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      Why Zombie Reaganomics Still Rules the G.O.P.

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      What’s my plan for the next two years? I will be happy, healthy and successful. What will I do to achieve these things? What are you, a Marxist?I’ve now summarized the essence of the Commitment to America announced by House Republicans last week. This “plan” was obviously meant to evoke Newt Gingrich’s 1994 Contract With America, which was followed by a Republican takeover of Congress.But the Contract With America, love it or hate it — put me in the latter category — offered a fairly specific policy agenda, with a list of planned legislation. What Republicans have just released, by contrast, is mainly a list of good things they claim will happen, with barely a hint of how they propose to make them happen.If you squint hard at the economics section of the Commitment to America, however, you can see the faint outlines of a familiar set of ideas — zombie Reaganomics. Which raises a question: Why are deregulation, benefit cuts and tax breaks for the rich still the ruling ideology of a party that now claims to stand for the working class?Before I get there, a couple of notes on what the economics portion of the commitment actually says.First, it’s striking how many of the economic complaints are about things that are barely, if at all, affected by government policy, like the price of gas (which has come down a lot since its peak) and supply-chain disruptions (which have been diminishing).Second, immediately after declaring that “we have a plan to fix the economy,” House Republicans say that they will “curb wasteful government spending.” As anyone who follows budget debates knows, that’s the ultimate weasel phrase. What spending are we talking about, specifically?Bear in mind that the federal government is basically an insurance company with an army: The great bulk of spending is on health care, retirement and the military. You can’t meaningfully cut expenditure without attacking at least one of these. So which parts of that spending are wasteful?Well, Senator Rick Scott, the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, has called for sunsetting all federal programs — including Social Security and Medicare — every five years, which would open the door to gutting America’s social safety net. Other Republicans have tried to distance themselves from that idea, although without removing Scott from his position. But again, what is this wasteful spending they propose to cut?But back to the commitment. Its economic program, such as it is, calls for “pro-growth tax and deregulatory policies.” No specifics, but this is clearly a call for zombie Reaganomics.Why “zombie”? Because we now have four decades’ worth of experience showing that deregulation and tax cuts for the rich do not, in fact, produce higher wages and faster economic growth. So the idea that tax cuts are the secret of prosperity should be dead, yet somehow it’s still shambling along, eating Republican brains.Of course, I’m just saying that because I’m a Marxist. (I’m not, but that’s what modern Republicans call anyone who supports progressive taxation and social insurance.) But for what it’s worth, financial markets share my skepticism. Look at what’s happening in Britain, where Prime Minister Liz Truss’s recent announcement of a Reaganite economic plan sent interest rates soaring and the pound plunging.Which brings me back to my original question: Why is the G.O.P. still committed to a failed economic ideology?For a long time, the G.O.P. seemed to fit the portrait famously drawn by Thomas Frank in his book “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” That is, it was a party mostly dedicated to making the rich richer that managed to win elections on social issues — which in practice meant catering to bigotry while campaigning, then pivoting to tax and benefit cuts immediately afterward.With the rise of MAGA, however, catering to bigotry is no longer a marketing device; it’s the party’s main agenda. In that case, however, why continue plutocrat-friendly policies? Why not add some actual populism to the mix? Why did Representative Kevin McCarthy, who will likely become speaker if Republicans take the House, declare that his first bill would be one to repeal additional funding for the Internal Revenue Service, allowing wealthy tax cheats to breathe easy?Part of the answer may be that anti-abortion, anti-L.G.B.T.Q., anti-immigrant warriors don’t know or care much about economic policy, so they’ve left it in the hands of the usual suspects — congressional staff members, conservative think tankers and other apparatchiks who’ve spent their whole careers promoting the tax-cut mystique.But there may also be a strategy here. Billionaires may no longer run the G.O.P. the way they used to, but the party still wants their money. So plutocrat-friendly policies may be a way of keeping wealthy donors and corporations on board, even if many of them are uncomfortable with the right-wing social agenda.This strategy depends, however, on working-class voters not realizing what Republicans are up to. Hence the vacuous nature of the Commitment to America; any acknowledgment of what the G.O.P. might actually do could be a big political problem.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Your Friday Briefing: Men Flee Russian Conscription

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      Plus Japan props up the yen and Cambodia concludes its Khmer Rouge trials.A billboard in St. Petersburg promoting military service.Olga Maltseva/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMen flee Russia, fearing draftOne day after President Vladimir Putin announced a plan to bring 300,000 civilians into military service, thousands of Russians received draft papers and boarded buses to training sites. Many others left the country in a rush, paying rising prices to catch flights to Armenia, Georgia, Montenegro and Turkey, some of the countries that allow Russians to enter without visas.Russian officials said the call-up would be limited to people with combat experience. But one journalist said her husband, a father of five with no military experience, had been summoned.Our reporter spoke to a 23-year-old who bought a plane ticket to Istanbul, wrapped up his business and kissed his crying mother goodbye — all within about 12 hours of Putin’s announcement. He said he has no idea when he will return. “I was sitting and thinking about what I could die for, and I didn’t see any reason to die for the country,” he said. Here are live updates.Reaction: The E.U. is scrambling to decide how to respond. Countries are weighing security concerns against their desire to help those fleeing an unjust war.Surveillance: The Times obtained nearly 160,000 files from Russia’s powerful internet regulator, which the government uses to find opponents and squash dissent. Compared with China, much of the work of Russian censors is done manually, but what Moscow lacks in sophistication, it has made up for in determination.The Japanese yen has been sliding against the U.S. dollar.Kim Kyung-Hoon/ReutersJapan props up the declining yenJapan announced yesterday that it had intervened to prop up the value of the yen for the first time in 24 years, in an effort to stop the currency’s continuing slide against the dollar.Yesterday, the yen passed 145 to the dollar after the U.S. Federal Reserve’s announcement on Wednesday that it would raise its policy rate by an additional three-quarters of a