of a physical law. But it cannot be taken for granted — certain conditions are required.
In Germany, those conditions are rapidly disintegrating. The country may be witnessing not just a regular economic downturn, but the degrading of the very structures needed for any future recovery. To symbolise this point, this week a bridge in the city of Dresden collapsed just minutes after a tram crossed it, thereby narrowly avoiding a fatal disaster.
Although no one was hurt, this is yet another example of Germany no longer living up to its reputation of being a well-run and efficient country. During this summer’s Euro 2024 football tournament, there were endless examples of Germany’s public transport buckling under the pressure. This is something we may have expected during the 2010 or 2014 World Cups in South Africa and Brazil respectively, but not in Germany in 2024.
Yet the country has been steadily falling behind in rankings measuring international competitiveness, especially due to a deterioration of its infrastructure. A decade ago it was ranked sixth; now it is 24th. According to a study, 20% of value-added activity is in danger of being lost.
KPMG has reported that digital infrastructure is worse than in surrounding countries as streets and bridges need renovations and bureaucracy is overwhelming. Only 58% of surveyed CFOs of foreign corporations in Germany consider Europe’s largest economy to be among the five most stable EU countries. Two years ago, the figure was 80%.
Looming above it all are high energy costs, making life especially hard for energy-intensive industries. A lot has been written about Germany’s suicidal energy policy, but nothing has been as devastating as a recent study showing that Berlin spent €500 billion on the “energy transition” towards renewables and barely has anything to show for it. If the funds had been spent on nuclear energy instead, Germany would have saved money, produced more energy, and decarbonised its electricity grid. Instead, the country wasted billions and — for the first time in 22 years — became a net importer of electricity.
Unsurprisingly, and not without justification, German voters are becoming increasingly disgruntled with the status quo. This was shown in the recent elections in Saxony and Thuringia where the Right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) won huge gains. Part of the AfD’s success can be attributed to its economic policy. It calls for an end to government subsidies that distort the market, an end to the country’s expensive green energy transition and, crucially, a reversal of the current deindustrialisation. If such moderate economic policy is abandoned by the centrists in power, then voters will look elsewhere. And Olaf Scholz’s ruling coalition will be partly to blame for the resulting cultural and social division.
Germany’s manufacturing and industrial success must be the bridge that links its past success and future prosperity. It cannot suffer the fate of the bridge in Dresden.
Ralph Schoellhammer is assistant professor of International Relations at Webster University, Vienna.
Raphfel
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SubscribeThe whole idea of claiming a gender other than your biological sex is insane and should be abandoned.
What is singularly depressing is that this woman is a Conservative MP. Unfortunately, I think it flows from the stupid idea of Theresa May that people thought of the Conservative party as the “nasty party” with the result that a lot of Tory MPs are so desperate to be thought nice they will sign up to any rubbish that might show themselves to be caring. The fact that being nice to self-identifying transsexuals is definitely not being nice to a much larger number of actual women escapes them in their eagerness to be nice. Nice but dim seems to sum it up.
Indeed. Are there any actual conservatives in the UK Conservative Party?
I regret to report that the New Zealand parliament has recently passed a law allowing people to change the sex recorded on their birth certificates without providing evidence of a medical procedure. See here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/09/new-zealand-passes-law-making-it-easier-to-change-sex-on-birth-certificates
Supported by every single political party in parliament, include the supposedly conservative National Party. Mind you, the Nats stood a 17-yr old in the last general election, which shows what pathetic wokesters they’ve become: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/117668485/national-selects-17yearold-william-wood-as-palmerston-north-candidate-for-2020-election
Hurray for Bray! Hugely sensible contribution. So many dim-wits pushing this dangerous nonsense — an ideology which is not only patent bullsh*t, but is actually destroying our children, and erasing lesbians and women generally. Certainly let us be kind and accepting towards the genuine sufferer from gender dysphoria, a pathology on a level with anorexia and cutting, all of which proceed from an inability to accept one’s body, but Stonewall and the others are using trans not to help the trans people (which it doesn’t) but to push a political programme, whose end purpose is to destablise us and our society.and to usher in their dream of a totalitarian state.
Stonewall had won its battles on behalf of gays and lesbians. Perhaps finding a new group to champion was more attractive than closing down after a victory party?
More lucrative.
She’s not conservative she’s just very silly.
I will be blunt. This women is stupid, illogical, dangerous and reckless which should disqualify her from chairing any committee, least of all the Women and Equalities Select Committee.
Excellent.
“This women is stupid, illogical, dangerous and reckless which should disqualify her from chairing any committee”.
Isn’t that rather what Murray accused Rachel Riley of being and Riley received an award of £10,000 from the English courts. Hopefully Noakes is not litigious particularly as I called her dim.
I think any jury who,listened to her interview would conclude that dim simply isn’t strong enough
Brave and well said.
