"Germany is hugely successful and has been for years, but now it's success is slightly shrinking."

Now please blame socialism and I got that sweet capitalist circle jerk bingo

What kind of propaganda non-sense article is that? I live in Germany. We're doing absolutely fine.

In terms of energy, the major fuckup was making gas cheap and electricity expensive (with taxes and renewable subsidies paid by private consumers).

If gas is 6 cents per kWh and electricity 35, no wonder people were installing gas heaters instead of heat pumps. Gas now being 9 and electricity 40 doesn't make it much better.

A heat pump would have to give you 4.4 kWh of heat for 1 kW of electricity to make financial sense even if it didn't cost more (Wikipedia: "Test results of the best systems are around 4.5. When measuring installed units over a whole season and accounting for the energy needed to pump water through the piping systems, seasonal COP's for heating are around 3.5 or less.")

No more cheap russian gas and oil, internal combustion engine expertise and all the associated pieces and submarkets being phased out in favour of simpler electric cars...it's going to be a few hard years until they find a new export industry to perfect. I'd expect hydrogen-based aviation or pharma, maybe even semiconductors, they'll figure it out.

At this late stage of Neoliberal Capitalism, what's deemed "economic success" is a measly 2% GDP "growth" and for Germany that can just be from exploiting its access to cheap hydrocarbons from Russia, something which is now pretty much over.

Meanwhile, like everybody else, Germany is suffering the cummulative effects of 4 decades of neoliberalism and its "oh so special" way of managing the Economy (unconditional saving of Financial giants that overextended themselves, like Deutsche Bank, maximizing rewards for asset ownership and pumping up asset bubbles all over the place and so on) not just directly but also indirectly because you're seeing empoverishment on a per-capita level in the countries to which German companies exported.

I think (all of this is opinion) that the general late stage Neoliberal Capitalism malaise is affecting most western countries and then Germany, thanks to that extra push of loosing the golden goose of cheap hydrocarbons (which was so great for the likes of BASF) is just this little bit worst than most, and after a decade which normalized a few percent of GDP increment as "growth" it doesn't take much of a "push" to have what is mathematically a large percentual difference in "growth" rates compared to the rest (i.e. when "growth" is 2%, loosing a mere 1% results in half the "growth").

Last but not least, as we're living in Peak Bullshit Times when it comes to Politically Important Financial Figures, all of this ends up reported with no sense of proportion so tiny changes in a aggregate figure (not even per-capita) that doesn't even map to most people's experience are portrayed as enormously important (notice how in the "good times" we were told 2% was the country "growing", when that value is statistically within the margin of error of the very processes used to produce those figures).

This is bullshit propaganda². Did some Lobbyist bought an Article over there? We dont need "breathing room for our energy-intensive industry" we need this lazy fucks to become energy efficient!

The first dominion of the fall of the neoliberalism. Germany has multiple major flaw.

It didn't invest in infrastructure like railways. Poor workers use public transportation what makes good conditions rare and therefore reduce the consumptions. The incomes are too low in the country. People can't afford a basic live and can't consume.

Budgetary rigor. Politics for years, we are looking at you Angela, wanted to spend the less amount of money they could. All of this ended with a lack of money in the system. This also is one factor to the rise of the far-right.

Tax cuts for companies and corporations created wealth for the capital. The capital grew what doesn't help the economy.

What? Thats absolut BS

Capitalism has cycles. Nothing new.

Germany grew complacent during a “golden decade” of economic growth in 2010-2020 based on reforms under Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in 2003-2005 that lowered labor costs and increased competitiveness, says Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg bank.

Gee, who was in power from 2005 until 2020?

They fucked around with trying to be civil to russia and learned russia hasnt improved since WWII.

Huh news to me.