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- Herausgeber: novum pro Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
After "Corona" comes the war! Suddenly it becomes clear that Europe has been fooling itself for years with the hope of "change through trade". And while there is intense debate about arms deliveries - yes or no, or maybe just 5000 helmets - the war reveals another problem: the collapse of the supply chain cycle! The supply of grain and vegetable oils is decreasing dramatically. Ukraine exported over 16 million tons of grain annually, mostly to North Africa and the Middle East. And while heated debates continue over the approval of Nord Stream 2, Russian gas continues to flow to Europe via Nord Stream 1, indirectly financing Putin's war. And while possible arms deliveries continue to be debated, we lurch into the next crisis.
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Seitenzahl: 862
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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Table of contents
Page
1. Growing inequality.
2. Supply chains: a cycle for exploitation and slavery, child labor, disregard for human rights, destruction of ecosystems.
3. Privatization of Health Care. A Neoliberal Wooden Path: The Fantasy World of Vulgar Economics.
3 Signposts
1. Anthropocene: The Age of Man
2. Sustainability / Climate Change / Climate Policy
3. Critique of growth: paradigm shift
Voices:
Dependence on growth makes sustainable economic policy virtually impossible (Reiner Klingholz); textbooks with an affinity for the market from Alaska to the Horn of Africa (Helge Peukert); false assertion: Well-functioning competition (Joseph Stiglitz); growth is the wrong metric (Klaus Schwab); belief in global turbo-capitalism is "nonsense" - morally philosophical and economically (Markus Gabriel); our economic model is fundamentally flawed (Tim Jackson); distinguish between basic needs and decadent luxury (Niko Paech); restructuring of the economy is necessary (Mariana Mazzucato); growing inability to tame the capitalist inequality machine (Wolfgang Streeck); it is time to question the life model of eternal more (Tobias Esch).
Flashback to 6/26/1998: Final report of the Enquete Commission "Protection of People and the Environment - Goals and Framework Conditions for Sustainable Development". Twenty years later, we are very far from achieving these goals worldwide and certainly in Germany (Christian Berg); the story of perpetual growth of consumption for all has not worked out, neither ecologically nor socially (Maja Göpel)
Bombastic
A bombshell New Year's Eve bang on Dec. 31, 2021 by the EU Commission: nuclear power and natural gas as green energy sources. EU taxonomy as a solid, science-based transparency tool for companies and investors. Nuclear waste - a radiating legacy for thousands of generations. Deutsche Umwelthilfe: The dirty lie of clean gas.
Compass for Germany. Statements and expectations - a debate: Managers and scientists want to rethink capitalism and transform the country green.
Digital Report 2022: High expectations of new government, general trust in digital competence of politicians continues to decline.
Three paths to greater sustainability: ecological, economic and social, and three strategies: efficiency, consistency and sufficiency, and a common goal.
And finally: On freedom and an obituary on the farewell to the social market economy.
A short and incomplete bitter balance - fragmentary notes.
Epilogue: Instead of an epilogue, only 16 questions.
Transparency International: "Corruption kills"1
The Corona pandemic is being exploited by some governments. This is the conclusion of Transparency International's current [2020] Corruption Index. More than two-thirds of countries worldwide are considered corrupt. [...] Especially in the procurement processes of medical devices and masks, authoritarian governments are not transparent. "That, of course, makes this process attractive for money to go into their own pockets, to enrich themselves at the expense of the population. Because in the end, in poorer countries, for example in Asia and Africa, less is invested in the health system."
Democratic countries perform better
According to the current ranking, those who live in Denmark and New Zealand can rejoice. "The two countries receive the highest score, followed by Finland, Singapore, Sweden and Switzerland. Germany comes in 8th in the ranking and gets 80 points as in 2019."
The situation is particularly bleak in Somalia and South Sudan. According to the organization, corruption is most widespread there. The situation is similar in Venezuela, Yemen and Syria. [...]
"The more democratic, open and transparent societies are, the more able they are to fight corruption. And we also see that some countries just undermine freedom of expression, don't respect human rights, that then also damages their ability to fight corruption."
Corruption Perception Index 2021
The 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index (published Jan. 25, 2022)2shows [...] "that progress in fighting corruption cannot be taken for granted. The global average remains unchanged for the tenth year in a row, with a score of 43 out of 100 - highlighting the difficulty many countries face in actively taking better action against corruption. Two-thirds of all 180 states and territories surveyed have a serious corruption problem, scoring less than half of the possible points. [...] In an international comparison, Germany ranks relatively well with 80 out of 100 points, but is still well behind the leaders in 10th place. Germany's score has not improved for six years. This shows that we are unfortunately making little progress in the fight against corruption. [...] A worrying loophole was highlighted last year by the Azerbaijan and mask affairs: despite the enormous outrage after the cases of personal enrichment became known, the members of parliament involved could not ultimately be held criminally responsible. This shows: The law against bribery of members of parliament has been virtually ineffective to date and urgently needs to be tightened up. Transparency Germany welcomes the fact that the coalition agreement between the two parties has announced that the criminal act will be made more effective. [...] It cannot be that the rules for civil servants are stricter than for members of parliament. In the future, the criminal offense must be a sharp sword in practice so that convictions are actually handed down in comparable cases. The current situation unfortunately fuels disenchantment with politics." [...]
International Bertelsmann Study: Democracy is Weakening3
A study of 137 countries shows: Once solid democracies are developing negatively, autocracies are becoming more repressive.
India likes to greet its visitors on entry with the reference to being the "largest democracy in the world. In the meantime, however, this democracy has suffered noticeably, once again because Prime Minister Narendra Modi has repeatedly propagated Hindu nationalism.
The once-stable country is therefore now described as a "defective democracy. The same is true of Brazil, where President Jair Bolsonaro is agitating against minorities. Turkey has long been a showcase for the fact that Islamic states can also be democracies - today it is an autocracy, and its leader is Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
These were the findings of the Bertelsmann Foundation in January 2020 in its latest Transformation Index - a kind of barometer of how democracy is faring in the world. [...] "137 developing and transition countries were analyzed by the foundation from the beginning of 2017 to the beginning of 2019; there is no comparable study anywhere else." Every two years, he said, some 280 experts provided data distributed in more than 120 countries, except where it is too dangerous, such as North Korea or Turkmenistan. Bertelsmann deals with three main topics, he said: Democracy, market economy, governance.
