From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
Ideological green policies are tearing Germany’s economy apart
In an interview, Prof. Kurt Lauk, former economic council head and automobile manager, warns half of Germans “will no longer be able to afford a car.” Socially explosive…”a disgrace”.
He also warns of a rapid demolition of Germany’s economic backbone: the automotive industry.
Story at Pleiteticker here.
“It is a disgrace what is sitting in the chair of Ludwig Erhard or Graf Lambsdorff. The hostility to technology coming from the Ministry of Economics is unbearable.
Everywhere where we are or were world market leaders, we have gone about abolishing it,” Lauk said in an interview . It is the “worst thing that could happen” for German industry.
“For several years now, we have been working hard to destroy this competitive advantage of German industry or to hand it over to other nations. We now have ‘economic heads’ sitting in the Ministry of Economics who have no other professional qualifications,” Lauk added.
Lauk says Germany’s technological advantages are now in jeopardy because the backbone of Germany’s economy and driver of innovation is the country’s automotive industry. “This is where most of the jobs are.”
150 years of technological experience “thrown away”
“The technological advantage of German carmakers through 150 years of experience with the combustion engine, transmissions etc. is being recklessly abandoned, Lauk said. “We are throwing away our competitive advantage and adopting the ‘Chinese drive’. Because 80 per cent of the battery drives come from China. That means China has driven us up against the wall in a strategic situation. And with our naivety, we didn’t realize what was happening.”
Unaffordable for the bottom 50%
Lauk warns that because of e-cars being considerably more expensive than conventional combustion engine vehicles: “The bottom fifty percent of the income pyramid will no longer be able to find a vehicle for less than 40,000 euros.” and thus this group will see significantly restricted mobility.
Tinder dry social powder keg of the haves and have nots
“Today you can get a cheap, suitable vehicle for 15,000, 18,000 or 20,000 euros. That will no longer be the case. We are running into a huge social conflict with this idiotic, singular policy to drive with electric batteries.”
What most people seem to miss is there is no intention of replacing all gas/diesel vehicles with EV’s. They will be for the elites.
The masses will reside in “15 minute cities” and rely on mass transit for travel beyond walking and bike riding distances.
The little people will also help by feeding tax money to the state who will then pay subsidies to the elites as rewards for buying their EV’s, just like we are doing now!
The current average US new car transaction price is already at $50k.. most arent ev as that’s around 6%
The affordability train left the station some time back,
Errr, this was and is a story about Germany (Europe) and affordability there.
Esp relative to earnings. As if I or anyone needed to say that.
Thus, tossing in some random context-free and irrelevant trivia about the US does not help you or your cause – rather the contrary in fact.
Come now Peta. Would it have been better if he went down a rabbit hole about sugar eating and soil erosion? At length?
Those who live in off topic houses shouldn’t throw moderation.
Yes . For readers it just used easily available numbers to show prices. Europeans pay massive VAT on top of the manufacturers price, in Germany its 19%
“15 minute cities” concept is been initiated in Europe.
The “15 minute city” concept is coming out of Europe.
Averages are a terrible measure since they hide the details. The top 4 selling cars in 2022 were monstrous SUVs, not cars at all that are in any way comparable to a base EV or what Tesla calls an SUV. They sell in such large numbers that they raise the average tremendously. No one buying these tanks would think about replacing them with a Tesla model Y and think they are in any way equivalent.
The biggest selling vehicles ford F series for example are ‘cheap’ ( thats why they are popular) F-150 is from around $35k. Same goes for the competing GM vehicles and from Ram
Smaller SUV from Ford such as Bronco are $32k
Trucks and SUVs have never been what most people consider cheap. Your cheap vehicles have traditionally been sedans.
There are still vehicle options down in the $20K to 30K range.
The average price says nothing about what the range is.
yes . No doubt theres cheaper , but it gave a ‘midpoint’ , median might be better . Otherwise theres nothing about rising prices that is useful
There’s even a few bare-bones models under $20k (none of them from American companies) such as, for example, the Nissan Versa base s-model which has a sticker price of about $17k.
However, over all prices are up. Even that bare bones Nissan Versa is about 30 to 40% more expensive than it was 5 years ago.
Exactly. To many, the above consequences are the features, not a bug.
Someone needs to break the awful news that CO2 doesn’t affect the weather much
that would be heretical and it is verboten to say openly!
Even worse it is actually good for the planet and mankind
Of course it won’t make any difference what effect CO2 has or doesn’t have, dear Lionheart. Or whether the majority come to understand reality or not. CO2 has always been the MEANS, not the ENDS.
The ends justify the means according to our betters. When we were told that burning fossil fuels was bringing us to the brink of a ‘new ice age’ back in the 1970s, it didn’t stop them for a heartbeat to discover that the trend had reversed.
The ends remained the same, to destroy capitalism by eliminating affordable energy. In the blink of an eye, the ‘problem’ morphed from aerosols blocking the sun to CO2 having a ‘dangerous’ enhanced greenhouse effect.
