NEW PARADIGM

Economic Turning Point – But How? What Germans Think

How should the economy recover from the crisis – through more market or targeted industrial policy? And how can climate policy gain broader acceptance? Our survey explores how people in Germany view key economic policy issues, which guiding principles they support or reject, and which narratives shape their perspectives.

BY

FORUM NEW ECONOMY

PUBLISHED

4. APRIL 2025

READING TIME

2 MIN

Key Links at a Glance:

  1. Survey Report: “Economic Turning Point” (February 2025)

  2. Paper: “Germans and Debt” (January 2025)

  3. Survey Presentation (Forum New Economy & d|part, Nov. 2024)

Together with d|part, we conducted a comprehensive, representative study on the positions of Germans regarding key economic issues.

  • 1,968 people participated in the survey.

  • The data was collected online between October 18 and 30, 2024, in collaboration with SAGO.

  • The sample is representative of the German population aged 16 to 80 – by gender, education level, and federal state.

We published the most comprehensive part of the study in February 2025:
Read the full report here (February 2025)

This report focuses on public attitudes toward key economic and socio-political challenges – including industrial policy, climate change, globalization, and inequality. In addition to exploring content-related opinions, we examined which narratives and catchphrases are especially influential. The results show: Many Germans are skeptical about the self-regulation of markets, but they are not simply calling for “more state” – rather, they expect differentiated and targeted state action.

We also hosted a Short Cut with Maja Göpel, Jens Südekum, and Achim Wambach on this topic.
Thomas Fricke also summarized the findings in a guest article on ZEIT Online.

The second part of the survey focused on public acceptance of government debt:
Read the paper “Germans and Debt” (January 2025)

The result: Traditional skepticism toward government debt – symbolized by the “Swabian housewife” – is fading. Many Germans now support public investment, even if it is financed through borrowing. Support is growing for reforming the debt brake to enable urgently needed public spending.

A concise overview of the main results is available in our presentation:
👉 See the presentation (November 2024)

Back in November 2024, Thomas Fricke and Marlies Uken presented some of the initial findings at the event titled “Economic Turning Point – But Where To?”

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After decades of overly naive market belief, we urgently need new answers to the great challenges of our time. More so, we need a whole new paradigm to guide us. We collect everything about the people and the community who are dealing with the question of a new paradigm and who analyze the historical and present impact of paradigms and narratives – whether in new contributions, performances, books and events.

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