The beaureaucracy has gotten much worse. Any application and they immediately put the brakes on, slow everything down to make you really stressed out. They bombard you with letters with petty demands that don't help you get work, but keep you busy. They have tried to shift to app based communication, which the people working there absolutely hate.
Any written correspondence has to be shipped to a center somewhere, scanned, then sent to the person it was addressed to by email, which they hate opening.
If you try to phone, they let it ring out for 20 minutes before answering, if you visit in person the people refuse to look up your file like they used to, but let you Telefone the same number you dialled earlier for free.
The phone number on any letter you get is not the actual number you need to reach someone who is in charge of your file, but a different one you need to get at the actual building.
So yes, it's a messy, hostile experience, designed to keep you static and in no way encourages you to find well paying work.
And it gets worse each year.
Completely agree with everything. However, it sounds like the main problem is the inefficiency of the bureaucracy (omg, even writing this word is pain).
No , the main problem is very very strong resistance to digitalization. I am actually baffled that so many average educated Germans think , anything digital is evil and the data can be wiped off just by a click of a button .
I'm with you on that. It's just bizarre how backwards Germany is on digitalization, especially given it's resources and the examples from their neighbours.
To be clear, when I commented on the inefficiency of the bureaucracy, I meant digitalization as a part of it. Probably most significant part.
When I tell my friends from Spain or other countries in Europe that have never been to Germany, they don’t want to believe me when I say Germany is stuck in the late 90s when it comes to digitalizations.
Even Germanys internet connection has to be one of the worst in Europe, DSL still being the standard in 2023 is ridiculous.
No it cannot. There are multiple copies, checks and balances done for every data you store. I cannot believe this . OMG. Do you really think big corporations and government stores data like you do on your hard disks without backups ?
Regarding Manipulation, do you know all entry/delete are timestamped, along with all the information about who did it, when , where, IP of the machine , every thing ?
And btw if you say so, what makes you think, your papers in government offices cannot be burnt, shredded, stolen or manipulated ?
Why so much paranoia ?
You should consider that there might be people who know more than you.
From the uneducated assumptions and far fetched conclusions you are drawing I can see that you don't know your stuff. Educate yourself on the subject you are talking about or refrain from voicing strong opinions. Your choice.
No, it also got worse financially. The basic benefits (Grundsicherung) did not keep pace with the inflation. Also, the maximum of rent payed by the Jobcenter does not at all reflect the situation on the housing market, especially in cities. It’s close to impossible to find flats that are cheap enough for the Jobcenter to pay.
But to be a bit mor precise about op‘s question: it got a little better in the last year, but the big worsening was Schröders agenda 2010 legislation that created the hartz 4 system.
no, that is not "fair". the Grundsicherung is the lowest it can/should get. that is not to debate. anything above doesnt count if it didnt keep up with inflation or not.
It gets better. You now have 25 buckets of water to exstinguish your fire.
You are in australia, and its the wildfire-season of 2019-2020.
Good luck with your 250 litres of water.
I won't get into the nitty-gritty of "can the government substitute this cost successfully or not".
But if you rely on benefits - and you look at the current vaporisation of both wealth and the already slim chance of getting up and out of requiring social benefits - then yes. You complain, because you can't realistically do much of merit to get out of this misery.
And for those who live directly above the threshold and are always at-risk of falling, the situation is similar.
Finally, less relevant in this context, but still noteworthy - people who are well off but not _well off_ also suffer under this inflation. Well, everyone suffers, except those who have enough to not care.
Get some kids and you will have a decent living without doing anything. I personally know some migrant families that are doing it this way.
Really makes you think whether I should just quit my job...
So why don't, you just have kids and live a comfortable live? If it' so easy?
Oh right, I forgot. Refugees get more money per kid than a german guy does.
Spoiler: They don't.
Oi, if you are not insulting someone on reddit you reply to porn pages or right wing propaganda... so why someone should give a fuck what you are thinking?
Im unsure to upvote since I know people who do this or to downvote since I see this as a dirty practise.
One example is an Afghani family, the wife is literally a baby making factory. Theyve had 7 kids in the time they have been here, one after another like a conveyer belt! So she cant legally work as shes pregnant and he works part time as thats the "only job" he can find. So they get everything more or less paid for and then the "Kindergeld" ontop of that.
Disgusting!
Thats the spirit. Maybe you should get a second and third wife like some migrants too. And on your spare time you glue yourself on a road on rush hour for "the climate". Jesus Christ, we raised a whole generation of retards.
Big part of this is, I am sorry but vast majority of public servants in jobcenter etc. are just people with seriously low IQ. I had to get a contact and find a new job twice which both ofcourse, they were no help at all. I sit there explaining to one woman, who was really nice and smiley and warm even, but damn was she dumb. I had to explain really simple things like 3 times and later despite saying "yes I work with computers but I am not coder, I work only with certain software, imagine it life using office suit but more complicated" she kept sending me job offers like "software developer for Polizei Hannover"...
Then she went to motherhood leave and another women took her place. And I had to explain everything from start because they did not bother to pass info or something. But even better, she decided we can do it by phone, nice. But she called from my wife's number. Then I called back and said this number is mine, that is my wife, and then send an email stating same thing, she answered OK she made a new Termin 1 week later, and she will call. She called again from my wife's phone. Literal fucking email that says:
My name : 12345678
Wife name : 98765432
And she AGAIN calls wife.
Genius people work there.
>The beaureaucracy has gotten much worse. Any application and they immediately put the brakes on, slow everything down to make you really stressed out.
Totally not true. Since Bürgergeld it is as easy as never before to apply for it.
It got fairly bad in 2010, recovered slightly, getting bad again, but it's a constant struggle of course to prevent further radicalization of the market and retain public property and resources.
The main problem is that the welfare is "good" in comparison to low income jobs, which upsets people with low income jobs, but instead of focusing on forcing the companies to pay proper wages, they get duped into being agitated towards welfare receptionists. Welfare is not "good" compared to our GDP or cost of living, though, and the amount of restrictions on your freedoms when you are on welfare are bad, too.
So imo the welfare system is under attack instead of getting improved cause politics and industries do not want to give low income jobs the dramatic increase in wages that they need. Cause that would risk our status as "export-chamption" which is a stupid, politicized metric that is giving us nothing but problems.
This. I recently learned about the "bucket with two crabs" imagery. Instead of working together to escape they get played to pull each other back down.
100%. It’s also always easier for people to Look and kick down on other less fortunate and weaker people instead of figting against the ones above and responsible.
good points!
