"No, fortunately not!" And: "No, just don't!" These are the answers to the most pressing questions about our tax money.
The first question: Is the federal government over-indebted if it is now also investing an additional 100 billion euros in the Bundeswehr – after all the Corona aid?
No, luckily she doesn't.
This shows Germany's debt ratio.
Even after the new rearmament, it will not be much more than 70 percent of economic output.
After the financial crisis, there were significantly more, and the country was still able to restructure its budget.
Consider: 100 billion euros all at once, that sounds like a lot of money – but the federal government pushes more than 110 billion euros into the pension insurance year after year as a subsidy.
Now there are other important goals, for example climate protection.
Secondly, if Germany can easily afford the 100 billion, would you have to create a special pot again?
No, don't!
Leave money for the unforeseen
The principle is actually quite easy to understand: Germany normally has to remain frugal in order to be able to react quickly in the event of an unforeseen emergency.
Unfortunately, this is not so easy in practice.
And that's because of the word "unforeseen".
The problem with crises is that they often come as a surprise.
You never know what the next one will be.
This is mostly not because there would be a lack of warnings.
On the contrary: that there are so many warnings.
Let's hope for a moment that the situation in Ukraine will improve soon, and let's look to the future: Do we now have to prepare ourselves more urgently for extreme weather events, for a cyber war, for the threat of a new pandemic, for enormous inflation or for the bursting of a real estate bubble?
Nobody knows.
Fortunately, many warnings from experts remain just warnings, they are rightly forgotten.
It would have been better to have heeded other warnings beforehand, such as those about Putin.
But which is which?
Nobody knows.
And then in the end a completely different crisis arises that nobody expected.
Germany can only get out of this difficulty if it takes more general precautions than it used to.
And if it keeps the financial leeway open to react to crises when they arise.
This usually obliges you to be economical.
Anyone who enters the crisis with high debts has very limited room for maneuver – Italy, for example, had to experience this during the Corona crisis.
How do you keep government debt under control?
So how do you keep government finances sound?
By planning predictable expenses well.
For example in terms of climate protection.
The federal government has already taken out 60 billion euros in credit and put it into a climate fund - it was the conceptual forerunner of the new equipment manoeuvre.
That was a mistake.
Climate protection is necessary and urgent, but not unforeseen.
The federal government should have made savings elsewhere.
There couldn't have been a better time.
After all, interest rates fell almost consistently during Angela Merkel's chancellorship.
Year after year, the federal government saved more and more billions in interest.
However, the money did not flow into investments, not into securing Germany's future, but into more and more benefits for the voters of the governing parties.
Retire.
The Baukindergeld.
Unnecessary subsidies to phase out coal.
And so forth.
But now two new parties are at work.
Taxpayers should have expected that the new ministers would sift through the budgets of their predecessors and find one or two items on which they no longer want to spend money.
But nothing happened, every minister demanded much more money than before.
It's actually a scandal.
Unfortunately, the country was speechless.
That has to change in the future.
Because if in a few years the crisis after next comes, again quite surprisingly, then Germany will urgently need its financial solidity.