Subject:  Viridian Note 00046:  German Bankers Love German 
Greens

Key concepts:  German Greens, fiscal conservatism, coal 
mining, generational equity, sustainability

Attention Conservation Notice:  It's blatant propaganda 
written by a German banker who is making strange-
bedfellows overtures to the German Green Party.  We 
Viridians are probably wasting our attention on this Euro 
political rhetoric, when we could be discussing something 
hard, immediate, and practical, like, say, postindustrial 
aesthetics.

Entries in the Viridian "Fungal Typography" Contest:
http://members.aol.com/stjude/
http://www.saunalahti.fi/~jtlin/viridian/
http://www.wenet.net/~scoville/Viridian/viridiantext.html
http://www.erols.com/ljaurbach/
http://www.empathy.com/viridian/
http://www.spaceways.de/Viridian/Viridiantype.html
http://www.stewarts.org/users/stewarts/viridian.html
http://way.nu/greens/typography.html
http://abe.burmeister.com/viridian2dot1.html
http://rampages.onramp.net/~jzero/viridian/
http://www.msys.net/reid/main.html
and
http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades/nancy.html
http://www.netaxs.com/~morgana/fungus.html
http://www.golden.net/~eli/viridian/
http://ucsub.Colorado.EDU/~smcginni/viridian/vfont.html

The Viridian Fungal Typography contest is now closed.
A winner will be announced shortly.  

From: cascio@well.com^^  (Jamais Cascio)

Source:  http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/oped/01hufn.html

February 1, 1999

The Greens vs. Germany's Welfare State
By MARTIN HUFNER

Much to their surprise and disbelief, some German business 
leaders have found common ground with their erstwhile 
worst enemy: the Green Party, which is emerging as the 
voice of economic reason in the new center-left Government 
in a number of areas.

(((bruces remarks:  Life will swiftly improve if we can 
just all get over this "surprise and disbelief" 
nonsense.)))

    This stands in stark contrast to the mood right after 
the election, when the victorious Social Democrats brought 
their electoral allies, the Greens, into their Government 
coalition. This raised grave concerns that once the Greens 
grabbed a little power, they would push an anti-capitalist 
agenda.

((("Grabbed a little power"?  They got elected, okay?)))

    In fact, the Greens and their pragmatic leader, 
Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, are quite fiscally 
conservative, more so in many ways than the  Social 
Democrats and their Finance Minister, Oskar Lafontaine. (A 
Green politician has characterized Mr. Lafontaine as 
someone "who is stuck in a totally outdated concept of 
demand-side economics.")

(((Almost as stinging a rebuke as declaring him guilty of 
"twentieth-century thinking!")))

    The Greens, for example, oppose various large 
subsidies for industries like coal mining == a reform 
crucial to improving the competitiveness of the German 
economy.

(((Oh happy day!  Diss a carbon-dioxide miner, and 
suddenly bankers love you!  Who says there's no justice 
for the righteous?)))

    Reform of Germany's famously generous pension system 
is another instance of the Greens' fiscal sense. While the 
Social Democrats are determined to undo the very limited 
scaling back in the pension system by the previous 
Government, the Greens advocate a firm focus on 
generational equity. They do not believe it is wise to add 
to the financial burden of today's and tomorrow's work 
force.

((("Generational equity" at least has the advantage of not 
being talked-to-death politically.)))

     For the Greens, "sustainability" is more than an 
environmental concept, and relates to financial, economic 
and social policy as well. They believe that if the level 
of consumption is not sustainable == be it in the form of 
deficit spending, the overconsumption of state services or 
environmental degradation == then policies must change.

    The Greens are even sympathetic to the idea that 
corporate taxes must be revamped to make German business 
more competitive. Their calculation is simple: financially 
weak companies cannot make the necessary investments in 
technologies to protect the environment. The Greens' 
persistence forced German business to deal with pollution 
and other problems before other countries did. In fact, 
environmentally sensitive technologies like oil 
reclamation are one  of the few areas where German 
business can claim a dominance comparable to its strong 
overall position as little as 15 years ago.

    Last year, Germany's 18.7 percent share of the world 
market for environmental technology was larger than that 
of any other country, including the United States.

(((We Viridians like to refer to this as the "Cold War II: 
Solar-Panel Gap with the Germans" Scenario.)))

    In some cases, it is business that has given due 
consideration to the Greens' way of thinking, rather than 
vice versa.

(((Really?  How unthinkably shocking!)))

    Take a party proposal to triple Germany's already high 
gasoline taxes. Many corporate and financial leaders were 
aghast. But then again, one cannot escape noticing that, 
at the very time the idea was floated, Volkswagen 
introduced its new "Lupo" car that is designed to run on 
78 miles per gallon.

     From a purely economic point of view, by the time 
that kind of leap forward in efficiency takes a broader 
hold in the marketplace, even a tripling of gasoline 
prices would not impose an additional burden on the 
average driver. 

    As advanced industrialized societies, we need to 
realize that the auto industry can no longer primarily 
rely on the "bigger and more powerful" mottos of 
yesteryear. "More intelligent" will do, as we look forward 
to vastly improved fuel economy and the wider use of 
information technology tools, like navigation systems. The 
Greens' policy once again presents a useful measuring rod 
for car makers' advances.

(((In a word, "jawohl.")))

    It is true that the Greens' single-mindedness in 
pursuing their goals has proved highly frustrating to 
business leaders at times. In retrospect, however, these 
tough battles yielded a considerable amount of mutual 
respect.

   Even the Greens' more outlandish ideas sometimes make 
an odd sort of sense.  (...)

   As long as Joschka Fischer manages to steer his party 
in the right direction, the Greens' innate anti-
establishment thinking == and their willingness to take on 
institutions deemed untouchable by others == provides a 
refreshing element in German politics.

    Contrary to all expectations, the Greens have had such 
a good start in the new Government that it has caused 
Germany's astute Chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, to change 
his own political strategy. Rather than letting them 
increasingly occupy the center ground in German politics, 
he is cooperating with them to put an effective check on 
the Social Democrats' left wing, which has so far resisted 
reforms. In working more closely with the Greens, Mr. 
Schroeder may be readying Germany for the changes it 
needs.

Martin Hufner is chief economist of Bayerische 
Vereinsbank, Germany's second-largest bank.

(((Well, this is clearly a cheering scenario for that 
haunting specter of 21st century Greens  in power.  
They're *politicians,* all right?  They have all the 
standard attitudes, tactics and programmatic alliances 
that bourgeois politicians always do, except that industry 
somehow finds ways to make money that don't blatantly ruin 
the climate.  It doesn't require shock and disbelief to 
envision this.  There's nothing remotely shocking about it 
== in retrospect, it's the twentieth-century that's truly 
unbelievable.)))