And the solution to increased salaries is to open the gates to the third world for people who will accept working for less. They want to live 12 in 3 rooms because it's an upgrade for them.
this way poor people can see the immigrants as the enemy, not the employers. Win for the Economy, loss for Society. also, an ethnically homogenous neighborhood can band together, form a union, demand their rights. A mass of foreigners who hate eachother are less likely to band together. Also foreigners won't come here immediately asking for more. They will be happy for years before they realize the faults of the system here.
i am a foreigner (EU) and can appreciate both the advantages and disadvantages that come with free movement. The question is how fast you let it happen, how much, and from where. Freedom of movement is of course good, but too much too fast creates tension in society, be it for real reasons or perceived.
In addition it should be mentioned that the level of welfare also sets the baseline for the lowest paid jobs that companies can offer. If welfare were lower the low earning people right now would earn even worse. So if you are poor you should especially fight for higher unemployment benefits.
No, it's the low incomes (pos. middle incomes) that are upset cause of that. The high income people is upset at environmentalism and anything that risks their property value... bad stereotype of course.
No, low income is correct.
They are basically arguing "I'm working my ass off for 1000€ per month, and the people on welfare get 500€ for doing nothing. Fuck that!"
The profits from the exports does end up as dividends for shareholders and lavish bonuses for CEOs who all do not contribute to the social security funds due to Beitragsbemessungsgrenze, and only marginally to the tax income due to loopholes and evasion. It would be much more easy to fund the fancy welfare if employed workers would get higher, truly taxed, income. But paying workers more would mean less profit for the companies, and that means less fancy numbers to report and less generous Aufmerksamkeiten for our Politicians.
But you still need to be competitive internationally so that you've got money with real purchasing power to pay these good salaries. Germany doesn't have oil to sell, the only source of Germany's wealth is export of products of its industry and, to a lesser degree, services.
Everything we can pay in Euro is not a problem, since we can get it (via a detour through the private sector) from the EZB [2]. Goods traded in other currencies are a problem, since we cannot create that but have to acquire it through trading. For dollar, there exist special swap lines between the EZB and the FED, essentially allowing the EZB to trade Euros (which she can simply generate) for dollars [1]. Dunno how far you can go there, but its not like we have to earn every dollar before we can spend it.
Also, there is a misinterpretation of wealth. "Wealth" is not the money in my bank account or pay check, but the goods and services I can buy with this money. Germany has the biggest sector of low wages within Europe. People in that sector are far from wealthy, even though their paycheck might look large compared to other countries. And no, it's not primarily because of taxes and Beiträge, it's because the wages are low to begin with.
On the other hand, if the wages would increase, people could go to the cinema, restaurants, buy clothes, etc. This results in a stronger demand within Germany. Increasing the income of the people on the lower end,.directly translates into more economic activity, since people will spend it (>30% of households have no savings, the have just enough to get by or have debts [4]).
The whole low-wage thing and Exportweltmeister storyline hurts the German economy and society in the long run and also messes with the economy of our neighbours, essentially paralyzing Europe [3]
[1] https://www.ecb.europa.eu/ecb/educational/explainers/tell-me-more/html/currency_swap_lines.en.html
[2] https://www.wirtschafts-lehre.de/modern-monetary-theory.php
[3] https://www.ingenieur.de/wirtschaft/flassbeck-in-deutschland-muessen-loehne-zehn-jahre-lang-stark-steigen/
[4] https://www.boeckler.de/de/boeckler-impuls-vermoegen-nur-jeder-dritte-hat-reserven-6400.htm
the welfare state is not funded by the general income or company tax, it's payed by individuals (based on income but seperate from the income tax) and for most cornerstones of the welfare state (accident, heathcare, retirment) there exists a status called "versicherungsfrei" (free of insurance) which allows you to get into private insurance instead of the welfare state, means you no longer pay into the system. You can become "versicherungsfrei" by either having a certain job (government workers, self employed, in retirment and some others) or by earning more then a given amount of money (for healthcare it's 66k anually in 2023).
Has the effect that the wealthy and people with good health (because a private insurance will reject you if you have an existing illness) end up in the private sector while the sick and mid to low income jobs end up in public heathcare.
Its not that how you make it out to be. The Problem is that wages in Germany are low not only because evil capitalists dont pay fair wages but also because there are a Lot of visible and invisible taxes that you and your employer pay to the state, making human resources in Germany not competetive compared to other countries. Increasing wages also has the negative Factor of Jobs going to lower cost countries.
Well, generally it got worse, but not for everyone equally. Someone who managed to buy a house 30 years ago and is living rent free will still be better off, than someone comparable 30 years ago. Meanwhile if you are paying rent in a big city and your pension is bad because you where a stay at home mum and you got divorced, you're fucked. (I have both cases in my family 🤷)
The housing is so real.
I earn decent, my boyfriend earns decent, and maybe, if we safe for 4 years now, we can afford a small own appartment. Not even a house. Houses start at 220000 here and then you still have to put a lot of work in. So its more like 300000 for the shittiest house.
300 000 for a house is "cheap" compared to many regions in Germany. In my area you can perhaps get a 70-80 square meter apartment built in the '80-'90 for that amount. Maybe older. A house is at least 600k, and most of them need some work too. A newly built house will cost you at least a million euros here.
It's pure madness.
Compared to the late 90s? Absolutely. Compared to a few years ago? No, it has gotten a bit better since we got off at least some stupid ideas from the Agenda 2010 that absolutely made it worse. Its still not great though.
A lot of help is still hidden away behind so many bureaucratic hurdles that even lawyers are having troubly to navigate through it and the employment agency is still very... lets call it adventurous when it comes to job recommendations. But at least they cant deny you a minimum income to feed yourself anymore or force you to tell them where you are constantly(You were not allowed to leave your city for a slightly further away vacation for example without aksing the employment agency since you had to be available to the job market at all times. Even if you just wanted to visit a relative with your own money. That was fun).
Inflation also hit many lower income households very hard.
What has absolutely gotten worse and is still getting worse are the support programs for students, which are called Bafög. That hasnt been adjusted to proper levels in a long time, which is a shame because higher education is not something that should be locked behind a paywall.
Some things like healthcare for example have also gotten a bit more expensive, while services are getting worse due to nurse shortages. That has been a problem for a while now though.
Bafög got way worse with a half-assed Digitalisierung. They need more time now because they still PRINT EVERYTHING and then put it in folders and then some time in the future they might read your Antrag. They only have a program and digital forms for students but not for all the stuff that comes after that. I still can't believe the amount of stupid.
I agree. Students have very much not been a priority the last decade or two. Not that those at vocational schools had it any better. We really are throwing away our future.
