The SPD does not have a run anyway, but the fact that its top candidate skidded on this question came unexpectedly.

The Bild newspaper asked him this week whether he knew the current price for a liter of gasoline, and what did Olaf Scholz answer?

He doesn't look at this price every day, he said, and besides: “I'm not going to refuel myself.” That almost looked like a total write-off: no sense - and that as finance minister - for the wallet of the motorized little man and the confession, always just to be driven around by the chauffeur.

Little consolation for Scholz will have been that the next day Armin Laschet answered the same question only hesitantly and Markus Söder only very quickly because he had the answer sent by SMS.

Jörg Thomann

Editor in the "Life" section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

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    However, none of you should grieve.

    Is the knowledge of the petrol price actually still the unit in which the closeness to the people of modern top politicians should be measured - just as areas obviously have to be indicated in football fields or in Saarland (the federal state, not its residents)?

    Are we really still the sausage-munching, beer-drinking people of motorists who once thought the world knew us?

    Aren't we going to be driving all electric cars anyway?

    No: If you want to convince the broadest possible number of voters today, you don't necessarily have to know the price of a liter of diesel or a piece of butter - but the value of a contemporary shopping cart.

    A liter of oat drink

    costs 2.19 euros. In any case, the totally hip barista edition of the totally hip brand Oatly, which is usually long sold out when we rush to the supermarket in the evening. The fact that there are so many baristas in Germany, that is, people who prepare coffee professionally, would be new to us, but people with "sports" shower gel who no longer even know where their running shoes are. You can also get oat drinks for 99 cents, which is usually still more expensive than mundane milk, but you just pay for the clear conscience that no oat grain was snatched from its mother right after the birth.

    You can get

    an FFP2 mask

    at the discounter for only 65 cents;

    Good to know, especially if you are currently the Minister of Health and your ministry frequently buys too much.

    Some of these things are much cheaper on the Internet, but pay attention to the ratings and the description of the condition: When it comes to “used - practically like new”, better hands off.

    A cell phone case costs

    around 20 euros.

    So with 240 euros a year, if you have a teenage girl at home who has to change her case at least once a month for fashion reasons.

    A liter of water

    costs 12 cents if it is the no-name brand from the supermarket, just under Euro if it is the elite Evian, and 0.2 cents if it comes from the tap. In some restaurants you can pay five euros for tap water when the waiter throws a lemon wedge into the carafe.