percentage point. The yen has lost over 20 percent of its value against the dollar over the past year, and it has been the worst performing currency among major developed economies this year.Context: The yen’s plunge has largely been caused by Japan’s determination to keep interest rates low. The government’s intervention followed an announcement by the Bank of Japan that it would stick fast to its longstanding ultralow interest rate policy — even as most other countries have begun to follow the U.S. Federal Reserve’s increases.Explore the World of the ‘Lord of the Rings’The literary universe built by J.R.R. Tolkien, now adapted into a new series for Amazon Prime Video, has inspired generations of readers and viewers.Artist and Scholar: Tolkien did more than write books. He invented an alternate reality, complete with its own geography, languages and history.Being Frodo: The actor Elijah Wood explains why he’ll never be upset at being associated with the “Lord of the Rings” movie series. A Soviet Take: A 1991 production based on Tolkien’s novels, recently digitized by a Russian broadcaster, is a time capsule of a bygone era. From the Archives: Read what W.H. Auden wrote about “The Fellowship of the Ring,” the first volume of Tolkien’s trilogy, in 1954.History: For years, a weak yen was widely seen as a boon for its export-driven economy, making Japanese products cheaper and more attractive for consumers abroad.Elsewhere: The Bank of England raised its key interest rate by half a point to 2.25 percent yesterday, the highest level since 2008. It is the latest effort to tame high inflation.Khieu Samphan, 91, is the last surviving Khmer Rouge leader. Nhet Sok Heng/Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, via Associated PressProsecuting the Khmer RougeFor more than 15 years, a court in a military camp in Cambodia has been working to prosecute the crimes of the Khmer Rouge regime, which caused the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians in the late 1970s.In its final hearing yesterday, it rejected an appeal by Khieu Samphan, 91, the fanatical communist movement’s last surviving leader, upholding his conviction and life sentence for genocide and other crimes.Many victims think the United Nations-backed tribunal, which spent over $330 million, was a hollow exercise conducted far too long after the atrocities were committed. Only three people were convicted, and many of the Khmer Rouge’s senior figures — including its notorious top leader, Pol Pot — were long dead by the time the court was created.Background: From 1975 to 1979, the Khmer Rouge caused the deaths of nearly a quarter of the population from execution, torture, starvation and untreated disease as it sought to abolish modernity and create an agrarian utopia.THE LATEST NEWSAsia PacificKim Jong-un, North Korea’s leader, with Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, in 2019.Pool photo by Alexander ZemlianichenkoNorth Korea denied a U.S. intelligence report that it was selling millions of artillery shells and rockets ​to Russia, accusing the U.S. of spreading a “reckless” rumor.The Malaysian businessman known as Fat Leonard, who was at the center of a U.S. Navy bribery scandal, was recaptured after he escaped house arrest two weeks ago.Tonga’s enormous underwater volcano that erupted in January may have caused a short-term spike in global warming, scientists said.Yoon Suk Yeol, the South Korean president, was caught on a hot mic calling U.S. lawmakers “idiots,” The Washington Post reports.Around the WorldDavid Malpass, the president of the World Bank, refused to acknowledge human-caused global warming earlier this week. Yesterday, he said he accepted the overwhelming scientific conclusion.A U.S. federal appeals court allowed the Justice Department to resume using sensitive documents seized from Donald Trump in its investigation.U.S. veterans are pushing Congress to grant Afghan evacuees a pass to residency, but some Republicans argue they pose security risks.A deadly cholera outbreak is spreading in Syria, where millions of people, displaced by civil war, lack clean water and health care.What Else Is HappeningCameron Smith/Getty Images for Laver CupRoger Federer will play the last competitive match of his career today in London.For the first time, Catholics outnumber Protestants in Northern Island, a striking demographic shift that could eventually fuel calls to reunite Ireland.The U.S. Senate ratified an international treaty to phase out hydrofluorocarbons, the planet-warming chemicals found in refrigerators and air-conditioners.The U.S. is on track to break its record for guns intercepted at airport checkpoints in one year. So far 4,600 have been discovered, and nearly 90 percent are loaded.A Morning ReadMohammed Zubair, second from the right, is a founder of Alt News. He was jailed this summer over a complaint from an anonymous Twitter user.Atul Loke for The New York TimesFake news is rising in India, with a surge of disinformation after the rise of Narendra Modi, the Hindu nationalist prime minister. Alt News, an independent website, has emerged as a leading debunker of misinformation, such as stories about child-kidnapping gangs and Muslims spreading Covid.But highlighting hate speech against minority groups has put it on a collision course with Modi’s government: A founder was recently arrested and is accused of spreading communal unrest.ARTS AND IDEASTolkien, for Italy’s right wing?Italy’s national election is on Sunday. Giorgia Meloni, the hard-right politician who is the front-runner to become the country’s next prime minister, has a surprising personal manifesto.Meloni loves “The Lord of the Rings” and sees the fantasy adventure series, written by J.R.R. Tolkien, as something of a sacred text. As a youth activist in the post-Fascist Italian Social Movement, she used to dress up as a hobbit.That might seem like a youthful infatuation. But in Italy, “The Lord of the Rings” has informed generations of post-Fascist youth. They have looked to Tolkien’s traditionalist mythic age for symbols, heroes and creation myths free of Fascist taboos, from which they could reconstruct a hard-right identity.Meloni, 45, said that she had learned from dwarves, elves and hobbits the “value of specificity” with “each indispensable for the fact of being particular.” She extrapolated that as a lesson about protecting Europe’s sovereign nations and unique identities.“I think that Tolkien could say better than us what conservatives believe in,” Meloni said. “I don’t consider ‘The Lord of the Rings’ fantasy.”PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookKelly Marshall for The New York TimesThis roasted mushroom and halloumi grain bowl is warm and adaptable.What to Read“Getting Lost,” a series of diary entries by the French writer Annie Ernaux, recounts an all-consuming romance with a younger man.DrinkThe appletini is back, and it’s ushering in a new martini era.Now Time to PlayPlay today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Even the slightest bit (five letters).Here are today’s Wordle and today’s Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — AmeliaP.S. Phil Pan is our next International editor. He was the first Asia editor of The Times based in Hong Kong and previously served as our Beijing bureau chief. The latest episode of “The Daily” is on Vladimir Putin’s escalation of the war.You can reach Amelia and the team at briefing@nytimes.com. More

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      3 Senate Hopefuls Denounce Big Tech. They Also Have Deep Ties to It.