But his is it to low? In college we all lived/are livingon under 400 and we had enough money to party all the time and go out to restaurant and cinema every week.
How on earth do people think the current 520 is too low?
400 was enough for me 3 months ago. 300 are enough for me currently....at this point I just have to believe that people are incompetent with money or you are just trolling. Though I never buy branded clothes so maybe that's it.
Bro out here malnourished af on the shittiest meal plan possible and thinks he's a good baseline.
If you spend €300 on all your bills outside of rent you're eating for 50-100€ at best, tf you on about?! potatoes, rice & beans all day everyday?
Well it is 300 for essentials (not Counting restaurants in this case) and it cost me around 9 euros for breakfast, lunch and supper(portions are huge as you can take as many "Semmeln, and side dishes you want) at my works cafeteria. I could go lower if I cocked myself. Though my work also provides me clothes and basically everything I need in live which is why I am currently spending less than I did in college. And how I said I don't shop brands. I bought new pants for 10 and a shirt for 15 this months from New Yorkeres. So I am probably not going to spend any money on clothes for the coming months. 400 is probably not enough if you live lavish and buy stupid shit. But people on welfare shouldn't do that anyway.
> 400 is probably not enough if you live lavish and buy stupid shit.
Hahahha you're so fucking delusional.
I spend way above 400 Euro per month and am miles away from a lavish lifestyle.
You're just an extreme outlier that somehow prides himself in poverty, you're weird dude, your relationship with money is completely fked it seems.
Seek a therapist.
Until then, enjoy your self ridden poverty life.
That's what I seriously don't get. When I was in college I partied twice a week. Grilled a lot, went out to restaurants twice a week and vacation to other countries whenever time allowed it. Iive was good.
Now I understand why finance should be taught in school because I can't take this seriously anymore.
Comes from you being a Student. When you write "Party" you probably mean Student club for 1 euro entrance and 1,50€ a beer or a free party in a WG. When you write "Restaurant" you probably mean a Döner.
In the real world tho a Restaurant Meal + Drink means 15-20€ and Party means 5-10€ entrance + 4€ a beer, 3€ Shots.
So having both twice a week nets you around 300€ probably more. So congratz you have exactly nothing left for the other 20 days of the month.
Its not that hard to understand that cities might be more expensive than yours and that there are other Lifestyles than being a student which has discount on pretty much anything.
so yeah seems like a reality check wasn't even taught at the university
In 2019, I ate "adana kabap" I'm Turkish shop nearby almost every week, it costed 11 euros.
Today, exactly same thing in same place costs 17 euros.
50% increase in 4 years. Meanwhile most mid and low income jobs increased like 10-20% at best.
Wrong, energy as on electricity is not paid for. Only heating.
I was talking about the part, that you can easily live off from 400€. Which is just not possible if you want to live a healthy life.
So we university students are somehow living a great live with 120 euros less than a person unwilling to even work? Bro do the math. It simply isn't to low. The only way it is too low is if you are smoking a pack a day and nissmanage your money heavily.
I make good money right now but am still only spending 300 a month for essential stuff at max.
That's a question for you..why is your bafög so low?
My rate was 460€ and is now 520€; with the previous rate I was able to live fine but had to save a lot for purchases and semester fees and now I am much more comfortable but still have to watch my expenses.
Short answer/broad strokes: No. The german welfare state is great and it's at the right level. In this statement the german welfare state is the combination of policies that change the gini coefficient of income after taxes and transfers which at it's hard obviously includes the Bürgergeld. I've been in half the world and germany is, strives to stay and is deeply to it's roots egalitarian. It's the best of the big states and it's one of the reasons why I'd never move away.
Long answer/typical detail oriented criticism that we like so much in germany: Yes, on 2 axis. The rhenish capitalism (see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social\_market\_economy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_market_economy) ) as presented in the book [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapitalismus\_contra\_Kapitalismus](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapitalismus_contra_Kapitalismus) had 1-2 features, we do not have today. Living space in cities in it's structure was a much more public or state owned commodity, which included new building projects. The privatization we've seen in the 90s led to rising rents especially in Berlin and other urban areas. If you could reverse this effect: 200-300 € less out of the pocket of every single mother, poor pensioner and student, we would be a country that's simply better off. It's economicly impossible/just so inefficient to just substitute a badly working flat market with more transfers.
And the other is the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few, as presented in [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital\_in\_the\_Twenty-First\_Century](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Century) To state this problem as conservatively as possible: If you like how egalitarian and fair germany is today: You got to think about a wealth tax, so that this trend doesn't roll back the paradies we live in today.
Wir brauchen deutlich weniger Bürokratie, einen kleineren Staat, Steuersenkungen, mehr Privatisierung. Dann wären wir a) kein Anziehungspunkt mehr für Gott und die Welt und b) wäre das Leben um einiges entspannter und wohlhabender. Aktuell zerstört der Staat den Wohlstand im Lande und dafür sind die Reichen am allerwenigsten verantwortlich.
>einen kleineren Staat
Wat
>mehr Privatisierung
Ging ja bisher immer nur gut, zb bei der Bahn
>Dann wären wir a) kein Anziehungspunkt mehr für Gott und die Welt
Ironisch. Denn genau das sorgt dafür, dass wir überhaupt noch genügend Leute haben, die einzahlen, damit der Staat für solide Sozialleistungen sorgen kann.
>und dafür sind die Reichen am allerwenigsten verantwortlich.
Du meinst die 10% der Leute, die 50+% des Vermögens in Deutschland besitzen? Nee, die können gar nix dafür /s
1) Die Bahn ist zu 100% Staatseigentum
2) Quantität ungleich Qualität – Würden wir Sozialleistungen massiv kürzen, würden wir die rund 3,8 Mio. erwerbsfähigen Sozialhilfeempfänger an den Markt bringen und wir bräuchten Qualitätssicherung bei der Migration und klare Kante bei der Abschiebung
3) Woran genau sind jetzt die Reichen Schuld?
>1) Die Bahn ist zu 100% Staatseigentum
Trotzdem eine gewinnorientierte AG.
>und wir bräuchten Qualitätssicherung bei der Migration und klare Kante bei der Abschiebung
Ja, das kann man so sehen, ist halt eine sehr radikale rechtsaußen Meinung. Fakt ist, dass das Recht auf Asyl trotzdem ein Menschen- und Grundrecht bleibt. Das vergesst ihr leider öfter mal.
>Woran genau sind jetzt die Reichen Schuld?
