But now FT Alphaville's Claire Jones has some troubling news.
Meat tax gives Germans something to chew on
Tacked up next to Frankfurt’s Schreiber stall, famed for the Bratwurst in buns it sells by the hundreds each lunchtime, is this:
Alphaville won’t provide a full translation. But let’s just say the meat of it is that everyone from lawyers and professors to painters and poets loves the city’s sausages. A look at the queue this weekday lunchtime at the Kleinmarkthalle, made up of a dozen men and women of all ages, suggests this mid-19th century Ode to Wurst still holds.
Politicians think that is changing. To the extent that some lawmakers from two of the three major political parties, the centre-left SPD and the Greens, are now calling for the removal of a low tax rate on meat products.
It is a tender issue. Germans love meat, especially pork, consuming 60kg of the stuff per year — more per person than any other nation bar the US, Argentina and Austria. So the idea to raise the Fleischsteuer from 7 per cent to 19 per cent might not sound like an obvious vote-winner.
But people here, especially younger Germans, are becoming more environmentally conscious. And in a tense political climate, that is threatening to have a big effect on the parliamentary balance of power. The latest polls put the Greens neck and neck with the centre-right CDU/ CSU bloc, and there is talk in Berlin of the next Chancellor coming from the party. In European elections earlier this year, a third of all young people voted green.Back to the plight of the bankers, the JPM post pointed out some of the marketing challenges faced by Human Resources in the in this great real estate move:
With the greenhouse gas footprint of meat production now widely recognised as a massive contributor to climate change, the need to conquer one’s inner Schweinehund — among a large slice of the German public at least — has become clear.
Some members of the SPD and the Greens want to donate the proceeds of the tax to a fund set up to improve animal welfare. Even the more conservative CDU, which faced a YouTube rant watched by almost 16m by vlogger Rezo that touched on its neglect of climate change, has not objected to the measure — though it does have more reservations about the idea.
Noble intentions. But Alphaville has doubts about whether it will achieve its chief aim....MUCH MORE
....The Real Deal had a piece on Frankfurt residential real estate that included this sentence:
The German city’s Westend neighborhood is hoping to become the next Mayfair...That's a tough sell....