3.4 billion people are ruled autocratically
A point system determines who is considered stable, defective, severely defective or autocratic. "Sixty-three of the countries studied are autocracies, including Turkey, Bangladesh and Mozambique. Seventy-four count as democracies, such as Poland, Hungary and Lebanon. A total of 3.4 billion people are ruled autocratically, according to the report, while 3.2 billion live in democracies."
"Worryingly," he said, the separation of powers was being "discernibly" eroded in a total of 60 states. In Poland, for example, more and more independent judges are being removed from office. In addition, the right to demonstrate is being significantly curtailed. Freedom of expression and freedom of the press have even developed negatively in half of all the countries surveyed.
A negative trend is also becoming apparent in economic terms. "While 38 percent of all countries surveyed were financially stable in 2010, this figure is now 20 percent. Many countries are highly indebted, such as Argentina." That's a particular problem in the current pandemic, he said: "Many don't know how to repay debts. How are these countries supposed to invest massively in the health system now?" There are positive developments in individual areas, he said. "Bulgaria, Malaysia and South Africa, for example, are making progress in fighting corruption. After the Arab Spring, comprehensive reforms were pushed through in Tunisia; there are free elections and an active civil society. That's how the country made it out of autocracy and into a democracy."
But the quality of governments is also showing a negative trend, he said. "The study examines whether politicians create social consensus for reforms. It shows that more and more democratically elected heads of state and government are contributing to the division of society."
They took repressive action, always claiming to have acted in the interests of the electorate: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan became a "super president" with the introduction of the presidential system, and Prime Minister Orbán has ruled by decree since parliament voted in favor of it at the end of March, thus stripping himself of power. The separation of powers has been formally undermined. Hungary is still listed in the index as a democracy, but it is in danger of slipping further.
Corona overruns human rights4
In Transparency International's (AI) latest annual report, published 6/4/2021, AI concludes that the human rights situation has deteriorated around the globe during the Corona pandemic. [...] "Millions of people were massively exposed to the pandemic and its consequences last year without governments around the world adequately fulfilling their duty to protect human rights," said the head of AI Germany, Markus N. Beeko. "Numerous states abused the health crisis to further dissolve rule-of-law principles and restrict rights, or condoned the deaths of people from at-risk groups or the health sector." It was significant, he said, that statistically, one person working in the health sector died with COVID- 19 every 30 minutes last year, [...] Worldwide, the figure was at least 17,000 - much of it in South America. Criticism of working conditions had led to arrests, dismissals or other punitive measures. In 42 of 149 countries studied, government agencies had harassed or intimidated health workers in connection with the pandemic, he said. [...]
Selfishness without end
[...] "The pandemic has also reinforced the mediocrity and mendacity, the selfishness and deceit among the world's rulers," said Amnesty's new secretary general, Agnès Callamard, in the annual report. Export restrictions on medical equipment, protective gear, medicines and food have been imposed in more than 90 countries, she said. The world is currently "incapable of working together effectively and equitably on a global event with major consequences," she said.
The vaccination chaos of the German vaccination campaign against the coronavirus prompts the "Rheinpfalz am Sonntag" [9.5.2921] to the following comment:
"The inflexibility and despondency of the state crisis managers in this country is demonstrated, among other things, by the fact that, on the one hand, they are stubbornly sticking to a vaccination sequence, but on the other hand, they are bowing to the pressure built up by powerful influence groups. Vaccination is now being carried out in companies and administrations that are considered systemically relevant. Even those who can protect themselves well from Corona in the home office. Families with children, on the other hand, must continue to fall behind in immunization. In the meantime, the incidence of infection has shifted to schools and kindergartens. This is politically concealed with the fig leaf of offering vaccination to children over the age of twelve sometime in the summer."5
We have seen above that lobbyism with "see-through" for democracy also dominates this scene, because companies and administrations, in contrast to families with children and their health, are of course more important, i.e. more system-relevant. Our governmental powers stand beside it, nodding eagerly weightily and approvingly - holding Hayek's "consolation plaster" on cardboard with elated cursive writing in gold unmistakably.
Referring to the association "Unsere Zeitung - Die Demokratische" (Our Newspaper - The Democratic), the ARA recommends us to sharpen the world of lobbyists a bit more. The social and political scientist Ullrich Mies, who we have already met in the preface, quoted in a three-part series "[w]ith capitalism creates crises and prepares wars" from the newsletter of the association "Abgeordnetenwatch" of May 26, 20196 :
"500 million euros, maybe even a billion or more: that's how much corporations and associations spend on their lobbying offices in Berlin. From there, at least 6,000 lobbyists then regularly swarm out to influence political decisions in their interests. According to our research, 778 lobbyists have a house pass for the Bundestag, for example representatives of the tobacco, banking and arms industries. This gives them unhindered access to the offices of members of parliament, the parliamentary party rooms or the Bundestag canteen. We citizens do not find out what concerns the lobbyists place there - because there is no lobby register in which attempts to exert influence, lobby budgets and clients are made public." Regardless of the situation in Berlin, some 30,000 lobbyists are said to be on the move in Brussels, working the Commission and EU- MEPs in a group-like manner and putting them in position for the desired legislative proposals. That's not all. The organization Lobbycontrol speaks of "captured legislation" by corporate interests.
The "capture of legislation" is one thing; something else is the "capture" of a not insignificant part of the population [...] who have not proven themselves "in competition". They are labeled as the weak, the stupid, the poor and the lazy; those who can no longer or do not want to participate are marginalized or threatened with "falling away." [They are] "the dropped out and superfluous", they are kicked down, denounced and humiliated. [...] They are useless "human junk" because "poverty [...] is the result of laziness."7
The subject of lobbying and its "beneficial" influence of the representatives of this guild has been with us for a while. As such, it is a legitimate component of democracy, but we have nevertheless noticed that our powerful rulers have tried to make "the best" of it in a "manly" and "womanly" way, bravely and purposefully, and in some cases also in an original way. The best? Well, the best result, depending on the interests at stake. And the best is obviously only to negotiate with lobbyists behind closed doors and to remain silent about the result. Transparency looks different.