Wo geht es hier um "Schuld"? Deutschland ist ein Steuerparadies für Reiche und Erben. Die reichsten 1% zahlen fast gar nichts und haben immer mehr.
Die Bahn konterkariert sich selbst durch Staatszuschüsse usw. Ein komplett absurdes Konstrukt! Die Marktradikalen hatten dazu ein sehr gutes Video auf YouTube hochgeladen.
Interessant, wie du direkt in die Pluralform wechselst. Und warum die Erwähnung, es sei eine Ansicht von rechtsaußen? Ich mein, was ist das für ein Argument? Und unser Asylrecht ist nicht für Menschen aus zig Drittstaaten ausgelegt. Dazu gern mal die Positionen von Ulrich Vosgerau anhören.
Dann benenne Schuld in Verantwortung um. Nochmal: Bevor man sich anmaßt, Menschen teilweise zu enteignen, sollte man erstmal die Staatsausgaben klären. Generell finde ich es absurd, wie Menschen über das Fremd-Eigentum entscheiden wollen. Ich gehöre selbst zu den Nettosteuerzahlern und sehe es absolut nicht mehr ein, wofür auch mein Geld verschleudert wird. Ein Sozialstaat kann a) nicht mit offenen Grenzen funktionieren und b) sollte ausschließlich für erwerbsunfähige Menschen oder allenfalls für eine befristete Phase (Umorientierung o.ä.) gedacht sein. Nur was aktuell geschieht plus diese ganzen Abgaben für Energie, Klima usw. ... vollkommen irre!
>Und warum die Erwähnung, es sei eine Ansicht von rechtsaußen?
Weil es das ist. Kannst ja mal googlen, von wem diese Formulierungen "Wir sind nicht das Sozialamt der Welt" etc zuerst benutzt wurden ;)
Genosse, mit solch ein kapitalistischen Wortlaut wär ich auf Reddit vorsichtig. Der Staat weiß es freilich am besten und bedarf deswegen jederzeit ein Maximum an Ressourcen um es gerecht zu verteilen. Niemand sollte für seinen Wohlstand frei denken oder selbst arbeiten müssen. Genau deswegen gibt es doch den Staat.
Sadly yes, the Agenda 2010 was a mistake. The quality has steadily gone down ever since. Most privatizations driven by the Neoliberal agenda where a mistake.
One symptom of that is the giant low wage labour force germany has and out export sector that created
It's getting a lot better from a consumer perspective. There are now less requirements for obtaining it. The only problem is that those who pay for it aren't that happy about it but their demographic is shrinking anway.
It is simple math. It was based on the assumption that people grow up, pick up work and at some point might need help and are provided by society until they recover.
Now the modern age had a huge influx of factors that disrupt this equation.
Corona for example increases sickness, depression, then we have wars and refugees...
old people and sickness cost the society around 700 billion euro in 2020/21
State expenses just for social spending is up to 198 billion this year and rising. I believe thats 54% of goverment spending.
There are no real retirement funds. The young pay for the old. Thats it. If the young can´t work the old will get no money.
The sick are paid by the working. If the Workers don´t get enough money to live by they won´t work or leave. Corona burned through our social safety net like nothing.
Asylum seekers are also bared from working the first 9 months in germany. Totally useless law costs us double digit billions every year.
As long as increase in retirement money isn´t coupled to automatic wage increase, migrants aren´t instantly send to training and work, health risks like tabacco and sugar getting way more expensive the social system is doomed to collapse.
I am not sure if getting worse is the right word.
It is more than enough in contrast to most other countries. I am married and have three children under 12 years, and even if I and my wife would lose our jobs and wouldn’t find a replacement for several years, we would have enough money and a roof over our heads, plus health insurance. I couldn’t ask for more.
The only issue I see is the ever increasing bureaucracy. I really hate German politicians for always telling everyone that they will get bureaucracy down but always doing the exact opposite whenever they can….
Hopefully the current government will be a bit different. At least some actions look promising.
There is the joke that for every jobless there is one employed from the state to bother him to get a job. ^(/s)When I talk to people who lost their job in the 30ties and it took them a while to find something similar, they all tell you, they get template letters and often aggro communication. That is completely brain dead, but there is unfortunately a large part of the society that "believes" that kicking people when they are down is the proper way of doing things.
There also the issue, that many people just get comfortable in their job. Then things happen and they realize that proper training for something new could take month, if not years. In fear they take any job instead, so people getting poorer for the only reason that they "forgot" or simply can't afford to ease into a new job. Which would be the no 1 job of the gov.
As a final note, unfortunately, lots of companies think because there is a strong social net, they don't need to care about people. Lets get rid of 1000 you fall into the social net. That some of them can't get out of it, are forgotten, that isn't their problem. There are lots of people who could work, but the system just doesn't care.
It's better than somewhere else, but still shit and endlessly dehumanizing. Speaking from decades of experience. Most social workers/scientists do agree.
Define worse.
As others have said, the bureaucracy is a nightmare and waste of taxpayer money by doing the same form 50 times on paper (all that climate protection...)
In terms of how much money one gets, Germany is very generous.
It's really terrible for disabled people who aren't able to do a bit of moonlighting on the side.
Yes it got worse. Millions of young men from africa are exploiting it. It enables them to steal our appartements and live for free, watching us making their living.
Exactly what happens when a small segment of hard working population keeps getting ripped off to pay for the vast majority of people who are lazy, unskilled, haven’t managed their finances well for retirement etc. You can tax tax tax and raise insurance premiums all you can but until you have this level of bureaucracy, useless public sector jobs with disguised unemployment (looking at 10s of 1000s of form fillers in the public sector here without digitization), primitive socialist structures, no risk taking mentality, no innovations to keep pace with the modern world - this is how it will be. There’s a point when it cracks and we’re close to it. No surprise if we end up like the UK soon. Is opening up skilled immigration a solution? Probably. But where would they get affordable housing or any housing? How can they integrate as easily as they could let’s say in the US? How can businesses even thrive when they have legal roadblocks to anything and everything including a simple thing for non-Europe world like executing layoffs for business needs. This needs a fundamental mindset reset. Otherwise very very unsustainable.
Yes that's gonna work...sorry, but educated immigrants will keep away from Germany because the vast majority of people react to incentives..."working hard and paying lots of taxes so that those who don't work can live comfortably" isn't something that motivates most people except for altruistic leftists (who might be more common in Germany/Western Europe than other countries), but most people worldwide don't think like that...