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      For Republicans running for the Senate this year, “Big Tech” has become a catchall target, a phrase used to condemn the censorship of conservative voices on social media, invasions of privacy and the corruption of America’s youth — or all of the above.But for three candidates in some of the hottest races of 2022 — Blake Masters, J.D. Vance and Mehmet Oz — the denunciations come with a complication: They have deep ties to the industry, either as investors, promoters or employees. What’s more, their work involved some of the questionable uses of consumer data that they now criticize.Mr. Masters and Mr. Vance have embraced the contradictions with the zeal of the converted.“Fundamentally, it is my expertise from having worked in Silicon Valley and worked with these companies that has given me this perspective,” Mr. Masters, who enters the Republican primary election for Senate in Arizona on Tuesday with the wind at his back, said on Wednesday. “As they have grown, they have become too pervasive and too powerful.”Mr. Vance, on the website of his campaign for Ohio’s open Senate seat, calls for the breakup of large technology firms, declaring: “I know the technology industry well. I’ve worked in it and invested in it, and I’m sick of politicians who talk big about Big Tech but do nothing about it. The tech industry promised all of us better lives and faster communication; instead, it steals our private information, sells it to the Chinese, and then censors conservatives and others.”But some technology activists simply aren’t buying it, especially not from two political newcomers whose Senate runs have been bankrolled by Peter Thiel, the first outside investor in Facebook and a longtime board member of the tech giant. Mr. Thiel’s own company, Palantir, works closely with federal military, intelligence and law enforcement agencies eager for access to its secretive data analysis technology.“There’s a massive, hugely profitable industry in tracking what you do online,” said Sacha Haworth, the executive director of the Tech Oversight Project, a new liberal interest group pressing for stricter regulations of technology companies. “Regardless of these candidates’ prospects in the Senate, I would imagine if Peter Thiel is investing in them, he is investing in his future.”Mr. Masters, a protégé of Mr. Thiel’s and the former chief operating officer of Mr. Thiel’s venture capital firm, oversaw investments in Palantir and pressed to spread its technology, which analyzes mountains of raw data to detect patterns that can be used by customers.Palantir’s initial seed money came from the C.I.A., but its technology was adopted widely by the military and even the Los Angeles Police Department. Mr. Masters and Mr. Thiel personally pressed the director of the National Institutes of Health to buy into it.Sharecare, a website whose consortium of investors included Mehmet Oz, answered consumer questions about health issues.Dr. Oz, the Republican nominee for an open Senate seat in Pennsylvania, was part of a consortium of investors that founded Sharecare, a website that offered users the chance to ask questions about health and wellness — and allowed marketers from the health care industry the chance to answer them.A feature of Sharecare, RealAge Test, quizzed tens of millions of users on their health attributes, ostensibly to help shave years off their age, then released the test results to paying customers in the pharmaceutical industry.Mr. Vance, the Republican nominee in Ohio and another Thiel pupil, used Mr. Thiel’s money to form his venture capital firm, Narya Capital, which helped fund Hallow, a Catholic prayer and meditation app whose privacy policies allow it to share some user data for targeted advertising.The Vance campaign said the candidate’s stake in Hallow did not give him or his firm decision-making powers, and Alex Jones, Hallow’s chief executive, said private, sensitive data like journal entries or reflections were encrypted and not sold, rented or otherwise shared with data brokers. He said that “private sensitive personal data” was not shared “with any advertising partners.”Peter Thiel has bankrolled Mr. Masters and J.D. Vance in their Senate campaigns.Marco Bello/Getty ImagesAll three Senate candidates have targeted the technology industry in their campaigns, railing against the harvesting of data from unsuspecting users and invasions of privacy by greedy firms.“These companies take this data and sell precisely targeted ads so effective they verge on predatory,” Mr. Masters wrote in an opinion article last year in The Wall Street Journal. “They then optimize their platforms to keep you online to receive ever more ads.”In a gauzy video posted in July 2021, Mr. Masters says, “The internet, which was supposed to give us an awesome future, is instead being used to shut us up.”Mr. Vance, in a campaign Facebook video, suggested that Congress make data collection illegal — or at least mandate disclosure — before technology companies “harvest our data and then sell it back to us in the form of targeted advertising.”In a December video appearance soon after he announced his campaign, Dr. Oz proclaimed, “I’ve taken on Big Pharma, I’ve gone to battle with Big Tech, I’ve gone up against agrochem companies, big ones, and I’ve got scars to prove it.”It is not surprising that more candidates for high office have deep connections to the technology industry, said Michael Rosen, an adjunct fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute who has written extensively about the industry. That’s where the money is these days, he said, and technology’s reach extends through industries including health care, social media, hardware and software and consumer electronics.“What is novel in this cycle is to have candidates ostensibly on the right who are arguing for the government to step in and regulate these companies because, in their view, they cannot be trusted to regulate themselves,” Mr. Rosen said.He expressed surprise that “a free-market, conservative-type candidate thinks that the government will do a fairer and more reliable job of regulating and moderating speech than the private sector would.”Technology experts on the left say candidates like Mr. Masters and Mr. Vance are Trojan horses, taking popular stances to win federal office with no intention of pursuing those positions in the Senate.On his website, Mr. Vance says, “I’m sick of politicians who talk big about Big Tech but do nothing about it.”Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesMs. Haworth, whose group has taken aim at platforms like Facebook and Amazon, said states like California were already moving forward with regulations to prevent online marketers from steering consumers to certain products or unduly influencing behavior.She said she believed that Republicans, if they took control of Congress, would impose weak federal rules that superseded state regulations.“Democrats should be calling out the hypocrisy here,” she said.Mr. Masters said he was sympathetic to concerns that empowering government to regulate technology would only lead to another kind of abuse, but, he added, “The answer in this age of networked monopolies is not to throw your hands up and shout ‘laissez-faire.’”Multinational technology firms like Google and Facebook, Mr. Masters said, have exceeded national governments in power.As for the “Trojan horse” assertion, he said, “When I am in the U.S. Senate, I am going to deliver on everything I’m saying.”It is not clear that such complex matters will have an impact in the fall campaigns. Jim Lamon, a Republican Senate rival of Mr. Masters’s in Arizona, has aired advertisements tarring him as a “fake” stalking horse for the California technology industry — but with limited effectiveness. At a debate this month, Mr. Lamon said Mr. Masters was “owned” by his paymasters in Big Tech.But Mr. Masters, who has the endorsement of former President Donald J. Trump, appears to be the clear favorite for the nomination.Representative Tim Ryan, Mr. Vance’s Democratic opponent in Ohio, has made glancing references to the “Big Tech billionaires who sip wine in Silicon Valley” and bankroll the Republican’s campaign.John Fetterman, the Democratic opponent of Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania, has not raised the issue.Taylor Van Kirk, a spokeswoman for Mr. Vance, said he was very serious about his promises to limit the influence of technology companies.“J.D. has long been outspoken about his desire to break up Big Tech and hold them accountable for their overreach,” she said. “He strongly believes that their power over our politics and economy needs to be reduced, to protect the constitutional rights of Americans.”Representatives of the Oz campaign did not respond to requests for comment. More

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      How Rules Fuel Populist Anger in Rural America