Inserting and at the same time anticipating current informing, the ARA communicated to us that a lobby register of the Bundestag came into force since 1.1.2022.
"In principle, the CDU/CSU and SPD had already agreed in the summer of 2020 on the introduction of a binding lobby register. The main trigger was the case of the CDU- politician Philipp Amthor , who lobbied for the US- company 'Augustus Intelligence' and had received stock options in return8 [about Philipp Amthor we have already informed above]. [...]
Despite [existing] instruments, the Council of Europe's Group of States against Corruption (GRECO)9 has repeatedly called on Germany to take measures to improve transparency. [...] In addition to the lobby register, the executive footprint was a core demand of the SPD. This should oblige the federal government to disclose who specifically contributed to a legislative text and how." [...]
Lobby Register in Force: A First Interim Conclusion10
"As of February 18 [2022], only 650 lobby actors have registered. As expected, the vast majority of these are legal entities, i.e. associations, companies and organizations. But around 50 individual lobbyist: inside have also registered." But that is only a fraction of what is required. It is clear, however, that the register will have to grow significantly by the end of the transition period in two weeks. In the previous list of associations in the Bundestag alone, there were last 2,238 entries. "Since the group of actors subject to registration is now much larger, we expect this number to at least triple." [...]
Hide and seek game for the clients
"But there is also the former CDU- member of the Bundestag Leo Dautzenberg and the former Green member of the Bundestag Christine Scheel. Both indicate EUTOP GmbH as the only client - and here it becomes less transparent. If one now knows that EUTOP itself is a lobby agency, then it can be concluded with high probability that Dautzenberg and Scheel do not represent the very own interests of the agency EUTOP, but are actually active on behalf of a EUTOP client. In total, EUTOP is named by five individual consultants, but also by two consulting firms as clients.
Concrete mission and goal of lobbying remain unclear
Assignment is prevented by a major weakness in the legal basis: All lobbyists working on behalf of clients, including agencies such as EUTOP, are not required to provide any further information on their clients due to the lack of a provision in the law: This means that it remains unclear what the lobbying contract is actually about and how high the financial volume is. This is much better solved in the EU- transparency register. [...]
Only voluntary instead of mandatory
A fundamental problem of the lobby register is the lack of mandatory information on which laws and decisions are to be influenced. Instead, we encounter in many entries the -popular trend already -known from the EU Transparency Register of -simply clicking on all possible areas of interest." [...]
The Süddeutsche Zeitung11 writes: "Who is involved in Berlin's backrooms? The new lobby register reveals some secrets of the lobbyists - others remain hidden nevertheless. [...] The then German Chancellor Angela Merkel, for example, argued that the lobby register should only record contacts to the Bundestag - but that influence on the federal government should not be taken into account. However, Merkel was unable to get her way with this. Elsewhere, however, there are indeed exceptions to the lobby register law: Churches as well as employers' and employees' associations do not have to register, even though the groups are influential in political Berlin. When the lobby register law was passed, Marco Buschmann (FDP), the current federal minister of justice, complained of 'exceptions as big as a barn', saying the law was 'as full of holes as a Swiss cheese.' [Buschmann has been federal justice minister since the change of government to the traffic light coalition on December 8, 2021]."
After this insertion, and equipped with the knowledge as well as recalling with hindsight the expert for "late Roman decadence " Guido Westerwelle, we now want to look at some further effects of the once tamed capitalism in the so-called "Rhenish capitalism" (see also above).
Effects [of neoliberal globalized capitalism] for the population
[Alain Badiou12 writes,]13 the first effect [...] is unprecedented growing inequality. Even the parliamentary right is sometimes concerned about this, he says. "These inequalities are so egregious that as states become weaker, it's hard to know how to keep control of their impact on people's lives." To that end, he said, there are some basic numbers that everyone should know and have at the ready. Numbers that suggested nothing more than a more stringent, sophisticated logic of classes that would make the democratic norm, even the most formal, seem silly or unworkable. "Once a certain degree of inequality is reached, it becomes meaningless to speak of democracy or democratic norm." [...]
"1% of the world's population owns 46% of the available resources. One versus forty-six, that's almost half. 10% of the world's population owns 86% of the available resources. 50% of the world's population owns nothing. So the objective presentation of this shows that we have an oligarchy worldwide, which is about 10% of the world's population. This oligarchy, I say again, has 86% of the resources. 10% of the world's population, that's about the same proportion as the nobility in feudal society." The ratio is the same, he said. "Our world today is reconstructing, restituting oligarchic relations that it knew and went through long ago." Now they are returning in a different form and under different auspices.
On the one hand an oligarchy of 10 %, on the other hand a mass of destitute people, about half of the world's population, that is the mass of the world's propertyless population, which constituted the overwhelming majority in Africa and Asia. "Taken together, the oligarchy and the destitute mass make up 60%. That leaves 40%. This 40 % represents the middle class. This middle class, with difficulty, combines 14% of the world's resources."
The division that follows from this, he said, is quite telling: "We have a mass of the destitute that makes up half of the world's population; we have a feudal oligarchy, if I can call it that because of its share, and we have the middle class, the pillar of democracy, which shares 14% of the resources with its 40 percent share of the world's population." This middle class, he said, is concentrated mainly in the so-called advanced countries, almost exclusively Western.
[...] In the world of today, there are a little more than two billion people of whom one can say that they count for nothing. These people do not even belong, which is obvious, to the mass of the 50% of the destitute. "But it gets worse: they count for nothing for capital. And against the background of the structural development of the world, that means nothing other than: These people are nothing and, strictly speaking, should not exist." [...] They count for nothing because they are neither consumers nor workers. For capital there are only two ways to exist, if one does not belong to the oligarchy. "One must be gainfully employed and in this way earn a little money, and then one must spend the money again by consuming the products of that same capital." [...]
