How we should assess the federal budget planning, Joe Biden’s state spending and the Chancellor’s double whammy, Thomas Piketty has written down for us:

“So incumbent governments (as well as oppositions) like to announce investment plans that amount to thousands of billions of euros (or dollars or yuan). On closer inspection, it is often found that these plans do not refer to a single year, but to ten or twenty years and the correctly calculated annual amount in truth only makes up a tiny fraction of the national income or the planned increase is below the inflation or growth rate that is expected in the same period (so that the announced fabulous investment in relation to national income does not increase, but decreases). Ideally, the media would make it their task to systematically convert the announced amounts into understandable orders of magnitude. But we are quite far from this ideal and the best way to get closer to it is undoubtedly that a growing number of citizens adopt this practice and also demand it from their favorite media. The choice of socio-economic indicators is a highly political decision. It affects each and every one of us and cannot be left to others. Otherwise, one should not be surprised if the chosen indicators reflect other priorities than those that are important to oneself.”

– Thomas Piketty in his book “A Short History of Equality”, C.H. Beck Publishing House, page 3. Edition, Munich 2022

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