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      ROCK HALL, Md. — When Dave Harden decided to run for Congress as a Democrat on Maryland’s conservative Eastern Shore, a friend gave him a piece of free advice.“Democrats lose on three things: abortion, guns and regulations,” the friend said. “If you keep one, you have to give up the other two.”Abortion and gun rights have both inspired passionate activism and countless front-page news articles. Regulations — not so much. Yet nitpicky government rules remain a potent and underappreciated source of populist anger against Democrats, especially in rural areas.On the campaign trail, Mr. Harden has gotten an earful from voters about maddening and arbitrary restrictions: Why are wineries in Maryland limited to serving only 13 kinds of food? Why does a woman who sells her grandmother’s cobbler have to cough up tens of thousands of dollars to build a commercial kitchen? Why does a federal inspector have to be on hand to watch wild catfish get gutted — but not other kinds of seafood? The short answer is that restaurant associations tend to wield more political clout than wineries, and catfish farmers in Mississippi are more powerful than seafood harvesters in Maryland. Big businesses can afford to hire lawyers to help them cut through red tape and lobbyists to bend government rules to their will. Small businesses, especially in rural places, get slammed.Dave Harden campaigning during the annual fireman’s parade in Ocean City.“The claim of overregulation is especially animating on the political right,” Joshua Sewell of Taxpayers for Common Sense told me. He said misleading rumors that the Environmental Protection Agency planned to regulate farm dust or that President Biden’s Build Back Better plan would have taxed belching cows played right into the stereotype of Democrats as city folk who were infuriatingly eager to regulate almost anything in rural America.In 2006, Democrats and Republicans had similar views on government regulation of business: About 40 percent of Republicans said there was too much, compared to about 36 percent of Democrats. But the percentage of Republicans who felt that way climbed steadily under President Barack Obama, who enacted more economically significant rules than his predecessors. By the end of his first term, 84 percent of Republicans thought that government meddled too much in business, while only 22 percent of Democrats agreed, according to Gallup. Democrats were more likely to say that the government doesn’t regulate businesses enough.With business owners more likely to be Republicans and government workers more likely to be Democrats, you have the makings of a yawning partisan divide. Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to remove two rules for every new one that was put in place.Can Democrats flip the script and win over conservative districts, particularly small- business owners in those areas, by speaking out against government red tape? Mr. Harden, a 59-year-old former Foreign Service officer who is running for Congress in Maryland’s First District, is trying. He hopes to replace Andy Harris, the sole Republican in Maryland’s congressional delegation. (Mr. Harris voted to overturn the results of the presidential election in 2020 and reportedly once tried to bring a gun onto the House floor.)Mr. Harden greets Bobby Higgins, the owner of an all-you-can-eat crab house in Ocean City.Crabs are Maryland’s iconic cuisine.Mr. Harden must first win a July 19 primary against Heather Mizeur, a progressive herb farmer who once represented Montgomery County, a much more urban area, in the state legislature. Ms. Mizeur has more money and name recognition than Mr. Harden, but he believes he has a chance because she seems out of step with the conservative district, which is considered a safe Republican seat.Mr. Harden is trying to chart an alternative path for Democrats in rural areas. He’s no fan of Donald Trump. He left a 22-year career in the Foreign Service in 2018 because he didn’t want to serve the Trump administration. But when it comes to regulations, Mr. Harden doesn’t sound all that much different from Mr. Trump.“The regulations in rural economies are ridiculous,” he told me.Mr. Harden is trying to walk a difficult line, appealing to voters who are angry about government overreach without turning off the Democratic base. He says he doesn’t oppose reasonable environmental regulations, but he rails against rules that make it harder for small businesses to survive.It’s a message that comes naturally to him. He spent years trying to improve the business environments in Iraq and the Palestinian territories as a senior U.S.A.I.D. official. He led a program in the West Bank town of Jenin that opened up a border crossing with Israel and prevailed on the Israeli government to allow more Israeli cars into Jenin so that Israeli Arabs could shop there, helping to start an economic revival.Mr. Harden’s campaign manager, Marty Lostrom, on Chris Lingerman’s lawn. Lingerman’s shop, Chester River Seafood, is behind his house.Ford’s Seafood in Rock Hall, Md., is family-owned.Mr. Harden is now trying to bring those lessons home to Maryland, where he grew up. On a recent Saturday, he squinted out at Chesapeake Bay, riffing about how to promote local economic development with Capt. Rob Newberry, the head of the Delmarva Fisheries Association, which represents licensed watermen in the area. Captain Newberry is a Republican who once hung a sign cursing Joe Biden on his boat. But he supports Mr. Harden, who listens patiently to his complaints about regulations.Captain Newberry represents people who harvest crabs, Maryland’s iconic cuisine, from the Chesapeake Bay, and he complains that excessive regulations are putting watermen like him out of business. He contends that the roughly 1,800 fishermen, clammers, crabbers and oystermen in his association are among the most highly regulated workers in the state.Captain Newberry, right, listened as Mr. Harden spoke to Chris Lingerman, the owner of Chester River Seafood, about regulations that hurt watermen.A Maryland blue crab.“When you get halfway to work and you pull up at a stoplight, does a policeman pull you over?” he asked. “When you get into work, does he come in and bother you two or three times and ask you what are you doing, do you have a license? That happens to me every time I go out on the harbor.”Captain Newberry has grievances with people across the political spectrum: with the environmentalists who lobby for more restrictions on the watermen; with the cities and companies responsible for faulty wastewater treatment systems and runoff that pollutes the bay; and with Mr. Harris, the incumbent.He told me that Mr. Harris refused to speak out against a nonsensical regulation that stipulated that catfish had to be treated like meat under federal law. The rule, which advantages catfish farmers in states like Mississippi at the expense of foreign fish farmers and Maryland fishermen, requires federal inspectors to be on site when catfish get gutted, even though there’s little evidence of a risk to public health.The rule is so outrageous that the Government Accountability Office once called for it to be repealed. Yet it remains in place. When the watermen complained to their congressman, Mr. Harris arranged for the government to pay for the inspectors. But inspectors still have to be called in whenever a fisherman brings in catfish for processing. (Mr. Harris’s office said he’s still working on it.)Captain Newberry says he has become disillusioned with the political sausage-making behind government rules. But he still works within the system to try to change them. He testifies before lawmakers and serves on committees, hoping that it will make a difference.On the campaign trail, Mr. Harden has gotten an earful from voters about maddening and arbitrary restrictions.However, those same frustrations have led some other watermen to fall under the sway of the “sovereign citizens” movement, which preaches that the federal and state governments have no right to require licenses for hunting, driving or owning a gun. Some adherents believe that the local sheriff is the only legitimate authority under the Constitution. Beliefs about the illegitimacy of the federal government appeared to be at the root of an armed standoff between federal authorities and cattle ranchers in Nevada in 2014.Maryland’s Eastern Shore hasn’t seen anything like that, Somerset County’s sheriff, Ronald Howard, told me. But he said he has faced mounting pressure to defy state rules and allow watermen to harvest oysters from sanctuaries that have been declared off limits. He refused. “I said, ‘Look, if I interfere, that’s obstruction of my duties; I can be charged criminally,’” he told me. “I had one waterman tell me, ‘That’s a chance you’ve got to take.’”Sheriff Howard doesn’t blame the watermen; he blames the rigid rules made by politicians who rarely take the time to listen to rural people. That’s where Dave Harden sees an opening for himself, however slim.Democrats have to find a way to reconnect with rural America, Mr. Harden told me. Frank talk about regulations is a good place to start.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Barack Obama’s New Role: Fighting Disinformation