What is also striking, he said, is the geographic distribution of these available but non-counting forces clearly related to zoning. "In those zones where anarchic conditions prevail, where the state is absent, where armed gangs move freely, one comes to terms quite effortlessly with the fact that the people who live there are without any institutional protection, indeed that they vegetate in 'humanitarian' camps." Why should one worry about their existence, since it is enough to provide for them in a makeshift way, that they are neither consumers nor gainfully employed? "They already have to see for themselves how they - driven back and forth between armed gangs and the capitalist robbers of all shades - can survive." That is why whole zones are firmly in the grip of a political gangsterism of fascist type, which would not be the case, indeed could not be the case, if billions of people were not considered non-existent. This kind of gangsterism and human trafficking could be prevented "if all people were involved in figures of sociality, an ordinary, collective solidarity - at the price of a reasonable measure of working time."
One can literally hear the outcry of the "libertarians" when they hear the name of the "left-wing", or even worse, the "Marxist or communist" philosopher Badiou. However, the facts and figures he presents are not so easily dismissed. They are verifiable. But it is also not far-fetched to assume that the 50% of the world's population who own nothing have had bad luck because they have not understood "the market" and its order, "which is so extensive that it exceeds the capacity of an individual and the possibility of steering it by his intellect", as Hayek formulated it crystal clear and must actually be understandable for everyone. It could helpFriedrich Merz14 , former candidate for the CDU- chairmanship, who once recommended to everyone in Germany, including the people who belong to the "modern precariat": Buy shares.
"We should use the stock markets to create better wealth and capital formation in private households [in Germany] in the long term," Merz told the "Welt am Sonntag", published on 02.12.2018 .15 Surely that would be a proposal that could even bear fruit worldwide? For the sake of good order, it must be noted at this point that Friedrich Merz's target group could possibly not have been the "not counted" or the "superfluous".
A side note for the readers: From 2016 to 2020, the "smart" Friedrich Merz was chairman of the supervisory board and lobbyist for BlackRock16 in Germany. He did not see a conflict of interest with "his" company, the financially strongest asset manager worldwide. On the contrary! Larry Fink, Chairman of the Board of the world's largest asset manager BlackRock, summed up the financial industry's vision of the future as follows: "The world needs our leadership."17
Flank protection received the "smart" Friedrich of the economist Dr. Daniel Stelter, who never AfD- member wants to have been, when he was asked in the transmission "Markus Lanz" on 3 March 2021 by Markus Lenz among other things: "Provide the citizens in Germany wrongly?". His answer: "Clearly yes." [...]
"A higher real estate ratio has the effect of making people more disciplined about saving. Those who call an owner-occupied property their own behave differently and are more likely to avoid unnecessary spending. According to a study by the University of Bonn, increases in the value of real estate and shares over the past 150 years have been between 6 and 8 percent p.a.. Germans, on the other hand, like savings books or life insurance policies. Here's an example: If you invest 1,000 euros over 30 years at 1 percent interest, you will receive around 1,300 euros. If you invested in stocks or real estate, you would get the equivalent of more than 5,000 euros."18
We have taken a closer look at the study by the University of Bonn (published on 31.3.2017)19 and would like to briefly discuss the significant results.
For example, the economic historians wrote that on average across all 16 countries, real estate (from 1870 to the present) had achieved an appreciation of about 7.8 percent per year. Stocks, on the other hand, would have achieved a return of 6.9 percent annually. Bonds, at just under 1.5 to two percent, were just as far behind as bank deposits, with a return of only 0.3 percent, he said. [...] Forgoing the differences in the countries, we want to go into the results for Germany, because they differ somewhat. "For example, real estate prices in this country have gained about 7.9 percent per year over the entire period, while stock prices have gained one percentage point less per year. But it is interesting to note that since 1950, stock returns in Germany have exceeded those of real estate. The difference becomes particularly clear from 1980 onwards. On average, real estate prices rose by only 4.1 percent since then until 2015, while shares yielded a good ten percent return per year." [...] That real estate in any case yields more returns than stocks should therefore not be concluded so simply from the study. "Schularick speaks of the historical development of real estate prices, for example, a 'field hockey stick'. That means the curve of real estate prices is flat at first - like a field hockey stick - for many decades, but then rises steeply since the middle of the 20th century." [...]
"As a result, this ensured that remote areas of land could be developed for business and population. The destruction caused by the world wars also caused the demand for real estate to rise sharply. The high real estate returns are not a law of nature, but a still recent development ."
We have recognized that our Doctor Stelter does go into the increases in value of stock and real estate, but refrains from going into the developments since 2017. To do so, he merely makes a calculation for a period of 30 years. If one is willing not to deal decisively with the exorbitant increases in both areas, then his calculation could be approximately correct, but nothing more. But he could at least have mentioned the "field hockey stick". Presumably, however, he will not know this. He will also have "overlooked" the "young development".
Now our doctor has written a book.20 We from the ARA declare frankly that this book contains a lot of text, but little knowledge gain. However, we state that we are not knowledgeable in this respect. We state, however, that sentence structure and orthography are correct as far as recognizable. However, we do not want to leave page 43 unmentioned. On this page he deals with the problems of the individual. He writes, among other things, "[f]or the concerns of workers [the individuals], the modern welfare state provides. Not least as a lesson from the world economic crisis and the political consequences of the wave of poverty at that time, unemployment insurance steps in for workers. For all citizens, social security - Hartz IV - also kicks in if savings are insufficient."
It is also important to know about Daniel Stelter that he seems to be an ardent representative of the guild of market fundamentalists and ideologists of the "God-ordained" market. In his book21 he warns in particular the "voices critical of capitalism", [because they] justify a social model with more state influence, more redistribution and less market with an alleged "market failure" in coping COVID- 19. This includes considerations of higher taxation for "rich" and "high earners", [...] up to the demand for an unconditional basic income. Calls for more "socialism," which were already growing louder before Corona, are now coming in stronger.
