Germany being especially bureaucratic is a myth. It is roughly the same as in US and France in this study, for example. Germany is just average bureaucratically.
Still, that myth may indeed scare off immigrants.
Georgia Meloni is her name. Two quotes from Wikipedia about her party:
Meloni's tenure has been described as the "most right-wing" government in Italy since World War II, whilst her time in government is variously described as a shift towards the far-right in Italian politics.
Academics and observers have variously described it as conservative, national-conservative, social-conservative, right-wing populist, nationalist, neo-fascist, post-fascist, and nativist.
It's too early, but EuroMoMo does not show an abnormal peak so far:
Well, it mostly shows that flu season is more deadly than a heat.
The previous government also tried to fix it and the one before as well. They all failed. So I don't expect the Merz gang to achieve anything.
The €500 billion special fund for military spending had a big impact. For example, mortgage interest rates immediately jumped by 0,5%.
You cannot fix the German economy by fiddling with income taxes a little. There is also lots of things the German government cannot do (e.g., ECB interests rates, Volkswagen business strategy).
I believe the biggest lever they have is to build residential areas to reduce housing costs. That shows up in the reform package but only in vague terms:
- Wohnungsbau: Es wird eine Wohnungsbaugesellschaft für bezahlbares Wohnen (WBG) errichtet. Ziel ist es, vermehrt Wohnungen im bezahlbaren Preissegment zu bauen, wo der Wohnungsmarkt auf Dauer nicht ausreichend bezahlbaren Wohnraum bereitstellt. Die WBG soll den sozialen Wohnungsbau sowie den industriellen Hochlauf seriellen Bauens unterstützen und insbesondere in Regionen mit nachgewiesenem Wohnungsmangel tätig werden.
So they want to create some kind of association to build cheap housing. No timeline, no budget, no goals.
For example, they plan to reduce taxes by 10 billion. Their example is "family of four with 60k income gets a reduction of 600 in 2028".
Germany's GDP is 4470 billion. These 10 billion do not make any significant difference on the grand scale.
On the personal scale, for this family of four, its +50€ per month or +12,50€ per person per month. Also not much of a difference.
Inflation makes a bigger difference than that by 2028. Also, here I just account for the tax aspect. This family will face increased costs to pay for pensions and stuff and it might well be a net negative for them. I'll wait for some professionals, like the DIW, to calculate that.
How do you distinguish between "employees" and "working class"?
It might be "sweeping" but I don't see anything with a big economic impact in there. The biggest impact is reduced labor rights.
Puh, this took me a while to understand, so I'll try to summarize:
- Big Tech likes to use cookie banners to annoy people to consent to tracking
- EU proposals says they must accept a machine-readable opt-out as well
- Google lobbies via countries to remove that part from the proposal
- It's up to the EU parliament now
"I have five pounds. Is that enough?"
"No."
"It costs more than five pounds?"
"No."
"How much do I have to pay?"
"This is NaN pounds."
"That means it costs more than five pounds?"
"No."
"It costs less than five pounds?"
"No."
"Exactly five pounds?"
"No."
leaves the shop
(Remember, comparison with NaN is always false)
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I assume Germany will veto this hard. We are very afraid of debt.