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      The former president has embarked on a campaign to warn that the scourge of online falsehoods has eroded the foundations of democracy.SAN FRANCISCO — In 2011, President Barack Obama swept into Silicon Valley and yukked it up with Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder. The occasion was a town hall with the social network’s employees that covered the burning issues of the day: taxes, health care, the promise of technology to solve the nation’s problems.More than a decade later, Mr. Obama is making another trip to Silicon Valley, this time with a grimmer message about the threat that the tech giants have created to the nation itself.In private meetings and public appearances over the last year, the former president has waded deeply into the public fray over misinformation and disinformation, warning that the scourge of falsehoods online has eroded the foundations of democracy at home and abroad.In a speech at Stanford University on Thursday, he is expected to add his voice to demands for rules to rein in the flood of lies polluting public discourse.The urgency of the crisis — the internet’s “demand for crazy,” as he put it recently — has already pushed him further than he was ever prepared to go as president to take on social media.“I think it is reasonable for us as a society to have a debate and then put in place a combination of regulatory measures and industry norms that leave intact the opportunity for these platforms to make money but say to them that there’s certain practices you engage in that we don’t think are good for society,” Mr. Obama, now 61, said at a conference on disinformation this month organized by the University of Chicago and The Atlantic.Mr. Obama’s campaign — the timing of which stemmed not from a single cause, people close to him said, but a broad concern about the damage to democracy’s foundations — comes in the middle of a fierce but inconclusive debate over how best to restore trust online.In Washington, lawmakers are so sharply divided that any legislative compromise seems out of reach. Democrats criticize giants like Facebook, which has been renamed Meta, and Twitter for failing to rid their sites of harmful content. President Joseph R. Biden Jr., too, has lashed out at the platforms that allowed falsehoods about coronavirus vaccines to spread, saying last year that “they’re killing people.”Republicans, for their part, accuse the companies of suppressing free speech by censoring conservative voices — above all former President Donald J. Trump, who was barred from Facebook and Twitter after the riot on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6 last year. With so little agreement about the problem, there is even less about a solution.Whether Mr. Obama’s advocacy can sway the debate remains to be seen. While he has not sought to endorse a single solution or particular piece of legislation, he nonetheless hopes to appeal across the political spectrum for common ground.“You’ve got to think about how things are going to be consumed through different partisan filtering but still make your true, authentic, best case about how you see the world and what the stakes are and why,” said Jason Goldman, a former Twitter, Blogger and Medium executive who served as the White House’s first chief digital officer under Mr. Obama and continues to advise him.“There’s a potential reason to believe that a good path exists out of some of the messes that we’re in,” he added.As an apostle of the dangers of disinformation, Mr. Obama might be an imperfect messenger. He was the first presidential candidate to ride the power of social media into office in 2008 but then, as president, did little to intervene when its darker side — propagating falsehoods, extremism, racism and violence — became apparent at home and abroad.“I saw it sort of unfold — and that is the degree to which information, disinformation, misinformation was being weaponized,” Mr. Obama said in Chicago, expressing something close to regret. He added, “I think I underestimated the degree to which democracies were as vulnerable to it as they were, including ours.”Mr. Obama, those close to him said, became fixated by disinformation after leaving office. He rehashed, as many others have, whether he had done enough to counter the information campaign ordered by Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, to tilt the 2016 election against Hillary Rodham Clinton.He began meeting with executives, activists and other experts in earnest last year after Mr. Trump refused to recognize the results of the 2020 election, making unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud, those who have consulted with Mr. Obama said.In his musings on the matter, Mr. Obama has not claimed to have discovered a silver bullet that has eluded others who have studied the issue. By coming forward more publicly, however, he hopes to highlight the values for corporate conduct around which consensus could form.“This can be an effective nudge to a lot of the thinking that is already taking place,” Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national security adviser, said. “Every day brings more proof of why this matters.”The location of Thursday’s speech, Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center, was intentional, bringing Mr. Obama to the heart of the industry that in many ways shaped his presidency.In his 2008 presidential campaign, he went from being an underdog candidate to an online sensation with his embrace of social media as a tool to target voters and to solicit donations. He became an industry favorite; his digital campaign was led by a Facebook co-founder, Chris Hughes, and several other tech chief executives endorsed him, including Eric Schmidt of Google.During his administration, Mr. Obama extolled the promise of tech companies to strengthen the economy with higher-skilled jobs and to propel democracy movements abroad. He lured tech employees like Mr. Goldman to join his administration and filled his campaign coffers with fund-raisers at the Bay Area homes of supporters like Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Meta, and Marc Benioff, the chief executive of Salesforce.It was a period of mutual admiration and little government oversight of the tech industry. Though Mr. Obama endorsed privacy regulations, not a single piece of legislation to control the tech companies passed during his tenure, even as they became economic behemoths that touch virtually every aspect of life.Looking back at his administration’s approach, Mr. Obama has said he would not pinpoint any one action or piece of legislation that he might have handled differently. In hindsight, though, he understands now how optimism about online technologies, including social media, outweighed caution, according to Mr. Rhodes.“He’ll certainly acknowledge that there’s things that could have been done differently or ways we were all thinking about the tools and technologies that turned out at times to see the opportunities more than the risks,” Mr. Rhodes said.Mr. Obama’s views began to change with Russia’s flood of propaganda on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to stir confusion and chaos in the 2016 presidential election. Days after that election, Mr. Obama took Mr. Zuckerberg aside at a meeting of world leaders in Lima, Peru, to warn that he needed to take the problem more seriously.Once he left office, Mr. Obama was noticeably absent for much of the public conversation around disinformation.“As a general matter, there was an awareness that anything he said about certain issues was just going to ricochet around the fun house mirrors,” Mr. Rhodes said.Mr. Obama’s approach to the issue has been characteristically deliberative. He has consulted the chief executives of Apple, Alphabet and others. Through the Obama Foundation in Chicago, he has also met often with the scholars the foundation has trained; they recounted their own experiences with disinformation in a variety of fields around the world.From those deliberations, potential solutions have begun taking shape, a theme he plans to outline broadly on Thursday. While Mr. Obama maintains that he remains “close to a First Amendment absolutist,” he has focused on the need for greater transparency and regulatory oversight of online discourse — and the ways companies have profited from manipulating audiences through their proprietary algorithms.Mr. Goldman compared a potential approach to consumer protection or food safety practices already in place.“You may not know exactly what’s in a hot dog, but you trust that there is a process for meat inspections that ensures that the food sold and consumed in this country and other countries around the world are safe,” he said.In Congress, lawmakers have already proposed the creation of a regulatory agency dedicated to overseeing internet companies. Others have proposed stripping tech companies of a legal shield that protects them from liability.No proposals have advanced, though, even as the European Union has moved forward, putting into law some of the practices still merely bandied about in Washington. The union is expected to move as soon as Friday on new regulations to impose audits of algorithmic amplification.Kyle Plotkin, a Republican strategist and former chief of staff to Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, said Mr. Obama “can be a polarizing figure” and could inflame, not calm, the debate over disinformation.“Adoring fans will be very happy with him weighing in, but others won’t,” he said. “I don’t think he will move the ball forward. If anything, he moves the ball backward.” More