The irony is that there was a kernel of solid science in both of the doomsday scare stories. What made both false was only a matter of degree. Lack of adequate pollution control did likely contribute to the cooling trend in the middle of the twentieth century. Not enough that it mattered too much, though. Likewise CO2 emissions are modestly contributing to warming the climate. Not enough that it will do anything harmful.
Regardless of what the climate does, the anti-human communist nihilists are always going to claim that the trend is catastrophic and that the solution is an end to capitalism.
German per capita car ownership is three times that of China. It is destined to be on par due to German ownership reducing while Chinese ownership increases.
Automobiles for the masses is a North American concept. Why should plebs get to own and drive automobiles. Let them walk!
German’s voted for this so can only blame themselves. The are also rabid supporters of the EU unelected law makers so just getting what they deserve; an energy free future.
Automobiles for the masses is a German concept. It was Hitler who came up with it and personally oversaw the design and realization. Designed by Ferdinand Porsche, it was named the Volkswagen (People’ s car) by Hitler. He wanted every German citizen to be able to afford a Volkswagen.
Rumor has it that Ferdinand Porsche’s little kid played with his fathers design sketches for the Volkswagen Beetle and crumpled those sketches up.
Ferdinand looked at those crumpled sketches and thought hhmm.
Very soon afterwards he presented the Porsche 911…
(I am not a fan, can you tell?)
This week there has been much fanfare about Ford’s e mustang and its hands free system
The car is ~£50K You get 3 weeks of the system free then it’s a monthly subscription
EVs will rake in the subscriptions…
Just added rental fees for a vehicle that can always be remotely turned off and / located. Never truely yours, it’s just your time?
Same always goes for lease or finance. Its never truly yours till the last payment
Comparing apples to shoes Duker
Funny I have always owned my vehicles far longer than the finance period. Ten years at least, a good car will get 20 years and over nearly 300,000 miles. An exceptional car will do 400,000. You just can’t be chasing that new car smell. Most people trade cars/pickup trucks far to early.
When I translate it literally it is even worse!
‘The bottom 50% of the income pyramid’ in my view means 75% of the Germans!
After all, 3 of the four triangles in this image are below half the piramid’s height…
You’d almost think that Lauk deliberately used ‘bottom 50% of the income pyramid’ as a euphemism, so as not to make the panic any greater…
The great reset, is emerging. For long now, the elite “ruling classes”, have planned for a future, where the plebs walk, or use public transport, whilst they get to ride in their expensive luxury cars, boats and planes. The joys of the world are for them, not us. Made all the more enjoyable, by watching the plebs suffer.
The Germans are a smart people. They almost managed to take over the world a generation ago. So what is going on with them now? Why are they doing this to themselves?
It makes you wonder….. Personally I think so much of this apparent stupidity is actually more a result of ignorance. In Germany and in other places. In large due to the malfeasance of the MSM. People are like frogs in a pot. But, they don’t even realize they are in a pot, and they have no idea (because they aren’t informed, and many don’t bother to look further or question) that the heat is being turned way up.
By the time the water gets too hot for them to stand it, it will be too late. When a great number of Germans find that they can’t afford either new or used cars (as this will drive up the prices on used cars) then perhaps they will start raising Cain. But, like the frogs, it will be too late. Who knows what will happen then. Perhaps some charismatic leader will rise up and lead a charge against all of this green garbage and the people who pushed it.
I remember visiting Berlin back in the mid-1980s, around 1986, I think. Near the Brandenburg Gate on the western side of the Wall, there was grafiti “Lass uns die DDR BRDgen”
The DDR was the Deutsche Demokratische Republik or German Democratic Republic, the Soviet puppet state of East Germany. BRD stands for Bundesrepublik Deutschland or Federal Republic of Germany – West Germany.
If you pronounce the letters BRD in German, it sounds like ‘bay air day’. That’s also the rough pronunciation of the first part of the word ‘beerdigen’ meaning bury. So the grafiti said ‘Let us bury the DDR/Let us change the DDR into the BRD’
Always a fan of puns and wordplay, I thought that was very clever, especially a few years later when it apparently came to pass in 1990. Sadly what has actually happened is that the DDR has taken over the West under the name of the BRD.
Germany was always a mixed market- socialist system. Bismarck invented the modern welfare state
The only real market countries around are those in poorest africa, south america or Asia. Cambodia for example.
Have you ever wondered why the richest countries have similar mixed socialist-market systems ?
Duker,
As to your question: the richest countries got rich by having a real market economy. As per Joseph Schumpeter, the leaders then forget how they got rich and thus slide into socialist [crony] capitalism. See the current stagnation & rent-seeking behaviors of the EU, USA & Japan.
Germany is the poster-child of committing economic suicide on the false-flag of climate change. .China is laughing all the way to the bank. And Sun Tzu would be proud: China is winning by not even having to fight. They just pretend to be concerned about the climate while slowly letting their competitors self immolate [including hollowing out the military with nonsense regarding gender &/or white supremacy].
