-------- Original Message --------
Betreff: Clueless in Berlin WSJ 10-May-2004
Datum: Wed, 12 May 2004 18:09:14 +0200
Von: Michael Eldred <artefact@...>
Firma: http://www.webcom.com/artefact/
An: "Wall Street, Journal" <letters@...>


Wall Street Journal

Cologne 12-May-2004

To the editor,

Having lived in Germany for over twenty years as an Australian ex-pat, I
found your editorial Clueless in Berlin WSJ 10-May-2004 mild indeed,
since the German malaise results not just from incapable politicians and
misguided party policies, but is deeply rooted in the German mindset
itself. One has to live here to appreciate how a national mindset can be
set in concrete. Paralysis and sclerosis are relatively innocuous terms
to describe the immobility of the German way of thinking. For instance,
a recent mild liberalization of Germany's retail opening hours' laws,
which still remain highly restrictive, caused pangs of anguish for a
German public resistant to any change at all.

After the demise of the Third Reich, the Germans started work on
building a luxurious Titanic called the "soziale Marktwirtschaft", which
translates literally and misleadingly as "social market economy", but
would be more appropriately rendered oxymoronically as "socialist
capitalism". After the total destruction of the war, this building
project went well until the mid-seventies, but for the last three
decades -- amounting to a lost generation -- there has been a creeping
process of decline. The well-padded, protective Titanic of the German
Sozialstaat with its model of socialist consensus capitalism is slowly
but ineluctably sinking, to the horror of the security-obsessed Germans.

A case in point is the German public retirement pension scheme that is
funded on a pay-as-you-go
basis and therefore rests on a so-called "compact between the
generations" according to which
the current working population pays for the current retirees. This
"compact" represents a fraud and contradicts all principles of
insurance. No insurance company in Germany or anywhere else in
the West would be lawfully allowed to offer old age insurance on a
pay-as-you-go basis, using premiums paid in to pay for claims, because
it is financially unsound. The demographics of the German population are
now revealing the lie in the generation compact and are showing up the
impending demise of the German pension scheme.

The formula "socialist capitalism" represents a vain, ultimately
moralistic attempt to square the circle. The chaotic zig-zag of the
red-green government is the result of a slalom between the two
contradictory flags, socialism and capitalism. The Germans realized
after the war that their wealth-creation depended on making money the
capitalist way, but this was already morally suspect and above all
egoistic, so had to be balanced by the "sozial" component, which stood
for compulsory, bureaucratically instituted and administered social
solidarity. In practice, this social welfare apparatus translates into
the citizen's (alas, egoistic) expectation to be cared for by the state.
In this way, any notion of self-reliance has been hollowed out over the
generations and what remains is Angst and almost total immobility, both
mental and otherwise. Those who industriously make money are regarded
with envy and as "asozial" -- as some kind of egoistic sociopaths who
can only be redeemed by paying high taxes.

Thus, for instance, the red-green government lurches from encouraging
self-employed people to establish small firms on the one hand, while on
the other it regularly sends up balloons to test public opinion on
forcing the self-employed and free-lancers to pay into -- thus helping
to prolong -- a social security system that everyone now knows is
unsustainable.

Despite the clueless government meted out from Berlin since 1998, there
is still not the faintest sign on the political horizon of an assertive,
forceful, self-confident move to clean up the lie of a totally
bureaucratized social welfare state offering cocooning, solace and
security against the waves of outrageous globalized fortune.

Dr. Michael Eldred
_-_-_-_-_-_-_- artefact text and translation _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_- made by art _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
http://www.webcom.com/artefact/ _-_-_-_- artefact@... _-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ Dr Michael Eldred -_-_-
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_