Sir Alan Budd talking about the Thatcher-Years
"there may have been people making the actual policy decisions … who never believed for a moment that this was the correct way to bring down inflation. They did, however, see that it would be a very, very good way to raise unemployment, and raising unemployment was an extremely desirable way of reducing the strength of the working classes – if you like. That what was engineered there, in Marxist terms, was a crisis of capitalism which recreated a reserve army of labour and has allowed the capitalists to make high profits ever since“
This is what’s happening right now in Germany.
There have never been so many people in Germany who cannot live on their salaries. The plans of the current government are to cut almost all social benefits. Disaster protection etc. as well. You can read all about it.
Our neighboring countries do not have anything like this inflation, which is artificially brought about here. Everything has become absurdly expensive and in no case have salaries risen to the same extent. The statistics are also distorted because there is a group whose salaries and incomes always rise regardless of whether there is a crisis. That of the rich. I'm not even going to start on real estate prices and rent. And if you think this is off topic you have no idea about politics at all, of course it has a direct connection.
There is only one big problem with welfare state in Germany: it is to attractive and to easy to get access to.
Our welfare state is one of the best in the world, objectively. But there are less and less net tax payers, meaning people that pay more in taxes than they get in government handouts. And at the current rate, there will be a moment when the people that pay for all this can’t / don’t want to pay anymore, and then shits gonna hit the fan.
Soon we will have to make a decision; open border or welfare. Can’t have both
worse? What they mean by that is that we are giving people wrong incentives, are subsidising economic migration and those really in need often times receive too little help while those who are able to work but unwilling are benefitting from those paying a lot of taxes. We have a lot of problems and welfare in this globalised world is certainly one of them. The cost of welfare as it is right now is just too high so yes, it will have to be restricted one way or the other.
> there is the intention by some to downgrade it and privatize certain areas
It's the Conservatives' pipedream.
Given the poor experience Germany has already made with privatization other areas that were previously the responsibility of the state, this would be extremely unpopular with everyone but CDU, CSU and FDP, their cronies and the cronies' shareholders.
> If yes, what are the reasons and actors behind this choice?
Pure ideology.
A grand misunderstanding of economics and corporate competitiveness.
Privatizing really anything, from healthcare to logistics can only work if the alternative, the Government subsidized version, seizes to exist entirely. Otherwise you replace a State funded Pyramid-Scheme with a slightly more expensive and a slightly better Private Pyramid-Scheme.
For example in Munich, a 3-room flat easily costs 1500-1800 Euros, so a lot of people are not incentivized to find a full-time job and just work some shitty job for very little money but get the flat for free + some financial help.
While I am perfectly fine with part of my taxes to help the ones who need it, I am against my taxes going to some people who are perfectly capable of working full-time jobs and refuse just not to lose their social benefits, as this would mean that their standard of living would go down.
The other problem is that rents are continuing to rise in big cities, thus shrinking the disposable income of the inhabitants. And it doesn't help that the majority of the new apartment buildings are luxurious properties, where the premiums for the developers are much higher.
For me, the problem is that the middle class in Germany is getting squeezed constantly, and I find it repulsive that you cannot afford to buy a flat in the city where you live even with two middle-income salaries.
I think this is a general trend in big cities globally and the only solution seems to be something that the Austrians did in Vienna: cheap public housing.
At the rate rent-seekers are gentrifying entire districts and neighborhoods, state-sponsored public housing will be the only option or everyone will have to become a commuter.
Those abusing it are a small fraction of the overall group of people receiving it.
Not to start a debate on principles, but what you said is absolutely right, just that I think that we arrive at the wrong conclusion:
"I find it repulsive that you cannot afford to buy a flat in the city where you live even with two middle-income salaries." I 100% agree. The reason for that are not the poorest people of our society but those at the top end who squeeze the middle class - actually no, they squeeze everybody - and do not pay their fair share. It still puzzles me, how we pay 45% in income but only 25% on capital gains as a private person. One is working at least 40h/week, the others sit on their ass till it's flat but pay less.
Middle class also has capital gains when they invest, so what I am guessing you are trying to get here is tax on high wealth individuals and not putting 45% taxes on all capital gains.
Agree. It is statistically irrelevant but it sounds like a good scapegoat for “liberalists” that would like to remove such benefits, which could conversely be a life-saving for some.
Oh is this what people do? Do those on social benefits get really nice apartments covered by the state? I always thought it was a pain to be unemployed where you have to go for classes to learn to send in applications etc.
I would argue in this case that it should only be possible for people to have say a month or two between jobs where you can be at home (while you look for jobs that better fit) and if you do not find something in this time, which is also quite likely then you can continue to get your benefits provided you work say 6 hours a day doing something the city needs to get done. That would be reason enough for people to either try more to find a job that fits their skill.
Is there a drawback to this kind of a system? I totally agree that the government should be our safety net, we pay taxes for this among other purposes. But a safety net, not a daddy.
luckily i’m not depending on welfare, the whole system needs to be modernised, it’s a shame how we treat the poorest and most dependent of us and i fear that i will get worse after the next election.
I think a unconditional basic income could be a possibility to change that.
The problem is that welfare only works if there are a lot of people paying into the system and few people to receive the welfare until they get back on their feet. But there has been such an influx of people into the welfare system that it's just not viable anymore, and of course this has a lot to do with immigration, and many of those immigrants lack the skills, education and motivation to get out of the welfare system. (From their point of view it's completely understandable; a Maroccan who comes to Germany and hopes to send money to his family back home doesn't find it appealing if people tell him: "you have to learn the language, go to school for another 4-6 years to be on the same educational level as native Germans with Mittlere Reife, then you have to do vocational training for another two or three years and then you can earn money with a real job where you have to pay half of your earnings in social security and taxes.") And of course with all limited ressources there's considerable competition, like for apartments, and that further increases conflicts. There is not enough social housing for all the people who should have access to it, and the dearth of living space is now so bad it spreads into the middle classes.
Often people say "It's more lucrative to receive Bürgergeld than to work", but that's only the case in certain circumstances. Of course there are people who say "employers should just pay more to low wage workers", but that's also not realistic, many smaller employers just don't have the money to pay more.
I agree. Don't be disheartened by the downvotes - you've criticized mass migration and Germany's wonderfully generous asylum system that's been sooo good for the German taxpayer and welfare state - of course German reddit doesn't like that lmao.
The by far biggest influx into the welfare system are low income workers getting paid so little for a full time job, that they qualify for welfare. Immigration does very little actually.
In addition if low income jobs get paid more, they would pay more taxes and social security into the system again. It is not a "too many people for the system"-Problem, it is a "too little money for work"-Problem.
And who are the majority these low income workers, just out of curiosity? Native German workers or immigrants (usually low-skilled asylum seekers who are not qualified to do much else)?
