Der Spiegel's US correspondent – Gabor Steingart – has distinguished himself by being consistently wrong on nearly every subject he touches. First he told his German readers that Barack Obama wouild never be the nominee of his party. Then, after Obama won the nomination, he wrote that Americans would never vote for Obama over John McCain. Now that Barack Obama is president, Steingarr is predicting massive failure on all fronts.
His most recent attack is on the economic stimulus plan put forward by the president. For the neo-liberal Steingart, the plan is too much reminiscent of FDR's New Deal proposal. Here the journalist is echoing the right-wing myth that FDR did not end the Great Depression with his programs. Obama, writes Steingart, should forget about Roosevelt and instead embrace the policies of Ludwig Erhard, the architect of Germany's postwar Wirtschaftswunder ("economic miracle"):
first make an effort when money became tight and, thus, more valuable.
You get the best results, he found, if, in the tried and true manner of
our forefathers, you work hard and don't forget to save. "The state
can't afford anything that doesn't come from the strength of its own
people," was the message. He also could have said: No pain, no gain."
So in Steingart's view American workers are not willing to roll up their sleeves and work hard to end the economic crisis, preferring to sit back and take on excessive debt. Question to Steingart: how are Americans supposed to work harder when they are losing their employment at alarming rates – over 3.5 million since last summer? How are the jobs supposed to materialize? In fact, worker productivity has risen consistently every year for the past ten years, even as workers' income and economic well-being declined.
Erhard revived the German economy with currency reform and the lifting of all price controls in the postwar era. Those policies worked well in a nation of ruined cities traumatized by war. In the US, however, we have just lived through an era of massive deregulation and can now see the disasterous consequences. Contrary to what Steingart thinks in his Washington-based cocoon, Americans are not afraid of "sweat" as long as they feel they are getting a fair deal. For a long time, however, the game has been rigged against them by Steingart's neo-conservative pals.
UPDATE: More on Steingart's "analysis" from Feynsinn and NachDenkSeiten.
