Heart Disease. And Nobody Operates.

I. The Diagnosis

In the summer of 2026 Hans-Werner Sinn, for many years president of the Munich ifo Institute, gave a speech in Giessen on the state of the German economy. It is recommended online as “absolutely worth watching”, and it is. Chart after chart, Sinn shows how industrial production has fallen by about 16 per cent since 2018, in the car industry and in metal production by 23 per cent each. Switzerland grew by 22 per cent over the same period. His image for it: the car industry is the heart of the German economy, and “Germany has heart disease”.

He lists the causes: the end of Russian energy, a flood of European regulations from sustainability reporting to supply-chain due diligence, an energy transition he considers technically unfeasible, Trump’s tariffs, and a state that now claims almost half of economic output. His therapy: abolish rules, allow faster depreciation of investment, wage subsidies instead of wage replacement, work more, retire later.

The hall applauds often. Then everyone goes home, and what has happened for years happens again: nothing.

II. What the Diagnosis Gets Right

One need not follow Sinn in everything to acknowledge where he is strong. His industrial figures show not a cyclical dip but a trend, and he says so clearly. In his own field he is hard to refute: if Europe unilaterally buys less oil, the oil does not stay in the ground. It becomes cheaper and is burned elsewhere. Years ago he called this the green paradox.

And he makes a point we have just described from the other side. The Germans, he says, tend to glorify ideas religiously instead of testing pragmatically whether they work: an ethics of conviction instead of an ethics of responsibility. In “Why I Did Not Become a Leftist” we called the same thing faith healing. Whoever considers a doctrine right no longer tests it against reality.

III. Where the Doctor Slips

Precisely for that reason Sinn must be measured by his own standard. In some places he does not meet it.

He says that only half a per cent of asylum applications are granted. That is true only of asylum under Article 16a of the Basic Law, which is indeed rare. Protection overall, as a refugee, subsidiary protection or a ban on deportation, was granted according to the Federal Office to 28 per cent of all decided cases in 2025 and almost 39 per cent in the first half of 2026. Whoever cites the smaller figure and omits the larger one creates a picture the statistics do not support.

He says of Muslim migrants that they want to “see the cash straight away”. That is not a finding but a sweeping judgement, exactly the kind of conviction without testing he accuses the Greens of. And he first gives the share of wind and sun in usable energy as half a per cent before correcting it to nine. These are no trifles from a speaker who reproaches his audience for being fooled by semantics without real numbers.

IV. The Same Diagnosis for Twenty-Three Years

The most important thing about the speech is not in it. In 2003 Sinn published a book entitled “Can Germany Still Be Saved?”. The diagnosis then was the same: labour too expensive, too much state, too little investment. Twenty-three years later the same doctor gives the same patient the same diagnosis, only worse.

Once there was an operation. With Agenda 2010 Gerhard Schröder pushed through reforms that Sinn today praises as courageous. Schröder lost the 2005 election, and the SPD has not recovered to this day. Every politician who has sought office since has learned this lesson: whoever operates is voted out before the patient wakes up.

The question Sinn does not ask is therefore the real one: why does nobody operate, although almost everyone knows the diagnosis?

V. Why Nobody Operates

The surgeon is elected the day after the operation. A reform costs immediately and works only years later. A member of parliament is elected every four years. Imagine a surgeon whose pay depends on how the patient feels the morning after the operation. He will not operate. He will prescribe painkillers.

Every organ has its association. In 1982 the American economist Mancur Olson described how, in stable societies, more and more interest groups form over time, each securing its slice of the cake and blocking any change that costs it something. The longer a society lives without upheaval, the denser this web becomes. Every reform Sinn demands hits a well-organised group, and each of these groups has a more direct line into the ministries than the patient himself.

The long march selects the cautious. In “The Long March through the Party” we described how in Germany there is only one way into parliament, the long march through the party. Whoever completes it has not stood out. A surgeon is sought; an administrator is selected.

The mandate is an asset. In “The Merzgefallenen” we showed how members of parliament rationally manage their mandate. A risky reform endangers this asset. Whoever dares it anyway may lose the next place on the list.

Responsibility migrates. Sinn himself complains that many of the harmful rules come from Brussels. Berlin points to Brussels, Brussels to the member states, the federal states to the federal government. Every level can show that the cause lies with another. A hospital in which every department refers the patient to another needs no malpractice to let him die.

VI. And the Doctors?

Unsparingly, one must also look at the diagnosticians. An economist who has given the same diagnosis for twenty-three years is invited, printed and applauded for it. The diagnosis earns applause; the operation earns defeat at the polls. The system rewards whoever describes the disease and punishes whoever treats it.

That applies to us too. Whoever writes from outside, as we do, does not operate either. The difference we set ourselves is modest: not only to describe what is wrong but to ask why it stays wrong, and to make proposals that start at that point, even if they are imperfect.

VII. What Would Have to Change in the Construction

If the construction prevents every operation, no better diagnosis helps. One must start with the construction.

First, rejection must become visible. In “The Missing Form” we proposed the blank vote: a ballot on which one can reject all offers without staying away from the election. As long as non-voters count as uninterested, every government can pretend to have a mandate. A counted rejection would be a pressure no party can talk away.

Second, members of parliament must be possible who do not owe their mandate to their party. We described this in “People’s Representatives without a Party” and in “Mandate without a Place” (both in German). Whoever does not depend on the next place on the list can carry a reform that harms his party and benefits the country.

Third, rules must have an expiry date. Every regulation Sinn complains about was once adopted for good reasons and never examined again. A rule that lapses automatically after five years unless someone demonstrates its effect turns the jungle into a garden that is pruned regularly. This is not a new idea, but it attacks the problem at its root: not the individual bad rule, but the construction in which bad rules live forever.

VIII. How This Text Could Be Refuted

This text claims that the construction of German politics prevents major reforms whose costs fall immediately and whose benefits come only later. That can be refuted.

If a federal government in this legislative period pushes through a reform against well-organised interests, for instance on pensions, social benefits or regulation, and is not punished for it at the next election but confirmed, then this text is refuted. We would gladly see it.

IX. The Hospital

A patient whose doctors have agreed on the diagnosis for decades and whom nobody operates on nevertheless does not die of his disease. He dies of the construction of the hospital.

Germany needs no further diagnosis. It needs a hospital in which operating pays.