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      Swiss Approve Ban on Tobacco Ads

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      Health advocates have said that the legislation, which was approved in a referendum, was a significant step toward tightening the country’s loose tobacco regulations.ZURICH — Advertisements glamorizing cigarettes will soon be a thing of the past in Switzerland, after voters on Sunday overwhelmingly approved legislation forbidding tobacco companies from displaying them in public spaces.Health advocates have said that the legislation, which was approved in a referendum, was a significant step toward tightening the country’s loose tobacco regulations.“Many organizations have stepped up to the plate and advocated for a solution that prioritizes youth protection,” said Flavia Wasserfallen, a member of the Swiss National Council and a proponent of the initiative.Across much of the West, tobacco advertisements long ago fell out of favor, but they have lived on in this Alpine nation, with displays for cigarettes and e-cigarettes showing up on billboards, in movie theaters and at events like music festivals.But voters made it clear on Sunday that they were no longer interested in seeing them, and despite strong opposition from the tobacco industry and the government, the tougher regulations were approved by 56.6 percent of voters and received strong support from the country’s French- and Italian-speaking regions, despite having the country’s highest smoking rates.Steps have been taken in recent years to try to introduce tougher regulations on tobacco-related products in Switzerland. In 2015, the Federal Council, the country’s executive branch, proposed a Tobacco Products Act that would ban the sale of tobacco and related goods to minors as well as restrict advertising.Parliament eventually approved a weakened version of the bill, which forbade the sale of tobacco to those under 18 but let advertising continue mostly unimpeded.The most recent initiative was started by a group of more than 40 health organizations that formed in response to the weakening of the tobacco legislation. The revamped Tobacco Products Act, which includes the advertising-related provisions that voters approved on Sunday, is expected to come into effect in 2023.“The majority of our country has decided to correct Parliament’s decision on the Tobacco Products Act,” Hans Stöckli, who serves as the president of the committee behind the initiative, said on Sunday. Mr. Stöckli described the result as “a historic milestone” and as “a necessary step” toward improved tobacco regulation.Opponents of the measure called the tighter restrictions extreme. And while they agreed that tobacco should be age-restricted, they said that the new rules amounted to a de facto ban on a legal product because children could potentially be exposed to advertisements anywhere.Switzerland has long had a close relationship with the tobacco industry. Philip Morris and Japan Tobacco International have their international headquarters in the country, and British American Tobacco also has a strong presence.The industry employs about 4,500 people in Switzerland, according to the government, including in the production of high-tar cigarettes that are illegal to produce or sell in the European Union. Cigarettes rank with chocolate and cheese as some of the country’s leading exports.Even after the new rules take effect, Switzerland will continue to have more liberal tobacco regulations than many other countries. And it will also still not fulfill all of the requirements needed to ratify the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, an international response to combating the tobacco epidemic, despite signing it in 2004. The United States has also not ratified the convention.Alain Berset, Switzerland’s vice president, who also serves as the country’s health minister, had opposed the initiative before the vote. But at a news conference on Sunday, he acknowledged that Swiss voters had spoken, and said that the government would move forward with the new regulations.“The Federal Council will now tackle the implementation of the initiative,” Mr. Berset said.The Tobacco Products Act was not the only issue on the ballot on Sunday. In a move that people feared could have cut Switzerland off from global medical progress, voters shot down a proposed ban on all human and animal experiments in the country.Voters also decided against providing Swiss media outlets with increased financial support, by rejecting a government proposal to extend subsidies to online media as well as to regional radio and television stations.A government-approved amendment to the federal stamp duties act that would have made it cheaper for companies to raise new capital was also rejected, with opponents saying it would have mainly benefited large companies. More

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      Germany Struggles to Stop Online Abuse Ahead of Election

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      Scrolling through her social media feed, Laura Dornheim is regularly stopped cold by a new blast of abuse aimed at her, including from people threatening to kill or sexually assault her. One person last year said he looked forward to meeting her in person so he could punch her teeth out.Ms. Dornheim, a candidate for Parliament in Germany’s election on Sunday, is often attacked for her support of abortion rights, gender equality and immigration. She flags some of the posts to Facebook and Twitter, hoping that the platforms will delete the posts or that the perpetrators will be barred. She’s usually disappointed.“There might have been one instance where something actually got taken down,” Ms. Dornheim said.Harassment and abuse are all too common on the modern internet. Yet it was supposed to be different in Germany. In 2017, the country enacted one of the world’s toughest laws against online hate speech. It requires Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to remove illegal comments, pictures or videos within 24 hours of being notified about them or risk fines of up to 50 million euros, or $59 million. Supporters hailed it as a watershed moment for internet regulation and a model for other countries.But an influx of hate speech and harassment in the run-up to the German election, in which the country will choose a new leader to replace Angela Merkel, its longtime chancellor, has exposed some of the law’s weaknesses. Much of the toxic speech, researchers say, has come from far-right groups and is aimed at intimidating female candidates like Ms. Dornheim.Some critics of the law say it is too weak, with limited enforcement and oversight. They also maintain that many forms of abuse are deemed legal by the platforms, such as certain kinds of harassment of women and public officials. And when companies do remove illegal material, critics say, they often do not alert the authorities or share information about the posts, making prosecutions of the people publishing the material far more difficult. Another loophole, they say, is that smaller platforms like the messaging app Telegram, popular among far-right groups, are not subject to the law.Free-expression groups criticize the law on other grounds. They argue that the law should be abolished not only because it fails to protect victims of online abuse and harassment, but also because it sets a dangerous precedent for government censorship of the internet.The country’s experience may shape policy across the continent. German officials are playing a key role in drafting one of the world’s most anticipated new internet regulations, a European Union law called the Digital Services Act, which will require Facebook and other online platforms to do more to address the vitriol, misinformation and illicit content on their sites. Ursula von der Leyen, a German who is president of the European Commission, the 27-nation bloc’s executive arm, has called for an E.U. law that would list gender-based violence as a special crime category, a proposal that would include online attacks.