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PaperclipPerfector
2mo ago
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Transnational Thursday for February 20, 2025
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Notes -
Federal elections are over, results as following (630 seats total):
All the other parties didn't make past the 5% minimum and thus aren't allowed to play in this term.And if you noticed one seat missing, that one went to the SSW, the South-Schleswig Voter Union, a party for ethnic Frisians and Danes that is allowed to skip the 5% rule for reasons of, effectively, Affirmative Action.
So we'll get another Great Coalition, as they call themselves - CDU and SPD giving us four years of Weiter So: more of the same.
The CDU campaigned on a tough-on-migration platform. They correctly judged that this would allow them to appeal to voters who consider migration the top issue but still find the AfD unacceptable. I for one don't find it at all credible. The party sat by and let Merkel do her thing or even supported her as she welcomed the mass migrations of 2015 and onward, and a bit of electoral campaign rhetoric isn't much convincing evidence that they actually changed their minds. This was a successful tactical move, and the next step is to backpedal and form a coalition with the SPD who are still married to the old idea of "German bad, foreigner good".
Someone please tell me I'm wrong.
The only other coalition that would have a parliamentary majority would be CDU + AFD, and the CDU reaffirmed their categorical adherence to the anti-AFD zero-cooperation "firewall" policy.
The thing you're likely to be wrong on that makes things different is the spending.
One of the major elements for the timing of this election in the first place, besides avoiding a lame duck government during the earnest Ukraine negotiations later this year, was the German balanced budget requirement. The prohibition on taking debt not only caused a major issue when the last government's spending plans fell through in court, but it drastically reduces the German government's- and thus by proxy the European Union as a whole which depends on German financial inputs- to do things like major state-directed investments in, say, military procurement / aid to Ukraine / European military-industrial spin-up etc. This was because the German system had already reached a political parity of social spending that was high enough- and too politically difficult to change- to free up state capital investments in strategic ends.
Once upon a time, this was considered a good thing. Such a good thing that the Germans also helped make it a vaguely equivalent policy restriction on other EU governments via the EU's spending limits and debt restrictions set up after the 2008 financial crisis. Part of this was the debt concerns, especially for the PIGS, but part of it was also to limit the ability of others to get relative advantage.
This could all change. If Germany shifts to allowing greater debt, you should expect more, if not most, EU governments to do the same. Economically, because the Germans being able to engage in debt-driven economic capital growth while others are bound by debt restrictions would break the EU's internal dynamics. And strategically, because if Germany is getting a pass, and they can get a pass, that makes it an opportune time to try and pursue long-sought goals.
The point to watch for going forward in the coalition talks isn't the new government's immigration stance, but the coalition politics around removing / reforming the debt break. As goes Germany, so will go the European Union, and if the European pocket books open that is a potential flood of money entering the (global) economy, much of it for the purpose of geopolitical competition.
You lost me at
You're not wrong about everything else, but you're also a neoliberal shill from the wrong side of the culture war breastworks! Fie!
I mean, I'd be fine with more military spending, but not fine with taking on more debt. Our spending is more than high enough for that already. I want to see spending redirected away from buerocracy and welfare, possibly decreased overall, but certainly not net increased. I just don't trust our political establishment to handle that responsibly. And I'm sure you know more about economics than I do and it's perfectly fine to take on more debt and state investments are a valid tool, but I just can't overlook the immense degree to which the state makes economic life in Germany more difficult than it needs to be. Less state will be more valuable to the economy than more state (powered by debt or otherwise), as far as I can see on the ground.
But ultimately none of that matters if we can't get a handle on immigration. What do I care about Ukraine, Europe and the world if Germany ceases to be the country of the Germans?
So the conservatives won in Germany and the change will be they will rack up debt by increasing spending. All to finance an empire's war, that already tanked their economy and that is already lost.
Sounds pretty Germany yeah.
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