According to his creed, of course, every critic of capitalism is infected by "socialism", especially since he [...] "the German economic constitution is by no means, as claimed, 'neoliberal' or even 'market radical' [is]. Unlike countries like the U.S., we have a well-developed welfare state that is spending more money than ever before. Already in 2019, spending on social welfare relative to gross domestic product was the highest in the history of the Federal Republic outside of recessionary periods. Therefore, after redistribution of income here are decidedly equal. Government spending as a share of GDP is also stable and only slightly below the level of the 1990s, mainly because less is being invested and interest spending has fallen significantly."
However, he sees a deficit in the policy for securing prosperity in the future. The state has invested too little, he says, weakening rather than strengthening the foundations for future prosperity. "But this has less to do with a lack of money or even too little tax revenue, but with the preference of politicians to spend funds on social services rather than investing."
And then another revealing sentence: "The Corona shock shows what we are capable of as a society. We can obviously act in a crisis." Now, he said, is the time for better policies that finally address taboo issues. "Coronomics is therefore the opportunity for greater prosperity for all."
Now let us state that Daniel Stelter published his book at the beginning of the Corona crisis, at a time when the failure of the government powers was not yet visible. His statement is a new basic architecture of the social market economy as a foundation for the future of the economy. He decries social benefits as a waste of tax revenues.
We, on the other hand, have in the meantime dealt sufficiently with the topic of poverty and have become acquainted with current investigations that are not indicated in the case of our doctor. However, we have to admit that we did not read his book line by line because of the narrow gain of knowledge . At another place we have already formulated that also critics are only individuals (thus humans), who can err and/or sometimes it is just a question of the taste - seen so, we would have perhaps none.
By way of introduction, we do not want to neglect to mention that the horror-inducing word "socialism" was formulated by Helmut Kohl (see above) as the most important campaign slogan for the 1976 federal election: "Freedom instead of socialism" was the campaign motto.22 The slogan did not help him, however, because "Helmut Schmidt remained chancellor of a social-liberal coalition. But Kohl again pushed the CDU/CSU well ahead of the SPD, which had finished ahead of the CDU/CSU for the first time in the 1972 'Willy election.' The Union managed 48.6 percent, its second-best result; only Konrad Adenauer had done better 19 years earlier. 'Adenauer's grandson' (Kohl said of himself) was thus firmly in the saddle - at least in the CDU as the undisputed party and parliamentary group leader."23
Now we know that Helmut Kohl meant the socialist spectre in the guise of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The "Cold War"24 dominated East and West. After 1945, the GDR was initially established as the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ) and finally officially became the German Democratic Republic (GDR) on "October 7, 1949. The area included the present-day states of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Brandenburg, Berlin (eastern part), Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony as well as Thuringia."25
After 40 years of dictatorship under the leadership of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), the GDR ceased to exist in the fall of 1989.
After this inserted information, neglecting Daniel Stelter's demand to politics: investment instead of social benefits, let's read what Pope Francis says about the "interests of the deified market".
Anthony McCarten26 writes that the grace he [Pope Francis] has shown to refugees and the poor [reference: his July 2013 visit to refugees on the Sicilian island of Lampedusa] has also led to fierce criticism of global capitalism. "In a year when, according to World Bank estimates, 767 million people had to live on less than $1.90 a day," Francis issued his first apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), in November 2013, he said, and was not afraid to "name the shortcomings of capitalist society in combating poverty and injustice."
Francis had strongly criticized an "economy of exclusion and disparity of income" in which "everything is done according to the criteria of competitiveness and according to the law of the strongest, where the more powerful destroys the weaker." [...] To this end, he had given concrete examples of economic models that he believed were causing serious harm to the world's population:
"In this context, some still defend 'trickle-down' theories, which assume that any economic growth favored by the free market is capable by itself of producing greater equality and social inclusion in the world." A view that has never been borne out by the facts, he said, expresses an undifferentiated, naïve reliance on the goods of those who hold economic power, "as well as on the sacralized mechanisms of the dominant economic system." The excluded continued to wait. [...] "This imbalance goes back to ideologies that defend the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation." [...]
The pope railed against corruption, tax evasion and " interests of the deified market, which are becoming the absolute rule," as the cause of the ever-widening gap between rich and poor. He called for a "[n]on to money that governs rather than serves" from the people and demands a "vigorous change in the basic attitude of political leaders" and "a return of economics and financial life to an ethic in favor of man."
Now, the Bavarian Bishop Heinrich Bedford-Strohm is not the Pope, but that did not stop him from "demanding a fair distribution of the Corona costs and a special contribution from the wealthy and profiteers of the pandemic", as of 19.6.202127 . The way in which those who have particularly profited and are particularly blessed with wealth should also contribute in a special way to the costs of the pandemic would have to be clarified in the political discourse. However, he said it was clear that they had a special obligation to contribute. "The boom on the stock markets, which made the asset increases possible to a large extent, owes much to direct corporate aid financed from taxpayers' money." [...]
It was right for the state to have provided such massive support for the economy. This had saved many jobs. "But now the costs must also be distributed fairly." [...] This necessary discourse is not a debate about envy, "but rather a decisive contribution to social cohesion."
Solidarity wins, not elbow mentality28
In their book, Carolin and Christoph Butterwegge show the spectrum of child inequality, explore the causes and propose countermeasures. "Because if a large part of the Corona generation is left behind, the whole society goes downhill." [Excerpt back cover text].
In Chapter 8 "Equality benefits everyone, children as well as adults" they dealt with a essay by the former head of the economics department,Nikolaus Piper , Süddeutsche Zeitung. Title:What would be just, and write about it among other things: [...] Piper has paradoxically the "Billionaire Report" of the major Swiss bank UBS and the management consultancy PricewaterhouseCooper [PwC], from which it emerges that the German billionaires have become richer between March 2019 and July 2020 by 96 billion US- dollars. This was due to the digitalization accelerated by Covid- 19: "Profited who invested now properly, for example in technology and pharmaceutical stocks. That's forward-looking, not unfair." So what is fair and what is not is decided by the stock market, according to Piper. And for the business journalist, an achievement that is rewarded with wealth and should be taxed as little as possible consists in betting on the right horse on the stock market. [...]
