{"id":949,"date":"2026-09-30T16:05:42","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T14:05:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forum-new-economy.org\/2026\/09\/30\/the-fatal-consequences-of-germanys-desire-for-decline\/"},"modified":"2026-10-19T09:58:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-19T07:58:10","slug":"the-fatal-consequences-of-germanys-desire-for-decline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forum-new-economy.org\/en\/2026\/09\/30\/the-fatal-consequences-of-germanys-desire-for-decline\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fatal Consequences of Germany&#8217;s Desire for Decline"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That sounds a bit <strong>tragic<\/strong> \u2013 after endless months in which Friedrich Merz\u2019s friends from business and rather ultra-orthodox economics have left no stone unturned to <strong>theatrically describe the immediate decline of the economy<\/strong>, the impending deindustrialization, the last place in growth tables, and generally the country&#8217;s incompetence, over-bureaucratization, and lack of willingness to perform.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Of course, this was <strong>calculated<\/strong>: following the supposedly proven motto <strong>that suffering ultimately increases people&#8217;s willingness for \u201cpainful\u201d reforms<\/strong> \u2013 especially when more convincing arguments for reforms are lacking; or when the <strong>lack of work ethic<\/strong> is lamented in a country where <strong>stress-related<\/strong> health <strong>issues<\/strong> are at a record high.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The double historical <strong>drama<\/strong> now unfolding is that the staccato of negative reports seems <strong>not to have increased<\/strong> the <strong>willingness<\/strong> of large parts of the population at all, as the <strong>electoral defeats of the two reform government parties<\/strong> already suggest. Instead, it has <strong>reinforced the narrative of all authoritarians<\/strong> that <strong>everything is wrong<\/strong> in the country anyway \u2013 and therefore, a firm hand is needed. Merz and his fellow complainers have conjured up the spirits that are now causing the downfall \u2013 only for their own. <\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Martin Kaelble and I discussed what this means for the coming months in <a href=\"https:\/\/forum-new-economy.org\/en\/podcast\/everything-bad-in-germany-on-the-failed-attempt-to-increase-willingness-to-reform-through-hardship\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Episode 3<\/strong><\/a> of our <strong>podcast<\/strong>. The gist: it makes no sense to sugarcoat everything now. <\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In any case, it would be urgently necessary to look more closely at what truly leads people to vote for the AfD \u2013 and when and where they do so particularly strongly. We have compiled the state of research in our <a href=\"https:\/\/forum-new-economy.org\/en\/#faktencheck\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Reality Check<\/strong><\/a> <strong> <\/strong>\u2013 work in progress. In the coming days, we will also speak with specialists in <strong>Paris<\/strong>, where the far-right <strong>Marine Le Pen<\/strong> could become president as early as spring. What are the commonalities, what is different in France? And what can be learned from <strong>France<\/strong>, where the Le Pens have been present since the 1980s? An update will follow.    <\/p>\n\n<p class=\"is-style-footnote is-style-footnote--1 wp-block-paragraph\">Credit Picture: (c) Maja Hitij\/Getty Images<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Chancellor recently said, after his electoral defeat, that one should also mention what is good in Germany. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":948,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"artikel-autor":[],"class_list":["post-949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-unkategorisiert"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forum-new-economy.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forum-new-economy.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forum-new-economy.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum-new-economy.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum-new-economy.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=949"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/forum-new-economy.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":971,"href":"https:\/\/forum-new-economy.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949\/revisions\/971"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum-new-economy.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forum-new-economy.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum-new-economy.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum-new-economy.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=949"},{"taxonomy":"artikel-autor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum-new-economy.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artikel-autor?post=949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}