this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2025
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Which party do you think would fare better and why? What I thought I knew about Merz is that he favors tax cuts and deregulation, which are definitely factors that Germany does need currently, but am I wrong about his views?
Random tax cuts are trickle-down economics, otherwise known as bullshit that only helps make the rich richer. Deregulating in the areas of environmental protection, climate change, consumer safety and even tax fraud, as the CxU wants to do is just hostility against the people. What Merz also wants to do: double down on energy imports (oil, gas, and nuclear if his lucky stars align), and double down on old tech (ICE motors and gas boilers). Notably, pretty much any party wants to spur investment and make bureaucracy more fluid -- but the CxU have questionable methods betraying questionable intentions.
The current economic issues in Germany are caused by a fossilized export-oriented industries that have been outdone variously in terms of price, technology, and quality by Chinese competitors. Germany didn't have a plan but exported all its technology to China for some phenomenal two decades of growth. And Industry Captains were somehow surprised that all their Chinese JVs sucked up their technology, improved on it, and then sold it at half the price. Meanwhile, China had a pretty good plan, and has supported the solar, wind, battery, and EV technologies for over ten years. They may have overshot target a little bit though, as they appear to be learning that they are producing more of these goods than they can sell. But that creates the kind of market pressure that hurts German companies too.
Another issue is energy prices, and it's true that Germany is not the cheapest country country in that regard. However, relying on more expensive imported resources oil, gas, nuclear energy is exceedingly unlikely to help in that regard.
I will note that I am a Greens proponent. But I think the above reasoning makes some sense regardless.
Thanks, great reply! Strong argument overall, maybe the only major disagreement here is with nuclear energy. Here in Finland electricity is some of the cheapest in Europe and while it’s not entirely due to nuclear that is a key factor for us in self-reliance and energy security especially when you’re going down the renewable road, because you do need some kind of a stable backbone for days where solar and wind just don’t produce enough, at least until there are better storage options. There’s a huge need to optimize the energy mix with renewables because it’s unsustainable to have these massive price fluctuations currently and I don’t see many solutions currently that have more potential than Nuclear, especially if we can make SMR’s a reality. I am of course aware also that Nuclear by itself definitely isn’t a cheap way to produce electricity, but I believe especially SMR’s and other advancements can do a lot there.