Let me start today with a positive message. It means that there is still growth even in the best Germany of all time. Don’t you believe it? Oh yes, there is growth and not too little of it. The Bundestag grows from one legislative period to the next and the federal government also grows larger.
This means we need more civil servants for the government and more employees for the parliamentarians in the Bundestag. Of course, they also need space in order to be able to develop themselves and their effect appropriately. The expensive expansion of the Chancellery is therefore unavoidable. Everyone understands that now.
What is no longer understood, however, is how Chancellors Helmut Schmidt and Helmut Kohl managed to conduct their government business with only around 400 civil servants in the Chancellery, while Angela Merkel needed around twice that number and Olaf Scholz will soon exceed the number of 1,000 civil servants in the Chancellery could.
Where there is planing, chips fall
Well, if Germany is growing so nicely in this area, then it will be easier to cope with the fact that there are also processes of shrinkage in other places. The German economy, for example, is making room for the new civil servants. More and more people are migrating abroad. This creates a lot of space in administrative buildings and offices and ugly industrial areas can finally be converted into cultivation areas for organically produced cannabis.
And rest assured, there will soon be a lot of space available, because one in six German companies is not only planning to move production capacity abroad, but has already started this process. We can also assume that every civil servant who moves into German offices, if they do their work thoroughly enough, will further accelerate this emigration process.
Many hospitals will also close their doors soon. There are already districts that have to make do without a single hospital. The district administrations could then move into these, because the buildings with their long corridors and abundant waiting rooms are ideal for being converted into official buildings.