For context: This refers to an Economist special published in 1999 ("The sick man of the euro") which fuelled a public discourse in Germany on what needs to be

For context: This refers to an Economist special published in 1999 ("The sick man of the euro") which fuelled a public discourse in Germany on what needs to be improved leading up to the labor market reforms under chancellor Schröder ("Hartz IV" etc.). This fixed the most imminent problem of the time (high unemployment rate, inflexible labor market) and led to a stronger economic period in Germany. This time, the underlying problems are probably much harder to tackle: 1. Germany's economic model depends on high worker productivity, strong education, cheap energy (still large industry base). All of these have structural weaknesses. 2. The public discourse is very much focussed on climate change, allowing little room for other discourses. Don't get me wrong: I believe the climate change discourse is globally the most important discourse of our time; it is just that there is little room left for other broad social discourses in Germany, at the moment. 3. No immediate pressure comparable to the high unemployment rate at the time. The German economy is getting comparably weaker, slowly but steadily. (Boiling frog problem) That the economy is getting weaker, is eg. visible in GDP constant prices growth rate stats. It is yet not as severe as last time (between 2003 and 2006, Germany was last in G7, even behind Japan, and Italy with base year 1999), but the gap between the best performing G7 countries (US, Canada), number 3 (UK) and Germany is widening. Since 2017 Germany has fallen behind France, too (except in 2020). (see https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2023/April/weo-report?c=156,132,134,136,158,112,111,&s=NGDP_R,&sy=1999&ey=2028&ssm=0&scsm=1&scc=0&ssd=1&ssc=0&sic=0&sort=country&ds=.&br=1 https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2023/Ap...)