Here in the USA the states of California & New York are the closest examples to Germany with regard to climate policy nonsense.
I’m not sure that you understood my point Duker. West Germany was indeed a mixed model, in line with the corporatist designs of Bismarck, but essentially capitalist and in comparison with the East, vastly more wealthy. That is all being dismantled through the guise of the Energiewende, brought in by East German Angela Merkel.
Soviet agitprop worked tirelessly against nuclear power in Germany (Atomkraft? Nein danke!), but only this month have they finally reached their mission-accomplished moment.
Greens have long opposed logging, mining, and any kind of extractive industry or any perturbation of nature by human activity. Any kind of activity that supports economic growth and maintains the capitalist economy that is.
If their true motives have not been to try to undermine capitalism, why are they so untroubled by the cutting down of old growth forests to erect bird shredding windmills? The answer is that it advances their goal of dismantling capitalism, collapsing the old order so that an undemocratic tyranny can take its place.
Countries get rich by using the market economy. Unfortunately as people get rich, they decide that it’s easier to not work and demand that government support them.
So after getting rich, countries go socialist and start stagnating, if not loosing ground.
Around the world, there is a very strong correlation between economic growth and the degree of free market capitalism.
This relationship has been known for 70 years and is still in play.
Chinas had the most economic growth by far than any major country. The state in national, provincial and city government is a big part of the economy and in many ways is mostly communist , but in the leninist-party-state version.
Since richest countries are all mixed market system , it sorts of proves my point. Purely capitalist is Cambodia , where even the politics is capitalist…to the highest bidder.
Friedmanites in the 1980s said more naked capitalism would notch up the economic growth over what places like Britain and other had in the previous years
Didnt work out like that on the longer term. yes some of the spurts can be higher but the recessions were deeper- as was the case in the commercialised western countries before WW1
Sounds like the Roman coliseum days.
It is not a bug, it is a feature.
Peasant scum have no rights, to the Elite. Sturdy sandals should be adequate.
It already started with an effort to ban air travel, except by private jets.
Complete utter nonsense. Where do you dream up such things
By opening your eyes Duker
The Germans are a smart talented hardworking people. They almost took over the world a generation ago. So what is going on with them now? Why are they doing this to themselves?
Affordability also changes on the income side when good jobs and benefits decline. The green squeeze play is on and the excuses and blame games will be much harder to pull off by consulting climate media teams.
Well we have read that electricity is now considered to be a luxury in Germany so why not cars
Seems like they’re cracking down on “digital violence” as well. Can’t be a coincidence. Speaking out against this insanity is apparently, to the elite, some sort of violence against nature.
We should all be pointing our fingers at Germany and the UK and laughing at their incompetence. But it’s a show quickly spreading through the rest of the western world. And with it, even those of us in U.S. will see our its treasured First Amendment reduced to the scrapbook of history.
Professor Lauk is a giant among midgets. What a brave and wonderful man. The German people are better than this, they need to rise up and boot their leaders out of office. These worthless leaders are worshiping at the alter of world government and that does not serve the people they are supposed to be representing.
Making personal transportation unavailable to the masses has been the goal of the social engineers for several generations.
People are much easier to control, when the government gets to decide when and how people are permitted to move.
RE:Angela, as Steyn (I believe) once said, you can take the girl out of East Germany but you can’t take the East Germany out of the girl.
The ‘new car smell’ is caused by chemicals linked to cancer, study finds
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11972947/New-car-smell-caused-chemicals-linked-cancer-study-suggests.html
The scientists found that the levels of the chemicals surpassed China’s national safety standard for air quality in cars.
The amount of formaldehyde, a known carcinogen, was 35 percent above the limit.
Acetaldehyde, another possible cancer-causing chemical, was 61 percent higher than the national standard.
The EPA is trying to kill us all
So the German “Volks” won’t be able to afford a “wagen”.
But in the name of preventing “global warming”, Germany has been committing economic suicide for the past 20 years.
In the 1980’s and 1990’s, West Germany, and later reunified Germany, was the dominant economy of the European Union, with industrial production far outperforming countries with a similar population size, such as France, Italy, and Spain, who were mired in varying degrees of socialism. Back then, other European countries kept devaluing their currencies relative to the deutschmark, in order to compete with Germany in the export market. This mass-devaluation finally stopped with the adoption of the euro as common currency in 1997.
Then came Angela Merkel, and the economic suicide began–closing down coal-fired and nuclear power plants and pushing solar power in a mostly-cloudy country north of the 45th parallel–whatever were they thinking? Where will they get the electricity to recharge their electric cars, especially if Russian gas gets cut off? And will Germans really complain if their winter gets a degree warmer–probably not!
This has probably benefited France, which is happy to sell surplus nuclear power to Germany (France gets about 75% of its own electricity from nuclear fission), and Italy, which recently elected a conservative government. Italy gets a lot more sunshine than Germany, but unfortunately, sunshine can’t be exported.
Maybe Germans who can’t afford an electric Volkswagen might buy a gasoline-powered Peugeot or Fiat and drive it back home.