But, to be fair, sort of, to Caroline Nokes; just how independent is she on this issue ? Is it not highly likely that as head of the committee under a Conservative government, it is her job to put forward the party line, and the party line is (despite some words to the contrary), there is no longer any such thing as a ‘woman’ in the true sense ? Nokes is just the ambitious mouthpiece, who, if the government changes it’s mind at a later date, can of course be used as a scapegoat.
Caroline Nokes isn’t confused, she’s thinking exactly what Stonewall and her LGBT focus groups told her to think. What she is is an idiot to stupid to even look down and understand what her own body is.
Adult human females aka women have significant biological differences which it is dangerous to ignore. They are more likely to suffer from different illnesses to men and should be not only screened for them but check themselves for symptoms.
What is not so well known is that they also have different nutritional requirements. Calorie difference is significant and fat balance in the diet reflects the difference in fat distribution in the body. Women have different requirements for calcium especially in relation to motherhood. They also have different requirements for folic acid.
How can so many well-educated people be so deliberately ignorant?
Because they are ambitious; approbation from their peers leads they hope to power.
Caroline Nokes is clearly insane.
Nokes ignored all the evidence presented to the committee by the many women’s groups who explained clearly and at length the problem of conflating sex with gender. Are women now at the mercy of Liz Truss in hoping that she will ignore this unhelpful paper?
The government has no right to know one’s gender, but ALL of the government and random people have the right to check your identity and Corona status before one can do such high risk things as entering a pub, going shopping, going to a mall?
The inmates have taken over the asylum.
One’s SEX is the word. The conflation of terms and takeover of biological definitions has definitely advanced the Stonewall agenda. No such thing as a “transwoman” they’re TIMs (trans identified males). And vice versa. The amount of fetish amongst this population is horrifying even if the offending rates remain the same as men who don’t claim they’re really women!! Nearly half of sex offenders in gaol in the U.K. say they are women.
I stand corrected, I think. It’s all so exhausting–sex, gender. I’m not really that interested and wish I could be just left alone. I treat individuals with respect. Isn’t that enough?
Sex=biology
Gender=social expectations
And we need to abandon the use of gender as a polite euphemism for sex which has a clear definition entirely related to type of gamete produced, applicable to almost all living organisms!
Very little respect for female humans in this proposed legislation!!
TIMs is new to me, but I love it!
OK, so what’s to be done?
I’d guess the Tories are split down the middle on this. And the other parties with some honourable but singular exceptions are either Stonewalled through conviction or cowed with fear.
Fortunately the Govt are increasingly sceptical. But hey, they may not be around for ever. Or going by the last few weeks, even that long.
So how do you shift the dial with MPs?
Her constituency is just up the road from me. I’m thinking a little local activism to let her voters know about her extreme views could be helpful.
It is incredible that the West has just accepted that somehow a man can declare himself a woman and vice versa. Gender dysphoria is a mental illness. Would we encourage some unfortunate person with schizophrenia that we also hear the demons that are tormenting them? Would we encourage a poor young woman with anorexia nervosa to continue to lose more weight because we agree with her delusion that she is too fat?
Yes, this is what I don’t about understand about the policy. Rightly or wrongly, there has been an increasing focus on mental health. Clearly if someone doesn’t feel comfortable in their own body – or God help them – want to mutilate it, they need help!
Nokes is a “Conservative”. She has form for always coming down on the left side of any debate.
Why do you use the expression “natal women”?
The only word needed is “women”.
Quite.
In saying “natal woman” you are accepting that “natal women” are just a subset of “women”.
I generally stick to ‘real women’, though occasionally use ‘proper’ or ‘actual’ as a prefix.
and Nokes wasn’t intelligently challenged on Today either. grrr. either she is stunningly ignorant or wholly captured by Stonewall’s TRA’s. This self-harming female is in a position of power so we cant just roll our eyes. She thinks she is progressive. God help us…well in the end reality will because TRA’s believe in the fictitious and reality has a habit of biting you on your bum.
Joan you are absolutely right on this. But given that it’s women who suffer as a result of this, will anything change?? The GRA was brought in so that a man who pretends he is a woman could marry another man (not possible in the U.K. back then). There is no longer any reason to issue a false birth certificate which overrides biological reality.
Excuse my ignorance, but what would be lost if we dropped the word ‘gender’?
Endless amusement in the comments’ section.
If I remember correctly (and it’s possible I don’t) the word “gender” was adopted by early feminists specifically to differentiate the social aspects from the biological reality of being a woman (and incidentally also of being a man). To now see the word used instead of, or as a synonym for, “sex” could be seen as retrogressive as it appears to imply that sex and gender are the same. Also it means that we will never again see a satistical analysis entitled “The House of Commons: Broken-down by Sex and Age”; I don’t know if such a report actually existed, but it should have.