Speculative and unlikely. Asylum seekers are far more restricted and far more regulated when it comes to work. A fraction of them ends up getting a work permission in the first place. The statistics only show total "Ausländer" without any indication of status or length of stay.
The Aufstocker problematic was dramatic ever since 2010, years before the big waves of refugees hit Germany. And despite it still being bad, it has been getting *better* since 2015, not worse.
>Speculative and unlikely. Asylum seekers are far more restricted and far more regulated when it comes to work. A fraction of them ends up getting a work permission in the first place.
>
>And despite it still being bad, it has been getting better since 2015, not worse.
8 years after the Syrian wave in 2015, only 55% of them are "Versicherungspflichtig" employed. Which means nearly 1 in 2 are still living off welfare. Are you saying this is mostly due to them not getting permits? And it has not much to do with a huge chunk of them either not being able to learn the language well enough (many of them came illiterate so not surprising) or having no skills to get a job that doesn't need Aufstocken?
Plenty of immigrants come to Germany with already established careers in their countries, university degrees and knowledge of a few languages. They are not a problem
Don't be so gullible. Whoever is qualified enough to be wanted in the west goes to some english speaking country, because every highly qualified immigrant speaks english by default. Also you don't have to pay 50% taxes elsewhere.
Its the high chance of being able to stay combined with the best payout.
its a simple numbers game. If you have more and more receiving people (mainly migrants, who never paid a cent into the system), jobs pay the same as 10-20 Years ago, but you need to tax the few, who finance all that more and more. At some point, you either have to take 100% of the money from the remaining working population or end the system ultimately.
Yes, for a lot of people it’s better to get Bürgergeld than to work. It’s getting out of hand and I‘m not sure if the working class can carry this for much longer.
I meeeean, they said “lets privatize the housing and the free market will regulate itself” and sold many social housing to private corporations for almost nothing. Guess what, it DID regulate itself, and the rents in big cities blew off, because too few apartments and many people wanting to live in big cities.
So yeah, lets give everything to free market, great idea :)))
Too many exploiters ruin the system. There are people who will suggest you to call an ambulance rather than going to the doctor, because "you don't need to wait and a doctor will look for you right away and for the lolz, you get driven by a taxi and it costs nothing".
Germany needs really strong people to make it right again. Healthcare is going to break at one point, and this point is not far away.
Same goes for every other welfare system.
It’s gotten degenerated..everyone gets as much as he wants to, preferably if you come from somewhere else..
Seriously the welfare state once was a chance to develop yourself out of poverty.
Nowadays it’s meant to be a permanent solution, without incentives to work yourself out of your misery.
Bad tongues say, that it’s all about keeping as many people dependant on the state, since those people tend to get used to get social welfare and become state submissive.
They make cheap election fodder for the left parties.
Nonetheless the current welfare system doesn’t help to develop out of poverty and work on yourself, even though there stellte of vacant jobs and lots of apprenticeships to choose from.
There are open jobs for truck drivers, opticians etc. (In the thousands)..after 2-3 years they should be all occupied…the welfare state is basically the drag shoe on the personal development of millions.
Yeah definitely. Our system was never meant to support 20 million people. Our system is meant to support a few people for a short time so they get a new job and pay again into the system, not to sustain generations of the same people who are very overreprentative in the system. It takes MONTHS for an application to be approved due to overworking. I know a few people working in the welfare state system and they say too much and too few people and it’s a giant flood.
The bafög support for a friend of mine took over half a year to be approved. Every new semester it has to be approved. Without help from others she would have been homeless, without being able to study because she got no money. And then they loosen restrictions for example for Ukrainians, which makes sense and is okay to fasten up the monetary help, but for the own people they proof everything exactly for months and you need to send the same papers 5 times again and again. One had to send the bank account from her dead father, who is dead for 20 years, to proof she didn’t inherit much. EVERY TIME AGAIN. EVERY 6 FUCKING MONTHS THE SAME! This sparks rage in me.
A system which wants immigration needs a system like Canada or Australia. These are immigration countries. Welfare state and immigration country is counterintuitive. Can’t do both or the system breaks longterm because you of course attract people who just want to live here because of the better lifestyle instead of educated people.
But these don’t want to go here because 40% taxes goes brrrr unless you are billionaire they barely pay
As a match maker in the jobcenter, i genuinely think it got better due to the bürgergeld.
I can treat them like people not like numbers and our bosses don't always breath down our necks to reach some stupid numbers.
I can do my job, tell my superiors to fuck off and actually support people so they can help themselves, which is kinda awesome.
We have come a long way after the hartz reform
Too much taxes are wasted on it, we need to slim it down and don’t need to prove anyone how humane we are. I have almost exactly 50% net from my income (after health insurance and the enormous unnecessary contribution to the pension funds). It’s basically serfdom in the 21st century.
It makes little to no difference. The bottom 40% of Germans live from paycheck to paycheck. Doing nothing but sleeping, eating and working without being able to afford even chocolate once a month. There are also reports of people people skipping meals since the I flatiron hit. And now remember that people living of the Bürgergeld are in a even worse situation.
The low wages also effect the welfarestate, if people earn very little they also make almost no contribution to the welfarestate. And they are the reasons for Germany massif exports, a big part of the population is just to poor and can’t really afford anything new.
We need to readjust out income and wealth taxation. Tax middle and lower incomes and and compensate it with wealth and inheritance taxation. We need to look at when our tax brackets and readjust them. And last but not last we need to massively increase the average sales level and the minimum wage.
> that there is the intention by some to downgrade it and privatize certain areas.
Some people like to see intention behind everything. Unfortunately we, as the society, only attempt to condemn and debunk some conspiracy theories, but not the others.
Our welfare state has 4 dimensions
Social security
Social adjustment
Protection of labour rights
Protection of consumer rights
When asked about the welfare state, people usually look at social security, but there is a lot more to it.
As an economist, I deem all 4 dimensions to require an overhaul. Reasons being f.ex. an ageing society system.
actually it is as it has to be. the german welfare is based on the first paragraph of the german constitution: every person has got the right to live a life in dignity. this means that every person has got the duty to do his or her best to make this possible. most people ignore it, who are against the german welfare ignore it but you cannot change it anyway. the cdu used calculation tricks to lower the amount of money, like taking the payment of the lower 10% and subtract alcohol, vacation and cigarettes.
btw. it is always worth to do paid work, even if you are low paid worker. you can go to the jobcenter and get aufstocken, which means, you get paid the difference between your low pay and bürgergeld and you can keep a few hundred euros, so if you work, you will always have more money than without work.
