[Skybird]

Germany fiscally petrifies. FOCUS writes:
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Spending spree with consequences: The federal government's latest relief package is once again merely a reaction to present-day problems that make it virtually impossible to think properly about the future. Fiscal petrification has long since begun.

The favorite word of all politicians is future. The future must be conceived, secured and shaped. The parties are happy to hold congresses on the future, adopt programs for the future and, in Jürgen Rüttgers, the CDU/CSU already had a minister for the future in 1994.

But as soon as they reach high government office, politicians dive into the problems of the present, never to emerge from them again. The "desire for the future" (CDU) ends in a major self-discharge time and again.

Present problems make thinking about the future impossible: "State loses ability to act"

An important group of voters always has to be quickly reassured, given presents or - as in these days - relieved. With great regularity, the political focus changes - until the future is barely recognizable because of the present. The greed for the moment , to speak with Ingeborg Bachmann, means in reality a continued consumption of the future. The hallmark of the modern state is its eternal need.

The shift in emphasis from the future to the present can be read in detail in the state budget. Social politicians of all parties tell people that there is enough money for everyone. People don't have to make an effort, just tuck in their shirts like starlets. Anyone who doesn't let the state subsidize their house, car, solar system, childbearing or even their pension hasn't understood the game.

This "maternalistic paternalism and care machine" (Peter Sloterdijk), constituted by all parties as a joint venture, means that the normal federal budget has hardly any money left for investments in the future. A large part of the budget, in fact about 90 percent, is "fossilized" , wrote the Federal Audit Office in its report on the 2023 budget: "As petrification progresses, the danger grows that the state will lose its ability to act."

The spending spree set in motion once again by the 65-billion-relief package, the core of which is the handing out of bad checks, will lead to further petrification. Sloterdijk sees a latent social democracy at work here that goes beyond the party of the same name because it is more or less irreversibly built into the procedures of modern statehood.

Germany does not abolish itself - it petrifies

Here are the facts that did not play the role they deserve during yesterday's presentation of the 2023 federal budget by the Ministry of Finance. Whereby Christian Lindner - it should be added to his credit - is not the inventor of fiscal petrification, only its executor:

By 2040, spending on age-related projects alone will explode to 282 billion euros annually.
Already today, taxpayer subsidies to a pension system that has become dysfunctional amount to 112 billion euros.
Unless the trend is reversed, employees will soon have to transfer half of their income to the welfare state
The draft budget does not reveal the true state of federal finances, says the Federal Audit Office:

"The shifting of expenditures and debts to special assets as well as accounting practices distort the picture. At around 78 billion euros, real net borrowing is four times higher than shown in the federal budget."

Austerity package? No citizens will be relieved - unless they stop filling up their tanks and heating their homes

The room for maneuver in the federal budget will now shrink further with each interest rate policy decision by the ECB. Already today, the ECB's Executive Board is set to discuss the next interest rate hike. Rising interest rates also mean more spending for the federal government.
Lindner speaks of a "steep wall" that is building up. For 2023 alone, he has budgeted around 30 billion euros to service the debt that has recently accumulated.
Investments - and these are the only expenditures that are intended for the future - remain constant at between 51.1 and 52.1 billion euros. This corresponds to a share of around twelve percent of spending. Whereby this spending for the future also includes social housing, federal road construction and other self-evident items.
88 percent of the budget volume is effectively withdrawn from changes in the budget formulation process because it relates to statutory entitlements such as social benefits, personnel expenses and precisely pension commitments.

Conclusion:

With the financing of a permanent present, the eternal chalk era continues to reign in schools, Germany's largest transport company remains a Bimmelbahn and the digitization of the administration will not be able to start until the 22nd century. Germany is not doing away with itself, as Thilo Sarrazin once predicted. It's just quietly fossilizing away.