BERLIN: In Britain, the result of the German election will prompt much gloating about ostrich-like German voters deferring an inevitable reckoning with grim reality. In fact, with most Germans in a high-turnout poll (78 per cent) voting left, it may be time to take their view seriously.
The concern Germans ought to have is less about their own economy than about that of Britain and the US: spendthrift, debt-burdened, environmentally toxic and grossly inegalitarian. Theirs is the sort of woe that used to beset local storekeepers observing the squire in the big house squander his inheritance, and hoping against hope that his cheques won’t bounce.
Would a ‘grand coalition’ really be a recipe for paralysis? The federal government has only limited power and effectiveness over the German economy, and good or bad provincial leadership shows up.
What does the German problem boil down to? An ageing population, true, but perhaps better adapted to expanding civil society. A public debt, largely caused by pensions — but is it any worse than the British private debt in this area? Rigid labour laws? Not so rigid any more, but Germany has in any case kept factories going that in Britain would have been summarily closed down, their technical expertise thrown to the winds.
These difficulties are probably less significant than the German suspicion of such catchphrases as ‘modernization’ and ‘flexibility’, which come too easily to the lips of the very wealthy. Their social responsibility doesn’t usually extend to curbing their salary rises and bonuses, which have ballooned in recent years and — more than militant unions — are eroding the spirit of Mitbestimmung (codetermination).
The American model that dominated postwar industrial reconstruction has given way to an eco, hi-tech one (the wind farms, the solar panels, the combined-cycle generators), which if anything demands more skilled manpower than the old assembly lines.
Through the Greens, the left has responded to this. So too has the right; the most devastating attack on marketism came from Heiner Geissler, the former CDU secretary-general, more radical and deeply thought out than anything from Tony Blair or Gordon Brown. —Dawn/The Guardian News Service