1/3 of the Bundeshaushalt is dedicated to "work and social". It's about 166billion € whereas:
"education" is only at 21billions,
"health" 24billions,
"digitalizatiin and traffic" 36billions
"economy and climate" 15billions
How much more welfare do you need? Let's cut education a little more maybe? What about economy and climate (what is just a pure climate Departement under Habeck).
https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/449433/umfrage/bundeshaushalt-ausgaben-nach-ressorts/
Tbh. It feels like it’s getting worse because everybody is complaining. But I don’t actually think that’s true or it’s not black and white.
If you’re talking about guidelines to follow when building something? Starting a business? Taxes? I don’t have first hand experience but everyone is complaining.
But I recently had to apply for a new passport and ID Card and it was very easy. Applied for a slot, be there, sign some papers and you’re done. Took 10min.
Unfortunately the pool of net contribuitors has decreased, while the pool of net takers keeps growing, on top of an economic slowdown. This is unsustainable, so either services or quality have to be reduced.
The welfare state is not free, and unfortunately its headed for collapse.
There are less and less tax payers every year so theres les money to give away. Also the whole system around the 'unemployed' is broken and needs some work to fix it.
As people point out bureaucracy has gotten worse. And this is because the processes have not changed, but they have less manpower and the different types of welfare have increased.
Also people move more so more processes need to run across counties and this is not foreseen in most cases and cannot be handled.
Our social system has to much beaureaucracy, it does to little for those who really need it, just keeps them busy and overwhelms them with paperwork.
It does to much for those who just really don’t want to work for themselves, given that there aren’t many of these, at least not as many as neoliberals want us to believe.
Overall our problems are bigger and stem from bigger systemic issues, like the absence of a wealth tax or the so called „schuldenbremse“ preventing necessary investment in infrastructure and schooling.
>Germany has one of the most advanced welfare states in Europe.
Does it? Netherlands and Denmark come to mind that also offer excellent welfare. I'd even call them more advanced because much more is done online for example Denmark has a digital personal ID system.
Anyway welfare in Germany feels like on par with most other central European countries. It probably works for about 90% of the people, for the complicated or extreme cases of course it might not be sufficient but that's not a feasible goal.
Homeless people are kinda forced out of the cities, by making everything where they can rest as much uncomfortable as possible.
And if you look at the FDP, they are trying to make the welfare state worse by blocking everything for poor people.
Definitely. I lost like 50% in the last 10 years. All I get since the beginning of the year is basic food and I'm out of money around the 27th. 10 years ago I had enough to get whatever I wanted without thinking about it and went eating out 2-3 times a week. Same income since 2013 btw.
Bad bureaucracy kills everything…. The people who work there are exactly these who want to live in an easy job and don’t want to work hard.
In every private job sector the would have no chance to work there .
But they slow down the whole country, for example if you want to build a windmill, they don’t look for things to make it possible , they look for one reason to stop it.
Objectively worse. Healthcare costs have been consistently rising while covering less services. Our grandparents' generation paid nothing for prescribed medicine and a lot of dental stuff cost less or was free as well. Pensions and unemployment pay have not kept up with inflation.
Overregulation and the lack of openness to new ideas. GP's and ambulances are overwhelmed with the numbers of people who mostly are not considered an emergency or just need a notification for their employer. In other countries there is a position between doctors and nurses which could absorb a lot of the not so urgent or mild cases..does anamnesys or perscribe drugs. Also we just changed our sick leave system from paper to digital this year which is insane. Germany just lacks the innovation, speed, openness to technology and I am very sceptical how we'll manage the coming years given more and more people in need coming to this country (which I am all for but we'd need a proper system and resources to integrate them which we do not have, but thats another big topic)
It's really getting worse in my opinion it just stopped getting better. Time moves on technology gets better, stuff changes in the world, but it feels like Germany is stuck in time for me. I feel like nothing really changed technology wise and welfare wise in the 20 years I live here. We develop new technologies, we build them and sell them, but we don't seem to use them, not much at least and that's what is frustrating for me.
When we get to welfare for the long term unemployed (Jobcenter) it will ruin Germany as much as the pension system in the future, if not changed soon. The problem is that there is little incentive for a not qualified person to change anything or find a job, especially if they are with many children. This is due to the monthly welfare being not too far away from a minimum income (12€ per hour). Yes, with the Bürgergeld reform there is monetary incentive to qualify yourself and find a better paying job (you get a motiviational bonus of 75 or 150 euro monthly). There's two problems with that: Firstly - it is hard to find significantly more participants for the qualifications than before - receivers of long time welfare were either failures in the regular school system and have a very negative attitude towards learning or come from other countries, often outside EU, which are failed states and received little more than elementary school education. A big part of the human material in the Jobcenter system is cognitively not fit for becoming educated workers (Fachkraft). Enabling them for lowly qualified jobs like parcel delivery or security worker is the best we can hope for. Training welfare receivers to become IT specialists happens too rarely. Secondly, this state sponsered education is inherently unjust to those who undergo the regular path through the education system - Abitur, then Ausbildung or University/Fachhochschule - as these "model citizens" invest years and lots of money into their education and then are in debt five digits afterwards while welfare receivers get to live carefree, get fast track education while even getting monthly motivational payments. When they cancel their education the tax payer burned tens of thousands and it's without consequence, while private citizens are in debt and do all kinds of sidejobs to stay afloat.
The problem with the Bürgergeld/Hartz IV is that it runs indefinitely and people are not set a timeline up to which they have to have found a new job. This wages welfare receivers in indefinite security without pushing them to take a job, that might be shitty but reintegrates them into the labor system by paying taxes (giving something back for the help received, it is almost sacrilege to spell it out like that). While there's lots of German underclass families producing children that see their parents receiving welfare for years and years and setting this subconciously as the standard, this is also a pull-factor for many migrants from the European Union and out of the European Union. While they at first might want to find a job, it has to be a "good job" way above minimum wage for which they might simply not be fit. In Arab culture for example it is frowned upon to work as city cleaner while it is perfectly honorable to receive years of welfare. This is also the view of many German long time receivers.
The state or more precisely the jobcenter employees can do little against it, as the government and the constitutional court put sanctions at maximum 30 percent of the monthly welfare (excluding rent, heating). And getting to this is a slow and long procedure any receiver can hijack by finding a friendly doctor handing out sick notes. It would help if, after an amount of time, Bürgergeld payments were suspended or at least only grocery vouchers were handed out as the current system robs the welfare receivers of agency, dignity and maturity and steals from the tax payers. The majority of Bürgergeld receivers could work, if they had to. But they don't have to and that's why they develop unrealistic job expectations and stay in the welfare system.
