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Europe has produced some great economic reformers in recent years. The Tony Blair for example. Or the Gerhard Schröder. And Mario Monti and Matteo Renzi in Italy. In Spain the Mariano Rajoy. And for a good year in France Emmanuel Macron.

Everyone has been more or less zealous in their countries, which the popes of economics have recommended: abolishing the burdensome rules of the labor market, relieving the poorer, lukewarmers of bad taxes, and reducing the unemployed (to finally put pressure on them), cheeky unions slowing down - and that is standard practice to cut pensions.

That always gave a lot of praise from many economics professors. And by officials in Brussels. And from people who manage money at the financial market from people who have a lot of it. So Friedrich Merz. To give an example.

Except that, somewhat irritating, all the star reformers have been met in a mysterious way since then by misfortune - usually in the form of a sudden decline in the popularity rankings of its own population. One or two of the people went out. Like this week, Emmanuel Macron, who, after all the fine reforms he had begun to the delight of these professors and analysts, is now plagued by the French protest in warning vests (and their own crash in the polls).

ETIENNE LAURENT / EPA-EFE / REX

Emmanuel Macron

Similar to Gerhard Schröder, only without yellow west, when he called the people to new elections in 2005 because of Monday demonstrations and popular misgivings - and then had to realize that he, the largest of all agenda reformers, wanted to let only a minority continue. What is not possible then according to democratic Usus. Now he has to do in oil and gas. Or Monti and Renzi, who were also hunted down from the field. Or Tony Blair, who today no one wants to have more on the island as a friend - at least in their own political camp.

Coincidence? Since then almost all (mostly formally social-democratic) parties have imploded to try as reformers - whether in Germany the SPD, in Italy Renzi's Partito Democratico or in France the once proud Parti socialiste, who had already tested the great reforming before Macron ,

As the? With such a finding, the preachers of economic orthodoxy should immediately tune into lamentations about the - either German, Italian or French - people, which simply shows too little economic insight - or somehow just too comfortable had (Spahn-Merz theorem). What should be expelled from the people under the pressure of suffering at the latest in the next crisis.

Or the preachers picked out the argumentative practical thesis that such reforms need time, so the people should not be so impatient - because in the end all the deprivations will lead to the economy growing stronger, creating more jobs, and am End all deserve more and land in paradise. Well. At some point.

Another interpretation could be that the whole reforming does not make everyone really happy for eternity - and one or the other from the people feels that.

It is correct: Wherever more or less was reformed according to textbook, all the renouncement, the flexibilisierten employment conditions and other Deregulierungen in fact usually provided for clearly better company balance sheets and investor luck. So, that part of the promise was clear. Never before have companies made so much money as they do today. Shareholders have never been as rich in shares as they have been since the days of the liberal market reformers Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.

It also seems to have worked well that companies have created quite a few new jobs in some places - in fact, thanks to the nice profits and all the new opportunities to hire people for a short time or for a bun, they have actually created quite a few new jobs. At least the measured unemployment in Ur-reform countries like the USA and Great Britain is historically low today, just like ours. Even in France and Italy, it has fallen significantly recently. Officially.

The catch here is that nevertheless something does not seem to be right - at least judging by how much it is now politically troubling almost everywhere. And that it first started to trouble in the US and the UK, where the market craze was previously most consistently practiced. In the meantime, there is a lot to suggest that this could be due to the pitfalls of the beautiful economic model:

  • Despite all the great profits, companies have seldom invested as much in the future as they did this time - which could have something to do with the lack of income and economic security that lacks the prospect of neatly growing domestic demand this time around.
  • Due to all the new pressure, the low-cost job competition and the diminished union influence, there will be no longer any large increases in wages in the long term. According to reports by the International Labor Organization (ILO), wages have been rising historically for years, almost everywhere in industrialized countries; In the United Kingdom and Italy, people earn on average, even when inflation-adjusted, less than they did before the 2008 crisis.
  • A significant part of the people does not really get anything from the gains - and in part they actually have less in real terms today than we did ten or twenty years ago; which is even more true for the USA.
  • Out of sheer mobility and flexibility, insecurity for workers has dramatically increased their incomes of losing income in their professional lives - which, according to the diagnosis of Mannheim economist Tom Krebs, has led quite unequivocally to many people frustratingly choosing populists. Keywords: descent fear.

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All this is the opposite of what the Reform Peoples had promised: that in the end, everyone would benefit. And it could also explain why even in Germany the displeasure is so great, where the common criteria for economic success are so pretty - steady growth with falling unemployment. And why not only the poor and the unemployed choose AfD and other populists. Or right-wing parties perform best where the globalization pressure was (and is) measurably highest - and especially many people seem to have lost control over their own destinies. And why Donald Trump won in 2016 especially in regions like the old industrial Rust Belt, where people saw their existence threatened from one day to the next.

That might also explain why populists are now ruling in Italy - after those who have done so much reform before have fallen out of favor, because even after years of reforms, the people did not get the feeling that they all soon had any more.

And why even the smart Emmanuel Macron now meets what the Schröders and Blairs and Renzis met years ago: that although they made the hearts of the Fundis beat faster in the economic camps, they were only politically at the end. And it has been politically troubling ever since.

REUTERS

Gerhard Schröder 1998

If that's true, there's an urgent need for a whole new understanding of what's good: a policy that allows entrepreneurs in the country to translate ideas and make enough money to invest and create new jobs - not as an end in itself or something that it leads to political collapse via various collateral damage.

Then in the mix of criteria for a good policy not only the usual economic stuff, but also how suitable this or that reform package is to bring society together again. And then one of meaningful reforms is to make sure, without any doubt (and not as a possible late succession), that as many as possible have something of it - if that does not happen automatically.

Then it may be worthwhile to consult psychologists much more about how much insecurity and loss of control the human soul can withstand from competition, competition and mobility appeals. According to the Israeli historian and bestselling author Yuval Noah Harari, in the face of the foreseeable upheavals that will come with the advent of artificial intelligence, there will be even more questions than before about how much change the human brain can handle. If the average specimen of our genus is overwhelmed with so many upheavals, because it has to feed a family and pay off a house, and therefore can not even move because there are jobs elsewhere; different from the textbooks.

Then what has been preached in the models of economic orthodoxy for a few decades may simply not be for the conventional kind of man. Whether for the French or the Italian or the German version.