A Good Trick

Many thanks to JLH for translated this essay by Hans Heckel in the Preußische Allgemeine Zeitung:

Good Trick

How they’re giving us the bird with the electric re-allocation charge, what was left out of the climate packet, and what Merkel wants with Huawei.

Satiric week-in-review

by Hans Heckel
October 19, 2019

Well, at least that’s something. So as not to annoy the Germans too much, the despised EEG levy, also called the Clean Energy Assessment, will — just in time for the 2021 Bundestag election — be lowered by 0.25 cents per kilowatt hour. The money will not, of course, be sent to us. It is only intended to balance out a part of the already foreseen CO2 tax, which could lead to undesirable decisions in the voting booth.

The lowering of the EEG levy is a signal that the political establishment also takes seriously the worries of the lower income strata. That is, they are not just paying attention to the climate concerns of those living in mini-mansion neighborhoods and chic historical districts frequented by politicians and leading journalists. It warms the heart and makes skeptical voters mellow.

So, on January 1, 2021, the “lowering” of the levy will see a change from 6.4 cents to 6.5 cents. A reason for hard-pressed electricity consumers to breathe a sigh of… Wait a minute!

Since when is a change from 6.4 cents to 6.5 cents a “lowering”? Is that a typo? No, No. It’s a simple trick. On January 1, 2020, they will raise the price more than 5% to a whopping 6.75 cents, then just a year later offer us a price of 6.5 cents as an epic unburdening of households. Clever, isn’t it?

Will anyone notice? Not likely, or the people responsible for this would stay away from such a ruse. A year is a long time to drive the climate hysteria to never-before-seen heights. Who is going to nit-pick “levies” when the planet is at stake? See?

It doesn’t matter that the world is hardly engaged, and the German uproar over CO2 has no measurable effect worldwide. Germany is, after all, a rich country and obligated to play a leading role in saving the world’s climate. The others will see that we are right, and fall in line. That is what they did with the no-borders intake of asylum seekers, right? No they didn’t. And won’t. Nonetheless, our Interior Minister Seehofer acts as though they were, and sends inviting signals to the potential lands of the wave of future asylum seekers, which, by all accounts, is already forming up. But let’s stay with the climate thing. In this case, there is the ominous possible erosion of a decisive base supporting the construct of the whole climate thing — i.e., that stuff about being a “rich country”.

It has occurred to one attentive writer that nowhere in all of the government’s climate package does the idea of “competitiveness” appear. As the country next to Denmark in the world in highest electric costs and an equivalent percentage of exports, completely ignoring this aspect is quite an accomplishment.

This author suggests, in Cicero, that a “borders compensation system” be concluded swiftly with our trading partners to offset the climate-policy-determined higher German prices. In other words, Berlin should convince the administrations of our competitors to artificially raise the cost of their exports and artificially lower the cost of their imports so that the good Germans do not throw themselves under the wheels of their own runaway policy.

That will receive massive approval. Foreign competitors and our European partners have surely only been waiting for a “fair distribution of refugees” — which has however not yet occurred.

Things will get tough. Years-long efforts on “the development of Germany’s Economic Position” are finally showing results. Things are proceeding on a wide front, of which our wise energy policies are a not inconsiderable part. According to Jörg Krämer, chief economist of the Commerce Bank, production in the three German core industries — autos, chemistry and pharmacology — has been regressing since 2018, while the rest of Euro territory has remained stable. This may be because German enterprises pay by far the highest price for electric power.

On top of that, the tax burden for enterprises in the Bundesrepublik is twice that of the European Union average, and 5.5% higher than in 2009. The neglected infrastructure, too, and the similarly declining educational system are weakening the country’s economy. Ten years ago Germany had the second-best road system in the EU, after France. We have slid to fifth place, with indications that we will fall further. More and more gymnasium graduates can neither write nor calculate adequately, so 83% of businesses cannot fill apprenticeships. At least in this instance, the politicians have reacted strongly. Since so many German graduates write and reckon poorly, their border opening has lured millions of people into the country who are, on the average, even worse at arithmetic and in many cases cannot write at all — even in Arabic. That will pay off.

At least the Germans have their savings for lean times — to pay more electricity hikes, CO2 taxes and additional social services for future asylum seekers.

Or do they? Unfortunately, the political establishment was oblivious To preserve the construct of the euro, savings interest has sunk to negative numbers, consuming Germans’ savings. Because people with money prefer investing it in real estate to watching it melt away under the Euro-Sun, property prices are driven up and finding a roof to shelter under now squeezes even more out of the pocketbooks of millions.

Look wherever you may. At whatever point the political establishment wants to act, it stumbles upon the ruins it has created. Tragic, isn’t it? Reminiscent of the socialists who have trampled everything underfoot, and have now finished up like a locust swarm at the end of its migration.

The main goal of our rulers is not to protect the well-being of the people, but to stay in power. One long-honed skill involved in staying in power is putting a hand into the pockets of some of the people to “reward” others who are more likely to vote.

But what if there is not enough anymore for “rewards”? Then the only thing to be done is to increase the intimidation and surveillance of a people becoming discontent. Have you heard? Chancellor Merkel has personally strongly advocated allowing the Red Chinese concern Huawei to participate in the German 5G net. All German security agencies allegedly fear espionage and sabotage from Peking.

What is Merkel up to? All we know is this: the Chinese know how to surveil. Their billion-strong people are electronically followed step by step. Who knows? Maybe the German administration can use that much experience. It could be helpful to bring an expert like Huawei on board.

2 thoughts on “A Good Trick

  1. Not the Germans’ only hypocrisy; after Fukushima (which mainly demonstrated the stupidity of building nuclear reactors in geologically unstable areas), they started to abandon nuclear-generated electricity, but still import it from France. So do we in the UK, by the way, but we are still building at least one new plant, Hinckley point in Somerset, but based on a known unreliable design and running late and way over budget, so I guess that’s ok!

  2. We Yanks would be well advised to follow the French model–instead of creating massive nuclear dumps, recycle the fuel. Save money and the environment at the same time. But that would require common sense.

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