“Germany was the first to try to tackle this kind of online accountability,” said Julian Jaursch, a project director at the German think tank Stiftung Neue Verantwortung, which focuses on digital issues. “It is important to ask whether the law is working.”Campaign billboards in Germany’s race for chancellor, showing, from left, Annalena Baerbock of the Green Party, Olaf Scholz of the Social Democrats and Christian Lindner of the Free Democrats.Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesMarc Liesching, a professor at HTWK Leipzig who published an academic report on the policy, said that of the posts that had been deleted by Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, a vast majority were classified as violating company policies, not the hate speech law. That distinction makes it harder for the government to measure whether companies are complying with the law. In the second half of 2020, Facebook removed 49 million pieces of “hate speech” based on its own community standards, compared with the 154 deletions that it attributed to the German law, he found.The law, Mr. Liesching said, “is not relevant in practice.”With its history of Nazism, Germany has long tried to balance free speech rights against a commitment to combat hate speech. Among Western democracies, the country has some of the world’s toughest laws against incitement to violence and hate speech. Targeting religious, ethnic and racial groups is illegal, as are Holocaust denial and displaying Nazi symbols in public. To address concerns that companies were not alerting the authorities to illegal posts, German policymakers this year passed amendments to the law. They require Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to turn over data to the police about accounts that post material that German law would consider illegal speech. The Justice Ministry was also given more powers to enforce the law. “The aim of our legislative package is to protect all those who are exposed to threats and insults on the internet,” Christine Lambrecht, the justice minister, who oversees enforcement of the law, said after the amendments were adopted. “Whoever engages in hate speech and issues threats will have to expect to be charged and convicted.”Germans will vote for a leader to replace Angela Merkel, the country’s longtime chancellor.Markus Schreiber/Associated PressFacebook and Google have filed a legal challenge to block the new rules, arguing that providing the police with personal information about users violates their privacy.Facebook said that as part of an agreement with the government it now provided more figures about the complaints it received. From January through July, the company received more than 77,000 complaints, which led it to delete or block about 11,500 pieces of content under the German law, known as NetzDG.“We have zero tolerance for hate speech and support the aims of NetzDG,” Facebook said in a statement. Twitter, which received around 833,000 complaints and removed roughly 81,000 posts during the same period, said a majority of those posts did not fit the definition of illegal speech, but still violated the company’s terms of service.“Threats, abusive content and harassment all have the potential to silence individuals,” Twitter said in a statement. “However, regulation and legislation such as this also has the potential to chill free speech by emboldening regimes around the world to legislate as a way to stifle dissent and legitimate speech.”YouTube, which received around 312,000 complaints and removed around 48,000 pieces of content in the first six months of the year, declined to comment other than saying it complies with the law.The amount of hate speech has become increasingly pronounced during election season, according to researchers at Reset and HateAid, organizations that track online hate speech and are pushing for tougher laws.The groups reviewed nearly one million comments on far-right and conspiratorial groups across about 75,000 Facebook posts in June, finding that roughly 5 percent were “highly toxic” or violated the online hate speech law. Some of the worst material, including messages with Nazi symbolism, had been online for more than a year, the groups found. Of 100 posts reported by the groups to Facebook, roughly half were removed within a few days, while the others remain online.The election has also seen a wave of misinformation, including false claims about voter fraud.Annalena Baerbock, the 40-year-old leader of the Green Party and the only woman among the top candidates running to succeed Ms. Merkel, has been the subject of an outsize amount of abuse compared with her male rivals from other parties, including sexist slurs and misinformation campaigns, according to researchers.Ms. Baerbock, the Green Party candidate for chancellor, taking a selfie with one of her supporters.Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesOthers have stopped running altogether. In March, a former Syrian refugee running for the German Parliament, Tareq Alaows, dropped out of the race after experiencing racist attacks and violent threats online.While many policymakers want Facebook and other platforms to be aggressive in screening user-generated content, others have concerns about private companies making decisions about what people can and can’t say. The far-right party Alternative for Germany, which has criticized the law for unfairly targeting its supporters, has vowed to repeal the policy “to respect freedom of expression.”Jillian York, an author and free speech activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in Berlin, said the German law encouraged companies to remove potentially offensive speech that is perfectly legal, undermining free expression rights.“Facebook doesn’t err on the side of caution, they just take it down,” Ms. York said. Another concern, she said, is that less democratic countries such as Turkey and Belarus have adopted laws similar to Germany’s so that they could classify certain material critical of the government as illegal.Renate Künast, a former government minister who once invited a journalist to accompany her as she confronted individuals in person who had targeted her with online abuse, wants to see the law go further. Victims of online abuse should be able to go after perpetrators directly for libel and financial settlements, she said. Without that ability, she added, online abuse will erode political participation, particularly among women and minority groups.In a survey of more than 7,000 German women released in 2019, 58 percent said they did not share political opinions online for fear of abuse.“They use the verbal power of hate speech to force people to step back, leave their office or not to be candidates,” Ms. Künast said.The Reichstag, where the German Parliament convenes, in Berlin.Emile Ducke for The New York TimesMs. Dornheim, the Berlin candidate, who has a master’s degree in computer science and used to work in the tech industry, said more restrictions were needed. She described getting her home address removed from public records after somebody mailed a package to her house during a particularly bad bout of online abuse.Yet, she said, the harassment has only steeled her resolve.“I would never give them the satisfaction of shutting up,” she said. More

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      As Germany Election Nears, Merkel Leaves a Strong But Vulnerable Economy

