Why don't construction prices go down?

Ok, then let's list it: - Denmark: we have a branch there – the colleagues groan under the cost of living, bureaucracy paralyzes productivity, and people are missing - Sweden: the gap between rich and poor is widening, gang crime – and climate-wise I also find D better - Norway: cost of living exorbitant, climate also not that great, and nutrition is terrible. Proper food is unaffordable for a large part of society. - Switzerland: ok, I'll leave that out – one of the few countries I know and would also emigrate to. Only problem: then WE are the foreigners there. The Swiss are not much different than Germans, even tougher actually. - Holland: sure, I like living in a country that will very likely just be gone at some point... - South Korea: sure, and I also like living in a country at whose northern border a bunch of heavily armed and at the same time undernourished half-idiots are just waiting to overrun me. No no, it's not all that bad here...

Moreover, these countries are not a counter-argument to what they were intended as a counter-argument to. They actually do things to achieve that which are (still) explicitly excluded in the political discussion in D: more taxes or more debt. You can quickly find the data by googling, many on Statista. Unfortunately, I can't link.

You don't address the fundamental argument that one person's income must be another person's expenditure and therefore saving in one place necessarily requires debt elsewhere. Why not?

Because he doesn't understand it/can't believe it I claim this has been shouted out for decades by politicians (actually also by the center) in such a way that it is now considered common knowledge: the state's debts are debts of the citizens or even the children (see debt clock). But that the state's expenditures (all of them, including the debts) are actually our incomes, one has to think about that first. So if the CDU and FDP say they want to make less debt or even reduce debt, they would actually have to explain first from whom they want to take what. And I'm not talking about departments now. Which citizens do they want to take something from!? Why the journalists don't ask that is beyond me.

The state's debts are the debts of the citizens or even the children (see debt clock).

That is not inherently wrong. It is just at most one third of the entire context.
- First, debt instruments belong to someone as (also inheritable) assets. They can be Germans, but don't have to be.
- Second, government debt works differently than debts incurred by private individuals. They can be revolved, so from a net perspective they do not have to be repaid.
- Third, a state is not comparable to an individual (the ridiculously stupid comparison to the Swabian housewife). It is its own sector and additionally has unique capabilities.

Especially with the third point, most people in Germany have now been hammered into assuming it as certain and no longer questioning it. For which the Americans, for example, openly laugh at us.

the state's debts are the debts of the citizens or even the children (see debt clock).

That is indeed the big problem.
State debts must a) be repaid at some point (they are mostly bonds, etc.) and b) interest payments must be made.

The more debt the state has, the more of our taxes it has to continuously pay for the interest. So we - especially when interest rates for the state rise (due to new borrowing and refinancing of expiring liabilities) - have to use more and more of our taxes for debt service. The more I borrow today, the more it affects future generations.

This is basically not a problem if the debts are in a reasonable ratio relative to GDP or similar indicators. If not, then Greece... (to name a prominent example).
And that will also become Trump's problem. But that is off topic.

The more debt the state has, the more of our taxes it must continually pay for the interest.

Who receives this interest?

State debt must a) be repaid at some point

These are mostly bullet loans, while new loans are taken out every year. Therefore, it is usually rolled over. From a private perspective, the concept of repayment only applies to a limited extent.

b) interest service must be paid.

If this is a problem – why didn’t, for example, Schäuble replace old, expensive debt with fresh, cheap long-term debt to the maximum extent possible during the absolute low-interest phase? He did not do so because new debt is always very bad. The rest of the world has also misunderstood this about Germany.

The more I borrow today, the more it affects future generations.

Let’s get back to my first question: Could it be that the following generation also owns the debt titles, thus also receiving the interest payments? At least partly? This is never spoken about, although interest payments and repayments do not just disappear into oblivion. Yet that’s how it’s treated...
Otherwise, the next generation wouldn’t just want low interest payments but also good education and stable bridges, an intact environment, and functioning public institutions. And more of these than before, because today there are different challenges and greater needs (for example, no one had to provide the Internet before. Education today is de facto more expensive per capita).

The problem of the imbalance in Germany between saving and borrowing remains untouched by this. Trump may shove this down our throats; whether we want to take notice or not is quite irrelevant to him.
Personally, it just annoys me to ignore basic connections in order to keep certain (pre)judices. -> not meant as a personal attack.

Why didn't – if this is a problem – for example Schäuble, in the absolute low-interest phase, replace old, expensive debts with fresh, cheap long-term bonds to the maximum extent possible? He didn’t do it because new debt is always seen as very bad. Even here, the rest of the world didn’t understand Germany.

With a 100-year bond at minimal interest rates like Austria’s, one could certainly have laid the good foundation for an investment fund for future infrastructure. But they didn’t want to, because the one-dimensional fixation on a single flashy KPI like “debt ratio” seems very German. Even though by now it should have been understood that changing times require adjustments. And so "ball possession" is played over and over and knocked out in the group stage – oh wait, different field.