German economic situation is deteriorating – Finance Minister Lindner

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  1. The economic situation in Germany, Europe’s largest economy, is deteriorating and the outlook is fragile, Finance Minister Christian Lindner said on Wednesday, defending his plans to raise income tax thresholds in response to soaring inflation.

    “The economic perspective of our country has become fragile,” Lindner told reporters in Berlin. “The economy is deteriorating”.

  2. This is war…of course there are losses. This is Germany’s personal conflict this Russia, too. So how about we start using plain language here?

  3. This is the same guy who is vehemently against the most obvious solutions though, taxing crisis profiteers and reducing the growing gap between poor and rich by e.g. reinstalling a wealth tax again.

  4. Cool – what kind of redistributive taxation or measures is he for to alleviate the issues soaring inflation will have on the lower or middle classes, or is he solely worried about industries, shareholders and profits? Germany has the fourth largest number of millionaires in the world and a steady GDP growth rate that hasn’t been as severely impacted by Covid or the 2007 crisis as other nations in Europe. This is a country that has the means to help their citizens even if the economic situation ”deteriorates”.

    Germans feasted on Russian fascist blood money for decades and now comes the hangover.

  5. Paying extra cost for fuel subsidies now will be cheaper that fighting the Russians in Estonia or Poland.

  6. Op should actually post the article instead of just the first few sentences:

    BERLIN, Aug 10 (Reuters) – The economic situation is deteriorating and the outlook is fragile in Germany, Europe’s largest economy, its finance minister said on Wednesday, defending his plans to raise income tax thresholds in response to soaring inflation.

    The German economy stagnated in the second quarter, with the war in Ukraine, soaring energy prices, the pandemic and supply disruptions bringing it to the edge of a downturn. Inflation is running at 8.5%.

    “The economic perspective of our country has become fragile,” Finance Minister Christian Lindnerof the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) said as politicians from the ruling coalition’s larger parties took aim at his draft “inflation adjustment law”.

    “The economy is deteriorating,” he told reporters in Berlin.

    Presenting his tax reform plans, Lindner argued that if the government did nothing, 48 million people would be hit by 10 billion euros ($10.2 billion) in effective tax hikes from Jan. 1 next year due to rising inflation.

    Lindner said he wanted to avert “secret tax rises” with his plans, which he said would give relief to the “broad middle of society”.

    The plans have, however, already been criticised by the two larger parties in the coalition government, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD) and the ecologist Greens.

    Achim Post, vice-chairman of the SPD parliamentary group, told Reuters Lindner’s plans “still need improvement” and that the relief should “primarily target people with small and medium incomes”.

    “The proposed increases in the basic tax-free allowance and child benefit go in the right direction, but are not enough,” Post said, suggesting direct payments instead to provide targeted relief to small- and medium-income households.

    The broad three-way coalition, which took office last December, is a first at national level and strains have also emerged between the partners over Scholz’s leadership on the Ukraine crisis.

  7. Current statistics are a bit confusing:

    * Employment is near an all time high and 0.1% higher in June than in May: [https://www.destatis.de/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/2022/07/PD22_321_132.html](https://www.destatis.de/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/2022/07/PD22_321_132.html)
    * Insolvencies in June are down 4.2% [https://www.destatis.de/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/Aktuell/aktuelle-insolvenzen.html](https://www.destatis.de/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/Aktuell/aktuelle-insolvenzen.html)
    * Production is up 0.4%: [https://www.destatis.de/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/2022/08/PD22_331_421.html](https://www.destatis.de/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/2022/08/PD22_331_421.html)
    * Exports are up 4.5%: [https://www.destatis.de/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/2022/08/PD22_328_474.html](https://www.destatis.de/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/2022/08/PD22_328_474.html)

    So actually a lot of things are getting better in the short term.

    The high energy costs will hit people very differently. People with new houses and electric cars are hardly affected, people in old houses will suffer a lot. So supporting poor people in old houses should be a focus instead of giving more money to people who are less affected (and can deal with less income better).

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