[Skybird]

From the Neue Zürcher Zeitung:


The German justice debate has a systematic intention. In the super election year, the Greens, the SPD and the Left Party need as much inequality as possible in order to score with “taxes on the rich” and property levies. The real causes of the partial non-prosperity are seldom discussed. -

In the last ten years around 500,000 highly qualified people have left Germany to avoid a tax burden. In the last ten years around 500,000 highly qualified people have left Germany to avoid a tax burden. -

The book “Working Class - Why we need work that we can live on” by the journalist Julia Friedrichs comes as ordered. Just in time for the super election year, the young author complains that social advancement through gainful employment is hardly possible in Germany. On 323 pages, all kinds of data and concerns are cited as evidence why the middle class is no longer wealthy. Globalization, deregulation, financial capitalism and of course anti-social politics are to blame. So far, so well known - and not entirely wrong. -

The sound matches the mood, which is constantly being voiced anew: “Rich Germany” affords a lot of poverty. To underline the drama, a statistical trick has recently been used: The criterion is not actual material hardship, because according to the Federal Statistical Office it fell to a low of 3.1 percent in 2018. The number of recipients of Hartz IV, basic security or asylum seeker assistance has also declined. So a possible “risk of poverty” is constructed. Those who have to live with less than 60 percent of the median income are already affected. If a rain of money were to fall over Germany overnight and everyone's wealth increased tenfold, nothing would change in the statistical at-risk-of-poverty rate. -

Social justice is a constant topic in Germany. If Ludwig Erhard still wanted to create “prosperity for everyone”, today the main concern is to level out the differences between rich and poor. The Greens, the SPD and the Left Party, which are heading towards a change of power in Berlin in the fall, need as much inequality as possible to justify their demands for “taxes on the rich” and additional property taxes. Gladly garnished with a citizen's money or a guarantee, which should also be due to those who do not want to work. - The German debate on justice rarely goes beyond the banal demand for redistribution from top to bottom. That too has a system: the real reasons why the lower half of the population persist in relative non-prosperity are seldom discussed. Because thought through to the end, you would end up as guilty with those who complain the loudest about the “unjust conditions”. In truth, they are redistributing from the bottom up. -

This becomes particularly clear using the example of rising rents and skyrocketing real estate prices: Although only 14.4 percent of the 357,000 square kilometers in Germany are designated as settlement and traffic areas, the Greens have declared war on the “land spoil”. Wherever they are in charge, new building areas are prevented. If possible, single-family houses should no longer be allowed. This politically wanted shortage is driving prices up dramatically. Excessive building law and ever stricter energy-saving requirements also ensure that even high-earning middle-class families can put their make-up on the dream of their own four walls. The beneficiaries are the owners of land and real estate. A dynamic of less supply and more demand (also through immigration) allows their wealth to grow. Which in turn deepens the lamented gap between rich and poor. -

Without property one remains a tenant forever and thus cut off from accumulating wealth for old age. Here, Germany is at the bottom with an ownership rate of less than 50 percent. The Bonn economic historian Moritz Schularick has calculated that the poorest 20 percent of German households now spend almost 40 percent of their income on living. In 1993 it was still 23 percent. -

It is this group of people who suffer from the high energy prices: around 350,000 households can no longer afford the electricity price each year, and their electricity supply is turned off. According to the Federal Statistical Office, two million people in Germany lack the money to heat their own homes sufficiently. Even the Federal Audit Office criticized this one-sided burden in its latest report. Nevertheless, the Greens and the SPD want to drive up the prices for electricity, gas, petrol and heating oil further. This is supposed to slow down climate change, even though Germany hardly contributes two percent to global CO2 emissions. -

The beneficiaries of this energy turnaround are those wealthy who have roofs and land for solar plantations and wind turbines or who invest a lot of money in high-yield “green funds”. You can also afford the expensive e-cars, while the working commuter is spoiled for his old diesel, which he urgently needs to earn a living. In this way, too, the poor are taken away and given to the rich. -

So it goes on with the green-red redistribution. While there is not enough money at home to give dependent employees more of the gross, in Europe they are a major sponsor. Contrary to the clear legal situation, Finance Minister Olaf Scholz declares a debt union to be a political goal. The SPD's candidate for chancellor, who has taken an oath of office for the benefit of the German people, holds its own taxpayers liable in order to protect the much wealthier citizens in Italy, Spain or France from unpleasant reforms. -

With a median net worth of just 61,000 euros, the Germans are even poorer than the Greeks, whom they had to help with many billions. The EU average is 100,000 euros. At the same time, under the Merkel government, the country has not only reached the top of the tax burden among the OECD countries, but here the working middle class also contributes most of the tax revenue with 27.17 percent. All promises, especially to noticeably relieve the lower income brackets, are wasted. -

The issue of migration is completely ignored in the German justice debate. Even in official studies such as the “Social Report 2021”, a distinction is made between domestic and imported poverty at best. As one of the few well-known politicians, Friedrich Merz was the only one who called for the debate about differences in prosperity to be included in the fact that without immigration to the welfare system in 2015/16, there would be "one million Hartz IV recipients less". But the call for more transparency was immediately discredited as racism. The conservative Merkel opponent has the facts on his side. Of the 5.52 million Hartz IV (part of the scheme of the social wellfare system, Skybird) recipients at the time, around two million do not have a German passport. 980,000 are assigned to the group of people “asylum seekers”. -

The report now presented by the Federal Institute for Population Research also speaks a clear language: Above all, the immigration of educationally disadvantaged groups from Africa and Arabia as well as their significantly higher birth rate have resulted in the population in Germany not shrinking, but to the record level of around 83 million has risen. One in four of the total of 416,000 asylum applications that were made in 2020 in all 27 EU countries were received by German authorities. The vast majority of recipients remain permanently dependent on transfer payments. -

Meanwhile, around 500,000 highly qualified people have left the country in the last ten years to escape a tax burden that the Greens, the SPD and the Left Party want to increase even further for the so-called higher earners. This also creates a social imbalance. But you don't read a word about it in Julia Friedrichs either.


https://www.nzz.ch/meinung/die-deuts...tem-ld.1609611

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The author Wolfgang Bok was editor-in-chief of "Heilbronner Voice" and now works as a freelance journalist. The political scientist holds a doctorate and teaches strategic communication at Heilbronn University.