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I I just can't understand how anyone could possibly vote for the CDU—given its racism and anti-social policies—but I also can't understand those who consider it competent. This party somehow has a reputation for being competent in economic matters, yet its shameless schemes are largely to blame for Germany's current dire economic situation.
Until 2003, the country was a global leader in photovoltaics, but the CDU cut funding to benefit its fossil fuel cronies, causing this now multi-billion-dollar industry to go to the dogs.
The internet infrastructure is abysmal because the Kohl administration chose to lay copper instead of fiber-optic cables to accommodate their cronies in the cable TV industry at the time. The problem persists to this day and has cost the country billions.
The CDU decided to phase out nuclear power without an alternative, presumably yet another favor for the fossil fuel cronies. Electricity in Germany is now more expensive than in almost any other industrialized country.
The CDU is on the verge of blocking progress in electric mobility as a favor to the auto lobby. Clinging to a technology that is simply outdated will cost the country billions in the medium term, just so that car manufacturers—who are themselves to blame for having completely ignored the signs of the times—can continue to generate high sales until, at some point, they can no longer sell anything because nobody wants their products anymore
The CDU is one of the key forces responsible for the one-sided orientation toward the US, which makes Germany vulnerable to blackmail and causes enormous harm to innovation within the country.
These are just a few examples—this party lacks economic competence on a unfathomable level: They are just lining their own pockets and so they have been making decisions for decades that have caused extreme economic harm to the country and continue to do so.
A few additions:
The solar industry didn't just lose subsidies, the government actively tried to prevent the installation of new solar panels.
The nuclear exit actually made a bit of sense; our existing NPPs were mostly old and extending their like was getting increasingly uneconomic. At the same time we had very few locations where new ones could be built. They actually had a solid economic case for the nuclear exit.
They even had a good plan for the exit itself, letting existing contacts run out and simply not renewing them. Then they decided to exit the nuclear exit, renewing all of the contracts. Then, after the Fukushima disaster, they decided to exit the exit from the nuclear exit and immediately terminated all contracts, having to pay large penalties for the early termination.
For twenty years they followed the "Black Zero" plan, which amounted to trying to incur no new debt on the federal level whatsoever, no matter what. As a result, they spent basically nothing on infrastructural upkeep and the army and then suddenly found themselves having to take on 100 billion euros in emergency debt because bridges were collapsing, trains had no usable tracks and the Bundeswehr is unable to actually fight.
The CDU/CSU are mind-bogglingly inept at handing the economy.
That was actually a solid move to funnel large sums of money toward the big energy companies, which they had not received otherwise. So all according to plan.
Aside from such topics, they also regularly want/do cut freedom in various ways. Internet filter, anti encoding, you name it.
I mean funnily enough all examples lead to a shitty interpretation of being "conservative": kill progressive technologies and stick to the old shit.
Nooo, Photovoltaic does scary shit with photons, that sounds dangerous. Nooo, electric cars don't wrooom. Nooo, fiber optics contain to much fiber, we don't know what 'fiber' or 'optics' even is.