Investment is not an end in itself; each project needs to be examined individually in terms of its benefits for society. Existing bottlenecks have to be alleviated in infrastructure, roads, railways and shipping lanes. The educational system in particular needs to be addressed; in individual cases we are either living off our assets or setting the wrong emphasis.
But there is certainly no nationwide investment bottleneck – the need for investment varies widely from region to region. We already redistribute large sums of money between Federal states today. Do we not need a sort of “Maastricht plus” within Germany – that is, to transfer greater responsibility for budgets to the cities and Federal states?