The chancellor says we're all rip-off artists. And finds that absolutely appalling. But ignores the fact that the willingness to take advantage is far greater among entrepreneurs and enterprises. Subsidies are gratefully pocketed, no matter how absurd the project is. Large corporations apply for funding awards because you can still get a few euros and take them. Structural development funds are used by enterprises to move operations from location A to location B - because location B offers lower business taxes or other sweeteners. The fact that jobs at location A then disappear is beside the point. And the employees at location A who then sit on the street as unemployed - all just rip-off artists. And the small and medium-sized businesses at location B - who have little leverage against the dominant player on site and are therefore left out of all decisions, after all the city council needs to keep the newly recruited major corporation - all rip-off artists. Also the mid-sized companies at location B who have fewer customers and thus lower sales due to the many unemployed, all just rip-off artists.
The world is so simple when you look at it through the rose-tinted glasses of neoliberalism. Then it's quite fitting when you have simple solutions and simple causes ready. You then push for mergers in banking, even though this will result in more job losses than the industry is already experiencing anyway.
That his simple solutions are just a dismantling of the welfare state and a transfer of society to corporations, that precisely his reforms have partly given enterprises the leverage for the recent extortions - none of that you see through the rose-tinted glasses.