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      Chancellor Angela Merkel steered Europe through crises, and Germany has boomed during her tenure. But she has ducked changes needed to ensure the success lasts, analysts say.During her 16 years as Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel has become an international avatar of calm, reason and democratic values for the way she handled crises that included a near financial meltdown of the eurozone, the arrival of more than a million migrants and a pandemic.Today Germany is an economic colossus, the engine of Europe, enjoying prosperity and near full employment despite the pandemic. But can it last?That is the question looming as Ms. Merkel prepares to leave the political stage after national elections on Sept. 26. There are signs that Germany is economically vulnerable, losing competitiveness and unprepared for a future shaped by technology and the rivalry between the United States and China.During her tenure, economists say, Germany neglected to build world-class digital infrastructure, bungled a hasty exit from nuclear power, and became alarmingly dependent on China as a market for its autos and other exports.The China question is especially complex. Germany’s strong growth during Ms. Merkel’s tenure was largely a result of trade with China, which she helped promote. But, increasingly, China is becoming a competitor in areas like industrial machinery and electric vehicles.Economists say that Germany has not invested enough in education and in emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and electric vehicles. Germans pay some of the highest energy prices in the world because Ms. Merkel pushed to close nuclear power plants, without expanding the country’s network of renewable energy sources enough to cover the deficit.Ms. Merkel met President Xi Jinping of China, second right, in Beijing in 2019. Germany has grown strongly through trade with China, but they’re also increasingly competitors. Pool photo by Michael Kappeler“That is going to come back to haunt Germany in the next 10 years,” said Guntram Wolff, director of Bruegel, a research institute in Brussels.There was never much pressure on Ms. Merkel to focus on fundamental economic policy because the German economy has boomed during her tenure. Germany has recovered from the pandemic faster than other European countries like France or Italy.But the pandemic has also exposed Germany’s economic dependence on China.In 2005, China accounted for a fraction of German exports. Last year it surpassed the United States as Germany’s largest trading partner. China is the biggest market by far for the automakers Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and BMW. German companies have also thrived by equipping Chinese factories with machine tools and other industrial goods that made China an export powerhouse.Ms. Merkel abandoned her early emphasis on human rights in her relations with the Chinese government and instead encouraged ever deeper economic ties. She hosted Chinese leaders in Berlin and traveled 12 times to Beijing and other cities in China, often with delegations of German business managers. But Germany’s economic entanglement with China has made it increasingly vulnerable to pressure from China’s president, Xi Jinping.Late last year, while Germany took its official turn setting the agenda of the European Union, Ms. Merkel and President Emmanuel Macron of France pushed through an investment accord with China over the objections of the incoming Biden administration, largely bypassing other European allies.“German trade with China dwarfs all other member states, and Germany clearly drives policy on China in the E.U.,” said Theresa Fallon, director of the Center for Russia Europe Asia Studies in Brussels. Germany’s economic dependence on China “is driving a wedge in trans-Atlantic relations,” Ms. Fallon said.An electric Mercedes Benz at the International Motor Show in Munich this month. Germany has only recently moved to match U.S. incentives for buyers of electric cars.Felix Schmitt for The New York TimesIn recent years China has been using what it learned from German companies to compete with them. Chinese carmakers including Nio and BYD are beginning to sell electric vehicles in Europe. China has become the No. 2 exporter of industrial machinery, after Germany, according to the VDMA, which represents German engineering companies.Ms. Merkel’s supporters say that she has helped the German economy dodge some bullets. Her sharp political instincts proved valuable during a eurozone debt crisis that began in 2010 and nearly destroyed the currency that Germany shares with 18 other countries. Ms. Merkel arguably kept hard-liners in her own Christian Democratic Union in check as the European Central Bank printed money to help stricken countries like Greece, Italy and Spain.But her longtime finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, was also a leading enforcer of policies that protected German banks while imposing harsh austerity on southern Europe. At the time, Germany refused to back the idea of collective European debt — a position that Ms. Merkel abandoned last year, when faced with the fallout from a pandemic that threatened European unity.Ms. Merkel had some luck on her side, too. The former communist states of East Germany largely caught up during her tenure. And Ms. Merkel profited from reforms made by her predecessor, Gerhard Schröder, which made it easier for firms to hire and fire and put pressure on unemployed people to take low-wage jobs.Mr. Schröder’s economic overhaul led to a sharp decline in unemployment, from more than 11 percent when Ms. Merkel took office to less than 4 percent. But the changes were unpopular because they weakened regulations that shielded Germans from layoffs. They paved the way for Mr. Schröder’s defeat by Ms. Merkel in 2005.The lesson for German politicians was that it was better not to tamper with Germans’ privileges, and for the most part Ms. Merkel did not. Many of the jobs created were low wage and offered limited chances for upward mobility. The result has also been a rise in social disparity, with a rapidly aging population increasingly threatened by poverty.“Over the past 15 to 16 years we have seen a clear increase in the number of people who live below the poverty line and are threatened,” said Marcel Fratzscher, an economist at the D.I.W. research institute in Berlin. “Although the 2010 years were very economically successful, not everyone has benefited.”Ms. Merkel’s failure to invest more in infrastructure, research and education, despite her background as a doctor of physics, also reflects the German aversion to public debt. Mr. Schäuble, as finance minister, enforced fiscal discipline that prioritized budget surpluses over investment. The German Parliament, controlled by Ms. Merkel’s party, even enshrined balanced budgets in law, a so-called debt brake.A school in Berlin last year. Economists say that Germany has not invested enough in education and in emerging technologies.Lena Mucha for The New York TimesThe frugal policies were popular among Germans who associate deficit spending with runaway inflation. But they also let Germany fall behind other nations.Since 2016 Germany has slipped from 15th to 18th place in rankings of digital competitiveness by the Institute for Management and Development in Lausanne, Switzerland, which attributed the decline partly to inferior training and education as well as government regulations. Between 40 to 50 percent of all workers in Germany will need to retrain in digital skills to keep working within the next decade, according to the Labor Ministry. Most German schools lack broadband internet and teachers are reluctant to use digital learning tools — a situation that became woefully apparent during the coronavirus lockdowns.“Technology is strategic. It’s a key instrument in the systemic rivalry we have with China,” Omid Nouripour, a lawmaker who speaks for the Green Party on foreign affairs, said during an online discussion this month organized by Berenberg Bank. “We didn’t create enough awareness of that in the past.”The need for Germany to modernize has become more urgent as climate change has become more tangible, and as a shift to electric vehicles threatens the hegemony of German luxury automakers. Tesla has already taken significant market share from BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi, and is building a factory near Berlin to challenge them on their home turf. Until last year, the financial incentives that the German government offered to buyers of electric cars were substantially smaller than the tax credits available in the United States.Wind turbines, mining and coal power in Garzweiler, Germany. Ms. Merkel pushed the country away from nuclear energy, but without renewables quickly filling the gap.Ina Fassbender/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“What is very important for Germany as an industrial nation, and also for Europe as a place for innovation, is a symbiosis between an ambitious climate policy and a very strong economic policy,” Ola Källenius, the chief executive of Daimler, told reporters at the IAA Mobility trade fair in Munich.Auto executives do not criticize Ms. Merkel, who has been a strong advocate for their interests in Berlin and abroad. But they implicitly fault her government’s sluggish response to the shift to electric vehicles. While Germany has more charging stations per capita than the United States, there are not enough to support increasing demand for electric vehicles.“The framework for this transition of the auto industry is not complete yet,” said Oliver Zipse, the chief executive of BMW and president of the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association. “We need an industry policy framework that begins with charging infrastructure.”Said Mr. Källenius of Daimler, “We are in an economic competition with the United States, North America with China, with other strong Asian countries. We need an economic policy that ensures that Europe remains attractive for investment.” More