“It goes without saying that we can talk” about changes to constitutional debt rules, CDU leader Friedrich Merz says at the newspaper’s economic forum Süddeutsche Zeitung on Tuesday. He will repeat something similar the next day in Parliament. We’re talking about the familiar Friedrich Mertzthe advocate of fiscal discipline, the “chosen one” of Wolfgang Schäuble, the devotee of the lean state and tax simplification.

If the polls are confirmed, Mertz will be chancellor in February. Just last year his party dragged the “co-government” under the social democrat to the Supreme Constitutional Court Olaf Solz for violating debt rules. The same rules, about which today “it goes without saying that we can talk”. This change of course promises, if nothing else, an exciting election campaign in Germany.

Already the president of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) Saskia Esken is proposing to Mertz an agreement to change the rules “here and now”, with a criterion of whether the new loans will be intended for “consumption” or for “investments”. In the first case they are “bad loans” prohibited by the constitutionally guaranteed debt brake. In the second case, these are “good loans” that do not fall under the debt rules.

Another “consumption”, another “investment”

There is a logic to this differentiation. It is also noticeable on an individual level: If we buy a big car just to impress our friends, it is a consumer expenditure from which we can only expect losses. In this case let us not borrow money, unless we are sure that we will service our debt.

But if we buy the same car to work as a taxi, then it is not a consumer good, but a capital good that will help us create new wealth. In this case it is not a bad idea to borrow, as we expect that the future income will far exceed the necessary capital to purchase the vehicle. In other words, we will pay off the debt and we will have a profit.

Something similar happens with lending on a larger scale. When it is used for consumer purposes, as unfortunately happened in Greece to a large extent in the past decades, the result is what we know. When used to fund critical infrastructure or to fund education, the resulting increase in productivity (which is not just measured in hours worked) will help us pay off the debt and leave us with a profit.

It’s hard to get the bill…

In today’s Germany, the costs required to modernize the economy and infrastructure are enormous. At the same time, other goals must be met, such as the increase in defense spending based on the dictates of NATO and the Donald Trumpthe consolidation of the insurance system, the implementation of the climate goals. We have repeatedly pointed out that this “squaring the circle” does not work out.

In addition, there is an uncertain variable in the whole equation, which concerns the cost of energy. The outgoing government may be celebrating weaning off Russian gas and meeting 60% of the country’s needs from renewable sources, but the relief is temporary. Experts estimate that Germany’s energy needs will increase and perhaps double in the next 20 years, especially if we take into account the extremely energy-intensive field of Artificial Intelligence.

Simply put, the bill is hard to come by without a loosening of the debt rules. We need a cool discussion, without moralizing that doesn’t help anyone. One such moral is that “we cannot live at the expense of future generations”. At first glance, the argument seems compelling. If we make it an image, we imagine an evil grandmother who is drunk, having previously broken the piggy bank that her grandchildren are hiding. But we repeat that we are not talking about consumer spending here. And also, let’s ask ourselves for a moment: Are the “next generations” not interested in attending decent schools and universities? Don’t they want to grow up with a health system that protects them, with transportation that serves, with government services that work, with public spaces that are maintained?