Nikolaus Piper is not alone in this view. We are reminded of Friedrich Merz, who once urgently recommended using stock markets to ensure better asset and capital formation for private households in the long term. Insiders suspect that he put these thoughts on paper in his aircraft, a twin-engine DA62 made by the Austrian manufacturer Diamond. It is an aircraft of the type with the designation D- IAFM - as in D- FAFM with the abbreviation FM like Friedrich Merz.29
On the advice of the ARA, we have taken a closer look at Nikolaus Piper's essay30 and summarize it briefly.31 The first sentence of his "attempt" reads: When things get expensive and difficult, "the rich have to take over. It's a reflex in Germany that you can rely on."
That is why the Left Party's parliamentary group in the Bundestag and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation have drafted a model for a wealth tax on the rich and had it calculated by the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW). "The levy is to be fixed once and paid off over 20 years. It could raise between 338 and over 500 billion euros, making harsh austerity policies unnecessary once the pandemic is over. The wealth levy is considered fair because it only hits people who are thought to be rich. But is it? There are strong economic arguments against it."
Clemens Fuest, whose work and intentions we have by now become sufficiently familiar with, explains that the levy would trigger capital flight. [...] It would exacerbate crises because it would have to be paid even if companies made losses. "Pointing out that the levy will only be imposed once doesn't help much," Fuest said. Everyone was bracing themselves for things to go the way they did last time with the solidarity surcharge: when the payments ran out, they would be denounced as a "tax gift for the rich" and fought. Finally, imposing the levy would be fraught with conflict. The fate of the old German wealth tax could serve as a warning here.
As a historian, fact-oriented and therefore avoiding apologetic verbiage, he explained: "What is economically wrong simply cannot be fair." He was referring to the 1995 decision of the Federal Constitutional Court because real estate had been taxed far too low compared to business assets. "That like is treated like is, however, a minimum requirement for justice." [...]
We will disregard the DIW's time travel, i.e., the reference to historical antecedents such as 1913, the "defense contribution" to the rearmament of the German Reich, the "Reichsnotopfer" of 1919, and the "Lastenausgleich" of 1952. Although, according to Piper, the aforementioned military contributions, Reichsnotopfer and Lastenausgleich should "make one suspicious," he leaves open why suspicion is appropriate. His interest seems to be different, because it refers only to economics. To base the historical comparisons of 2013 and 2019 on this alone is fatal, because both the pre-war period of 2014 and the period after the end of World War I and with the failure of the Weimar Republic ultimately paved the way for Hitler's rise to power. But that is a whole other story.
"This was relatively easy in the economic miracle years, when the economy grew by an average of eight percent a year. Such conditions no longer exist today, not even in good years," Piper continues.
We have sufficiently described above how the economic miracle came about.
"No," Nikolaus Piper thunders on, "the gap between top and bottom has not grown in Germany." "Justice" and "just" are used inflationarily these days. There is social justice, gender justice and just language. The pandemic shows how blurred the use of these terms is. Is it possible to define where the just wage is for all the people who are currently doing superhuman things in hospitals - beyond saying that they should earn more than they do today? [...]
We, on the other hand, know that this gap has definitely become deeper. [...] After all, says Piper modestly, "the fortunes of the rich and super-rich have grown, worldwide and also in Germany. According to the Billionaire Report of the major Swiss bank UBS and the management consultancy PwC, German dollar billionaires became $95 billion richer from March 2019 to July 2020. But why? The year 2020 was a historic turning point. Covid- 19 accelerated digitization in a way that no one could have imagined before. Those who invested properly now, for example in technology and pharmaceutical stocks, profited. That's prescient, not unfair. It is also quite possible that the stock markets have exaggerated. In that case, billions in assets would disappear overnight. [...] In Germany, for example, all attempts have so far failed to spread participation in productive capital more broadly or to help as many people as possible to obtain a funded pension (the Riester pension was well-intentioned, but too complicated and too expensive). Real estate assets are not widely enough spread. The pandemic has also shown how gigantic the deficits are in the German school system. This makes it difficult for people in Germany to build up their most important asset: Education.
Reforms that change this are difficult to implement. It is easier to fall back on the enemy image of the rich. Some widespread myths help here. For example, the myth of welfare cuts . The market radicals, so the narrative goes, have organized a 'social clear-cutting' for decades because they wanted to regulate everything via the market. In reality, these social cuts never took place. What Germany spends on social welfare, the 'social benefit ratio' has risen since 2011 and in 2019, despite a good economy, reached 30.3 percent of GDP, the second highest level since the republic came into existence. In 2020, a new record was probably reached because of the pandemic. Saying goodbye to old myths and the idea that there is a big equity gap in Germany would be a good first step to prepare the economy and society for the post-Corona era."
One has to wonder in which world Nikolaus Piper lives - in the land of poets and thinkers or in the land of myth hunters? We leave this question open, but remind you of the most important asset for him: education! The fact that market radicalism is a myth for him, only one thing helps against it: education! Also his question whether one can define, "where the fair wage for all humans lies, who carry out at present in the hospitals superhuman - beyond the statement that they should earn more than today", we do not want to define, but answer: more knowledge over the this-sided fact situation of those, which exercise care occupations. Hence the tip for him: education! In other words, make any kind of knowledge usable, according to the general understanding. However, not everyone has access to sources of knowledge - perhaps not even necessary if they do not fit into the ideological grid. For readers who are interested in myth-hunter episodes, the footnote32 is suitable.
