Seductively Simple: Mistakes That Cannot Be Avoided

You may know this cartoon: two signposts are set up at the fork. On the one hand it says “simple but wrong”, on the other “complicated but right”. The crowd turns to the left, on the simple, wrong path. Now you think for sure: you would turn right – complicated, but right. A little more humility, please. With the great approval of intelligent people, various federal governments have decided in recent decades things that the Germany of today has recognized as completely wrong. For example, there is the Riester pension. Whether private pension provision should be promoted by the state is still controversial today. But Riester had a completely different, much worse clause: the obligation that at the beginning of retirement at least the money paid must be available. This almost always happens in practice; but to guarantee it one hundred percent is very expensive. Today, every Riester pensioner sees how much return this guarantee cost. In the new retirement account there is no such a clause anymore. It was similar with the debt brake. Germany has neglected its investments, informed people said, now you have to borrow so you can invest properly. It was often forgotten that in previous years the federal government pushed tens of billions of untapped money before itself. Now the debt brake is dragged, there is money – and investments are still not progressing as hoped. The federal government has redistributed several billions into consumption. On some construction sites, the shortage of skilled workers, poor planning and excessive bureaucracy slow down progress. Investments hardly grow, their costs even more. After all: Now no one can excuse himself with lack of money. Finally, we are looking at the real problems. At the railway, a new boss has already been installed to improve management. Maybe it’s just like this: If false ideas sound too simple and too plausible, then you have to give in to them first. The right solutions sometimes only come to justice when the wrong ones have been removed from the debate. Perhaps we can also learn from the past. What decisions is Germany facing right now that sound totally plausible but will turn out to be wrong in retrospect? Please remember the things that seem quite right to you. Here's a proposal. The Bundestag has just debated again whether the contradiction solution applies to organ donations: Who does not contradict, becomes organ donor. However, international studies show time and again that the contradiction solution increases the number of organ donors, but not the number of donated organs. Many of the new theoretical organ donors remain exactly that: theoretical. After the opposition solution was introduced in Spain, the head of the F.A.S. organ donation centre there sent the warning sentence: “The opposition solution distracts from the really necessary changes that are necessary for organ donations of deceased people to work.” What are they? It is about the organisation of hospitals, compensation, incentives. Germany has already improved some things, but others are still missing. Complicated, but right. The sugar tax could also be discussed for a long time. Anyone who learns from the past can now consider what mistakes can simply be made because they are not so bad, so that the really effective measures come soon afterwards. The Riester guarantee was very damaging for a generation of insured. Is the contradiction solution less bad? Everyone will answer that differently. 500 billion euros in debt for investments, on the other hand, will cost the Treasury 20 billion euros annually in interest. We should rarely make such mistakes.