TonThe new front-runner, who won the German national vote at the end of this month, said that he believes he can awaken the center-left in Europe from a decade-long slumber through a double commitment: to ensure the continued economic success of his country while ending personal success. Always a myth of starting from scratch.
This summer, Olaf Scholz, Deputy Chancellor and Minister of Finance of Germany, unexpectedly surpassed his Social Democratic Party (SPD) over the Christian Democratic Union of Angela Merkel (Angela Merkel) in a poll. CDU), this is largely due to its reputation for rational decision-making and fiscal policy. Caution reflects the caution of the outgoing prime minister.
In an extensive interview with The Guardian, Schultz stated that he will also use the political victories within his power to launch a new debate on how to redefine professional and social values.
“If it is not in self-interest, why would the UK vote for Brexit? Why would the United States vote for Trump? I believe this is because people are experiencing profound social insecurity and lack appreciation for what they have done.” A 63-year-old man said at a campaign rally in the university town of Göttingen in Lower Saxony.
“We see the same dissatisfaction and insecurity not only in the United States or the United Kingdom, but also in the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Austria or Germany-these countries seem to have no problems at all from the outside.
“In some professional classes, the prosperity of the elite class leads people to believe that their success is completely self-made. As a result, those who really keep the show on the road do not get the respect they deserve. This must change.”
Around the word “respect”, Schultz’s campaign borrowed heavily from the Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel’s recent work on “tyranny of merit”. He told the Guardian that he was reading the 1958 book of British sociologist Michael Young. The elitism “shocked” after “The Rise”.
“he [Young] Describe the rise of elite rule as a dystopian irony in 2034, but it turns out that it is almost a prophetic description of the trends of our time,” Scholz said.
Thinkers such as Sandel or Daniel Markovits believe that meritocracy—a political system designed to reward individuals based on their talents, efforts, and achievements—has been dominated by educated knowledge workers who only define merits based on their own values and ignore the tangible. Labor gives credit.
“There is nothing wrong with this feat,” Schultz said. “But this is not limited to high-income earners and those with college degrees. Security has its advantages. Manual workers should not be more respected than academics.”
For the potential next leader of Europe’s largest economy, the adoption of this argument is significant, but there are also potential risks in Scholz’s case: ironically, a third tendency within the European and American leftists supports elitism. In the era of Gerhard Schröder (Gerhard Schröder), Scholz as an SPD general, the secretary played more than one role.
Whether “respect” can become a coherent policy and slogan is still unclear. “We have two tasks,” Scholz said. “On the one hand, it recognizes the advantages of these other types, and on the other, pays higher wages for those who are not properly compensated. Raising the minimum wage is important, and the wages of nursing staff and skilled workers are also higher.”
Some of Schultz’s campaign promises are social democracy in the old-fashioned sense: In addition to raising the minimum wage to 12 euros per hour, he also called for a wealth tax refund and the construction of 400,000 new houses each year. The Social Democratic Party proposed a new, less “distrustful” welfare program called “Citizen’s Money” to replace the controversial Hartz IV unemployment benefit that was sanctioned by the previous center-left government.
“Perhaps progressive parties in Europe and the United States have long ignored these two challenges,” Scholz said. As a model for renewing the left, he is not referring to the Democratic Party of US President Joe Biden, but the Social Democratic Party of Sweden, Denmark, and Finland.
Like its Scandinavian counterparts, even the revived Social Democratic Party is a shadow of its former self: Opinion polls show that the Social Democratic Party leads the election with 23% to 25% of the votes. The last time Scholz’s party won 38% of the vote in the 2002 federal election led by Schroeder.
The SPD candidate’s plan to revitalize Germany’s center-left is still a balancing act: because although his campaign has at least partially reversed the rhetoric of the third way, it is also trying to seize the crown of economic power from the center-right CDU. .
“Germany still has a very strong industry,” Scholz said. “This is an industry with globally competitive companies, some of which are medium-sized companies with 300 to 2,000 employees. Few countries in the world have deeply rooted this tradition. We are still good at making cars, airplanes or satellites. .”
When sketching out the task of putting Germany’s extremely energy-intensive industry on a green track, Scholz sounded more like his center-right rival Armin Laschet than Annalena Baerbock of the German Green Party.
“The huge challenge we face is that we are still a successful car country that manufactures electric cars, our industry produces chemicals, steel or cement without undermining our climate protection goals, and we are in just 25 years Achieved this goal.”
He believes that private companies are already pushing the German auto industry to switch to electric vehicles-the government’s task in the future will be to expand the infrastructure to make it available. “This new starting point will not lack investment funds. But […] Every gas station needs a charging station. “
He insisted that not only can the impact of global warming be mitigated, but also that “we can take major measures to curb climate change” and that his government will be able to do this without completely changing Germany’s debt-averse fiscal culture.
“The debt brake is in our constitution, and amendments require a two-thirds majority in our parliament. Given the firm position of the CDU and the Liberal Democratic Party on this issue, no one should base their political ideas on the debt brake. Major changes may occur on the basis.”
Helmut Schmidt, who was Chancellor of the German Social Democratic Party from 1974 to 1982, is a clear example of the candidate of the Social Democratic Party: A TV commercial Starting with the sound of the late Hamburger’s inaugural speech, Schultz strode towards the Bundestag.
Schmidt is often regarded as saying that “a visionary politician should go to a doctor.” Schultz said that this sentence is not only fabricated, but also unfair.
“After all, he was the designer of G6 and G7: after the financial system of his time collapsed, the economic policies of the largest industrialized countries needed to be coordinated. The same is true today: we should meet the current challenges together.”
Schultz’s commitment to the sharing of European sovereignty is more enthusiastic than Merkel’s wording. Although the outgoing prime minister is the spokesperson for her party’s further economic integration, he pointed out potential ways to deepen the alliance of nations.
“By the middle of this century, the world will have 10 billion people. The European Union will still have only 400 million people at this time. If we want to keep what we care about in Europe in the future-democracy, the rule of law, individual freedom, market economy, welfare state- Then we must work together.”
“That’s why I believe European Union It must be the most urgent task for Germany at the moment. This is especially true after Britain left sadly. “
The recovery plan promoted by Schultz’s Ministry of Finance ignoring Germany’s former thrifty union allies to support member states affected by the Covid-19 pandemic is considered by the German conservatives as not a step towards a “transfer alliance”, but a temporary tool This will be exhausted in 2027. However, Scholz claims that it will leave a lasting legacy.
“As an alliance, the EU is pooling loans to help countries cope with this crisis. We agree that these liabilities will eventually be repaid. This is where the new moment comes: these debts will not be donated from countries based on the GDP of each member country. It will be repaid from the new European resources. This will have a major impact on the future development of Europe.”
