SPD General Kühnert is suspicious of people who make provisions for old age themselves. Each only the apartment that he lives in himself. That is the idea of SPD General Kevin Kühnert. This is problematic and uneconomical. Kühnert wants even more socialism in apartments than in the GDR. A guest post.
“If everything were fine here, then, in my view, everyone would only have the apartment they live in,” explained SPD General Secretary Kevin Kühnert a few days ago in a Sat1 program on the subject of rent. First I had to look up what “alles tutti” is supposed to mean. Italian “tutti” means “all, everyone”, so “alles tutti” means a doubling, but is otherwise meaningless. Kühnert apparently wants to express how he imagines an ideal economic system, namely without private landlords.
As SPD general secretary, he remains true to his opinion that in his opinion there should only be two types of apartments in an economic system: owner-occupied apartments, which should also be privately owned – and state apartments.
Kevin Kühnert, then still chairman of the SPD youth organization Jusos, asked in 2019 on the talk show “Maischberger”: “By what right does someone have more than 20 apartments?” And in the same year he explained in an interview with the weekly newspaper “Zeit”: “I don’t think it’s a legitimate business model to make a living from other people’s living space… Thinking it through to the end, everyone should own no more than the living space they live in.” Maximum. So to speak, an upper limit of an apartment, but only for self-use.
In this way, Kühnert wants even more socialism in the housing sector than in the GDR. In the GDR, not only were 84.4 percent of single- and two-family houses privately owned, but also 20.6 percent of multi-family houses. “Democratic Socialists” always vehemently defend themselves against the accusation that they wanted conditions similar to those in the GDR.
But Kühnert’s proposal shows that the economic policy ideas are very similar: the basic conviction, with the exception of owner-occupied residential property, that only state apartments are good apartments, is identical to the GDR philosophy. Except that Kühnert wants to implement housing socialism even more consistently than in the GDR, where private letting was undesirable and difficult, but still every fifth apartment was privately owned.
The rent freeze, another favorite idea of the Social Democrats (which they could not implement only because of the resistance of the FDP) prevailed in the GDR, which had continued a corresponding law from the National Socialist era almost 1:1.
Kühnert apparently does not know what led to this. The smallest problem was that the living space per person in the GDR was 22 percent less than in the West (27 square meters versus 35 square meters). In 1989, when the GDR was at an end, 65 percent of all apartments – including the 3.2 million post-war buildings – were still heated with coal stoves. 24 percent did not have their own toilet and 18 percent had no bathroom. The equipment with elevators, balconies and modern kitchens was even less. 40 percent of the apartment buildings were considered to be badly damaged, eleven percent even completely uninhabitable.
The state was not in a position to remedy this situation from its own resources. So, after reunification, the legislature decided to give investors tax breaks in order to renovate the dilapidated apartments in the area of the former GDR and to build new ones. A total of 80 billion euros were mobilized in this way – for reconstruction after socialism.
As shown above, Kühnert has long advocated his socialist utopias for housing policy. It is remarkable that he formulated them just as clearly and radically as SPD general secretary as he once did as Juso chairman. The FDP should take this as an example and also formulate crystal clear liberal ideas, for example liberalization of tenancy law, abolition of the rental price cap, tax cuts for everyone, privatization.
Instead, one gets the impression that the FDP is content to have prevented the very worst – which is indeed an achievement, but not enough to keep voters in line. The FDP is very considerate of its left-wing coalition partners, while not a day goes by when the Greens and SPD don’t formulate redistribution ideas, demands for tax increases and so on.
Something else should make you think. Kühnert stands for non-business politics, and that also has something to do with his biography, which is not untypical for many politicians – especially, but by no means only, from the left-green milieu: twice scheduled to study, but never completed a study, and almost always lived at the expense of the taxpayer without ever generating anything productive.
This gives you time to think all day long about how to redistribute what others have earned and how to deprive other people of their livelihoods. Because about 60 percent of landlords in Germany are by no means large corporations, but amateur landlords. For example, the craftsman who has bought a few condominiums or a rental house for retirement provision.
Politicians like Kühnert are deeply suspicious of these people, who don’t rely on the state but do something themselves to secure their old age – hence the demand that private landlords should no longer exist.