Let us dwell for a moment on the management consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). Here, too, we do not have to look from "Alaska to the Horn of Africa" (see above). The headquarters of this company are located in Frankfurt am Main.33 PwC has become known in particular for the so-called Luxembourg Leaks (LuxLeaks).34 "Between 2012 and 2014, PwC employee Raphaël Halet leaked documents from his firm to a French journalist [...] At the time, this contributed to the revelation that multinationals such as Ikea or Amazon pay almost no taxes in Luxembourg. PwC sued in a Luxembourg court for theft, resulting in a conviction on appeal and a fine - relatively mild - of 1,000 euros. Halet sought official recognition as a whistleblower and an acquittal, and therefore appealed to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). The ECtHR has now [published 11/5/2021], unlike the Luxembourg courts, classified Halet as a whistleblower. At the same time, however, the ECtHR also upheld the Luxembourg judgment on appeal. Among other things, as in the Heinisch ruling35 , the issue was the balancing of the damage to the company and the right to express opinions. A decisive point in the assessment was the not too great novelty value (not 'unpublished, new and essential') of Halet's documents. [...] The criterion of novelty value will thus be of very limited application in the future by national courts with reference to the judgment 'Halet v. Liechtenstein' (21884/18)."
Is the state trampling on the "social" market economy?
Der Spiegel36 takes a closer look at the "billion-dollar rip-off" of large corporations. "Large corporations such as Bayer, Evonik, Daimler and Currenta used dubious tricks to avoid the EEG levy for years-, saving up to ten billion euros in the process. -Instead of paying back the sum, the industry pushed through an amnesty [with responsible politicians, in this case the Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, responsible head Peter Altmaier] in -a night-and-fog action. Protocol of a scandal." [...] "Armies of lawyers then appear, it's all about legal texts, tiny legal loopholes - and expert opinions as far as the eye can see." [...] "Consultants such as PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), large law firms such as Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer [with offices in Frankfurt am Main, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Munich and Berlin] and energy lawyers such as Munich-based Becker Büttner Held (BBH) were called in. The industry sought ways to get around the onerous levy - with success." [...] It was money that should actually have been paid to the state to use to pay for the expansion of renewable energies, he said. "Just as every citizen does, month after month, when paying the electricity bill. [...] But the corporations - publicly otherwise happy to pretend to be green and sustainable - circumvented the levy with a special construction." Whether they were moving in the gray area between legal and illegal is currently being clarified in court. "Morally, it is undoubtedly a scandal." [...] In addition to the "public purse" were specifically private households, small businesses and medium-sized enterprises, all those who dutifully -paid their EEG fees.- "They all had higher electricity bills than necessary in the mail in recent years, with kind regards from the industry. In the files the procedure trades as ' disk lease model ', a harmless, quirky term. But the dimension and the action of the involved ones remind in fatal way of the CumEx affair-, with which unscrupulous Finanzjongleure cheated the state around a two digit billion amount. [...] In the case of the CumEx transactions, in which banks were involved, the Federal Court of Justice ruled that they were illegal offenses. [...] It is a complex scandal, and at the same time it is one,which tells a lot about this country . It was not carried out by a criminal gang on the fringes of society, but by the icons of German industry, their lobbyists and the crème de la crème of law firms. Of corporations that sing the praises on Sundays and try everything on weekdays to hold themselves harmless. It is also about compliant German politicians who, in an almost unravelable network with business, first ensured that the corporations could save billions, and then, when it all came to light, ensured that they did not have to fear any sanctions. This network influenced the drafting of laws, influenced wording and ensured that the idea of the law was taken ad- absurbum. Overnight, the ruling coalition still in office waved through amnesties that experts in the Federal Ministry of Economics themselves classify as "questionable in terms of constitutional and state aid law. [...]
In an overnight action, the coalition also amended the paragraph that regulates the own-generated electricity privilege in the several hundred-page EEG amendment and pushed the entire work through the cabinet. The content of the revised version is based on a text proposal by the VCI [German Chemical Industry Association], led by Evonik CEO Christian Kullmann, which had been deposited in Altmaier's house months earlier. This change is tantamount to a capitulation of politics. [...] The hopes of electricity customers thus rest on the Constitutional Court - and on a new federal government. It could restore a bit of lost trust by reclaiming the controversial amnesty. And - quite incidentally - also reduce electricity costs by up to ten billion euros."
Finally, the disc lease model will be briefly explained (Spiegel, ibid., p. 69):
It is exempt from the EEG- levy.
You save yourself the EEG- levy.
Above we asked the question whether the state is trampling on the "social" market economy? Nikolaus Piper (see above) and other representatives from politics and business will probably answer this question vehemently in the negative, telling the story of the myth of social cuts and at the same time confirming that politics has only acted in the interest of "fair electricity competition". Of course, in accordance with the best conceivable climate policy, hearing job destruction of the "experts" as a background murmur, but by no means acting compliantly, but together with the lobbyists and consultants guild have only taken legal paths. By no means capitulating, but only obeying necessity, the work was completed in an interest-driven and consensual manner without sanctions. We, on the other hand, note that our government powers have confirmed the fairy tale of the social market economy with this night-and-fog action - they have indeed trampled the "social" market economy underfoot. If there was still a need for a final proof that our market economy is no longer social since "Basta", then the representatives of the amnesty have provided this proof - and "only the stupid pay"37 or the "superfluous", as Hajek and Co. noted.
Meanwhile, the ARA recommends us not to leave unmentioned the Catholic priest, professor of moral theology, canon law and social sciences Oswald von Nell-Breuning38 . Let us briefly touch on this. He wrote his doctoral thesis in 1928 on the subject of "Grundzüge der Börsenmoral," which is still relevant today. His central statement:
"The stock exchange has always been the playground of the most unscrupulous machinations, and nowhere else can ruthless self-interest so cavalierly walk over corpses as on the stock exchange. But if, according to the well-known words of Augustine, even the gangs of robbers have their code of honor and their morals, without which they could not exist at all, then the functioning of such a fine and complicated apparatus as the stock exchange presupposes all the more a perhaps very one-sidedly developed, but certainly not inconsiderable merchant's morality. To mention only one thing: without the most absolute fidelity to contracts, the technique of modern stock exchange operation is not conceivable at all." In addition, he was for many years a sought-after advisor on social issues. [...]
