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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?
I suppose I wasn't clear on what that was supposed to mean. Apologies, and more elaborated-
If you want to look at the longer-term implications for your immigration stance and if it will change, don't look at the government's immigration stance with this coalition, look at the new government's willingness to take on debt. The initial government policy position is less important than the fiscal bounds of future government policy positions.
IF the government is willing to take on debt, THEN a significant precondition/contributing element of the continent's general migration pressure will also change, enabling migration change regardless of what the government says starting out. However, IF the government keeps the debt limit, THEN much of the dominant economic case for the migration-based economy remains, regardless of a nominal change in the government's position on migration.
One of the main economic pillars for the pro-migration arguments is that migrants are required to afford the social state within the bounds of the debt limit. For the past decade(s), really since the monstrous costs of East Germany re-incorporation this has generally been the dominant theme of German economic policy- Germany needs the labor force to maintain the export economy to afford the obligations of the state (re-integration then, social welfare for the aging population now), and the bigger that obligation grows the cheaper the labor needs to be. This is one of the reasons why neoliberalism took root in Germany- post-reunification Germany couldn't really afford to subsidize bad east german economics (budget / debt limits), but poorer east germans were a major potential labor force, and neoliberalism was a model to make a virtue out of necessity.
This paradigm is fundamentally changed if you aren't bound by the debt limit. Then you can tolerate larger costs for the same thing, because those costs are offset as debt. As long as you aren't concerned with the economic most efficient thing (the 'neoliberal' thing) in the first place, then you can afford to spend on the politically popular priority (immigration). It may not be the best economic decision, but as you say- ultimately none of that matters if you can't get a handle on immigration. But whether a German government views immigration as The Problem, or The Necessary Part of the Solution, is going to hinge on the view on debt, which for Germans has a practically religious level of significance (for various historical reasons).
Regardless of the origins, though, the government needs to change both the debt and the migration policy to actually carry forward with the migration change as opposed to walking it back on grounds of costs. If debt policy changes but migration policy doesn't, then migration policy is far more prone to compromising without the economic necessity argument.
Hence, watch for the debt policy change first. If that changes, then you know that the economic-paradigm of the German state has fundamentally shifted, and with it new things that were previously economically unjustifiable are not justifiable.
You’re a pretty knowledgeable guy, Dean. But the problem is, the more one knows, the more spurious relationships one’s brain can come up with. There’s really nothing linking german elites’ mistaken evaluation of islamic third-worlders’ productivity, to the debt ceiling, to german unification. They could easily have rejected any one of those, and keep the others. Those are all independent events.
Not really, no. Not in the academic sense of the word.
Independent events are events that, by definition, do not effect each other's odds of occurring. Coins flipping do not shape how the next coin flips.
However, the policy field is a series of events where policies in one context (the past) influence the policies in another (the present) not only because of lessons learned and drawn for, but often because it's the same or generally related groups of people implementing them. Because these variables are shaping the current events, they are- by definition- in a dependent relationship. It is not two way- the events in the past are not influenced by the events in the present- but events in the past and the present influence events in the future.
Which is easier to remember you remember that events happen, but policies are chosen. Often by the same people, who in turn raise and influence similarly minded people who go on to make decisions shaped by their formative professional experiences and professional mentors, who in turn were influenced by their formative experiences and mentors, creating chains of influence.
This is precisely why 'personnel is policy' is such a critical maxim in understanding politics. States are not entities which approach each problem in a vacuum, they are groups of people influenced by past events and people shaped by past events, and as such they are the dependent variables of the non-independent events of their policy choices.
That's bullshit, Dean. You're always long-winded even when you have little to say. They would have taken east germany and showered it with money regardless of the the retirement benefits situation. East germany was full of pensioners anyway, so there was no relative gain to be had from the cheapness of the rest of the labor force. In your theory, east germany is both a cost and a profit, depending on what your theory needs it to be.
You weave these elaborate causal chains which bear no relation to reality. People never believe stuff, they 'have to' believe it, because random cause X is the true cause.
I disagree. They believed in neoliberalism, they believed in the productivity of syrian refugees, they believed that debt is a bad thing. Their opinions, like mine and yours and even the german people's, matter. When they're right, good things tend to happen, when they're wrong, the opposite.
Do not become antagonistic just because you feel like you're losing an argument.
Is someone reporting all your comments? Your mod notes always end up in my janitor duty.
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