"From 1948 to 1965 he was a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Administration for Economics and the Federal Ministry of Economics, and in 1949 he was a co-founder of the Federation of Catholic Entrepreneurs (BKU). Also in 1949, he took on a teaching assignment at the Academy of Labor, Frankfurt a. M., the training institution for trade union secretaries. From 1950 to 1959, he is deputy chairman of the Scientific (Housing) Advisory Council at the Federal Ministry of Urban Development and Housing. From 1953 to 1955 he acts as advisor to the Central Association of German Consumer Cooperatives, and from 1959 to 1961 as a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Federal Ministry for Family and Youth Affairs. From 1959 to 1965 he advises the 'Stiftung Mitbestimmung' (Co-determination Foundation), and from 1959 he is a member of the Economic Institute of the German Trade Union Confederation."
He also had no fear of contact with Marxism. [...] With his contributions to Marxism he intervenes both in the disputes at the Würzburg Synod, which lead to the resolution "Church and Workers", and in the conflict between West German social teachers and Latin American liberation theologians. [...] His insight "We all stand on the shoulders of Karl Marx" is the result of that dialogical approach, which he consistently follows, "to acknowledge to the last [...] everything that is contained in the opponent's opinion in terms of truth".
Forty years after his commentary on "Quadragesimo anno"39 , Nell-Breuning presents a critical balance sheet of Catholic social teaching, which is also a self-critique. His book "How Social is the Church?" [first published: 1972] already hints at its ambivalent character in the subtitle "Performance and Failure of Catholic Social Teaching." [...]
He criticizes as "an extremely grave omission of Catholic social teaching, or rather of Catholic social scientists" the inadequate engagement with "contemporary philosophy of science". This critical self-reflection enables the doyen of Catholic social teaching, in the last two decades of his life, to confront with determination the deficits of social-ethical-church thinking, which is so closely connected with his own work.40
We are used to "carefully punched political phrases" being used with pleasure even by those who are "removed into the super-political"41 . Some politicians, accustomed to carrying the Bible in their luggage at all times and, when the situation calls for it, point out that they are Bible-savvy, but then light-footedly and elegantly move on to the next topic. The social component, whether admonished by the church or by circles outside the church, has finally become so firmly anchored that it no longer needs to be discussed. Of course, this also applies to the various, scientifically based technical papers, on whatever subject, or topics that are open to the public. However, the fact that some topics can only be discussed behind closed doors under "top secret", "secret", "VS. Confidential" or "VS- For official use only" are not accessible to unauthorized persons because they are "harmful to the interests of the Federal Republic of Germany or one of its countries"42 , we know. Let us leave it at that for the time being and turn away from the closed doors, because it is obvious that at least the conservatives, i.e. those with the C in front, have heard or even read about Oswald von Nell-Breuning. We do not want to impute this to the libertarians. After all, a restriction of freedom is completely alien to them. The Pope will know about the deficits of the social-ethical-church thinking, so that we can come back to Adam Smith again unhindered. To this end, the ARA has provided us with a memorandum. One might think that the pope has leafed through Adam Smith's book, Prosperity of Nations (1776),43 . We do not know about Heinrich Bedford-Strohm. Smith dealt with the special relationship between capital providers and "managers" (the principal-agent problem of the "East India Company"44 and the difficulties of this construction. Let us read what Sergio Aiolfi, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, writes on 15.02.2021:
"Since the directors of such corporations manage other people's money, and not their own, they cannot be expected to look after it with the same attention with which the partners of a private firm watch over their own money. Negligence and waste, therefore, will always prevail in the management of the affairs of such a corporation."
Smith had already recognized at that time what the basic problem of corporate governance45 had been, and the reference to "waste" shows that he was aware of the loose handling of company resources by managers (including the receipt of exorbitant bonuses). All the more surprising, then, "that the rip-off problem still awaits a convincing solution soon 250 years after Smith."46 A "devil's company," the East India Company, as David Liss calls it.47
Christian Berg writes, among other things, about inequalities48 : "Although global inequalities have decreased overall in recent decades - largely due to the growing middle classes in Asia - inequalities have increased within most countries." Not only does this raise questions about equitable distribution of income and wealth, he said, inequality also correlates with social and health problems: "The more unequal societies are, the more virulent many social and health problems are among their populations (poverty, mistrust, corruption)."
The ARA helps us with a supplement : Oxfam Deutschland e.V. informs49 in January 2018, among other things, that global inequality has worsened and continues:
"82 percent of global wealth growth last year went to the richest one percent of the world's population, while the wealth of the poorer half of the world's population stagnated. This extreme inequality traps people in poverty, destroys social cohesion, is economically counterproductive and, as a consequence, disastrous for all of us." These, he said, are consequences of political decisions "that can and must be changed. To overcome the rapidly increasing inequality worldwide, we need fair taxes, fair incomes for women and men, and investments in education and health for all." We want to provide just a few key words here: "Fat profits for a few and narrow fare for many." However, we must point out that "it [will] take another 217 years to achieve economic equality for both sexes [...] according to recent calculations by the World Economic Forum."
[...] "At the same time, our economic system is largely sustained by the contribution women make through unpaid care work. The economic value of this unpaid work is estimated at $10 trillion US- per year."
Oxfam comments on Germany as an unequal country:
The 40 richest Germans alone have as much wealth as the poorer half of the population. Despite a buoyant economy, inequality is also a problem in this country: "In terms of wealth distribution, Germany has the second-highest inequality within the eurozone after Lithuania." An increasing concentration at the top of the wealth pyramid: "The wealth of the richest one percent of the population grew by 22 percent between 2016 and 2017, while that of the poorer half grew by only 3 percent." The picture is similar for incomes. "The disposable incomes of the bottom 40 percent have fallen significantly in absolute terms since the early 2000s, while the incomes of the top 10 percent have grown faster than average. To -earn the annual income of a CEO of a DAX company-, an average employee in Germany would have to work 157 years."
In the recent Oxfam study on "Social Inequality [News of Jan. 25, 2021]. Corona crisis? It's already over for the richest:50