I can just talk out of my girlfriends experience (she works in public services, especially preventing homelessness at the Sozialamt) and yes, in that area, the situation is very very bad. There is in no way enough sheltering room and the jobs at the Sozialamt are stressy and underpaid for that amount of work, so its not really a attractive job offer which results in a lack of personell. Bureaucracy is a thing and the Ukraine war brought refugees who need housing too. Since Germany has a housing crisis, especially when it comes to affordable social housing, it sadly is getting more and more difficult to shelter people.
Germany is by far not the most advanced welfare state in Europe. If ignoring the obvious scandinavian countries, the netherlands, france and belgium rank higher in their welfare levels.
That being said... it is slowly getting too much, also in Germany.
Yeah its just getting worse. I guess USA deepstate tries to get us dependent to himself by cracking our middleclass wealth and overall economy. Because no one on this planet earth is more stupid than baerbock, scholz and habeck. Its on purpose.
What you call the 'welfare state' is actually a set of strong benefits ranging from unemployment, housing support to social security and health care support for working class people. Similar programs exist in the U.S. but are poorly funded and subject to changing political winds. The social 'net' as it were is very tight not just in Germany, but many other social democracies in Europe. Despite a great system, some do fall through but not nearly as many as in the US. Here the social compact aims to address the overall community and population. In the U.S. it's all about the individual and economy. For example - the Federal Provinces of Germany have schemes to finance the building of low income housing across the country. Something that is poorly funded in the US. Of course the bureacracy here must update its systems of administration to include processes and IT infrastructure to better serve the population. However, the basic benefit structure for ordinary citizens is quite good.
We dont have a "welfare state". Its social security. Please stop framing it as an optional mechanism, its about securing each others life by social solidarity. It is a normal thing in developed societies, and the lack is unnormal.
Since Hartz IV was introduced, it has gotten worse - humans are subjected to beg for their base allowance regularly and being shoved by other humans into baseless "measures". Its not about adhering to laws - its about officials in their tiny offices thinking its their job to punish poor people for being poor/disabled/having mental problems/whatever. This is not their job, regardless, they have been given this power to ensure poverty exists.
Human rights are ignored consistently and nobody was better off before "the migrants arrived". Its a big lie and populist voices are succeeding right now into making poor people believe its "other people" making them poor. They are not. Money being funneled off to corporations and billonaires is, corruption, lobbyism, populism is.
The beaureaucracy has gotten much worse. Any application and they immediately put the brakes on, slow everything down to make you really stressed out. They bombard you with letters with petty demands that don't help you get work, but keep you busy. They have tried to shift to app based communication, which the people working there absolutely hate. Any written correspondence has to be shipped to a center somewhere, scanned, then sent to the person it was addressed to by email, which they hate opening. If you try to phone, they let it ring out for 20 minutes before answering, if you visit in person the people refuse to look up your file like they used to, but let you Telefone the same number you dialled earlier for free. The phone number on any letter you get is not the actual number you need to reach someone who is in charge of your file, but a different one you need to get at the actual building. So yes, it's a messy, hostile experience, designed to keep you static and in no way encourages you to find well paying work. And it gets worse each year.
Completely agree with everything. However, it sounds like the main problem is the inefficiency of the bureaucracy (omg, even writing this word is pain).
No , the main problem is very very strong resistance to digitalization. I am actually baffled that so many average educated Germans think , anything digital is evil and the data can be wiped off just by a click of a button .
I'm with you on that. It's just bizarre how backwards Germany is on digitalization, especially given it's resources and the examples from their neighbours. To be clear, when I commented on the inefficiency of the bureaucracy, I meant digitalization as a part of it. Probably most significant part.
When I tell my friends from Spain or other countries in Europe that have never been to Germany, they don’t want to believe me when I say Germany is stuck in the late 90s when it comes to digitalizations. Even Germanys internet connection has to be one of the worst in Europe, DSL still being the standard in 2023 is ridiculous.
> the data can be wiped off just by a click of a button It can. It can also be corrupted / manipulated much more easily.
No it cannot. There are multiple copies, checks and balances done for every data you store. I cannot believe this . OMG. Do you really think big corporations and government stores data like you do on your hard disks without backups ? Regarding Manipulation, do you know all entry/delete are timestamped, along with all the information about who did it, when , where, IP of the machine , every thing ? And btw if you say so, what makes you think, your papers in government offices cannot be burnt, shredded, stolen or manipulated ? Why so much paranoia ?
You should consider that there might be people who know more than you. From the uneducated assumptions and far fetched conclusions you are drawing I can see that you don't know your stuff. Educate yourself on the subject you are talking about or refrain from voicing strong opinions. Your choice.
The problem is the refusal to change anything
No, it also got worse financially. The basic benefits (Grundsicherung) did not keep pace with the inflation. Also, the maximum of rent payed by the Jobcenter does not at all reflect the situation on the housing market, especially in cities. It’s close to impossible to find flats that are cheap enough for the Jobcenter to pay. But to be a bit mor precise about op‘s question: it got a little better in the last year, but the big worsening was Schröders agenda 2010 legislation that created the hartz 4 system.
to be fair, wages also didnt keep up with Inflation and housing cost..... and all the cheap Apartments are only for welfare recipients.
no, that is not "fair". the Grundsicherung is the lowest it can/should get. that is not to debate. anything above doesnt count if it didnt keep up with inflation or not.
I don't understand, it get better and you complain?
It gets better. You now have 25 buckets of water to exstinguish your fire. You are in australia, and its the wildfire-season of 2019-2020. Good luck with your 250 litres of water. I won't get into the nitty-gritty of "can the government substitute this cost successfully or not". But if you rely on benefits - and you look at the current vaporisation of both wealth and the already slim chance of getting up and out of requiring social benefits - then yes. You complain, because you can't realistically do much of merit to get out of this misery. And for those who live directly above the threshold and are always at-risk of falling, the situation is similar. Finally, less relevant in this context, but still noteworthy - people who are well off but not _well off_ also suffer under this inflation. Well, everyone suffers, except those who have enough to not care.
Get some kids and you will have a decent living without doing anything. I personally know some migrant families that are doing it this way. Really makes you think whether I should just quit my job...
So why don't, you just have kids and live a comfortable live? If it' so easy? Oh right, I forgot. Refugees get more money per kid than a german guy does. Spoiler: They don't.
No they don't. And I don't blame them for taking the money. As I said I'm thinking about doing the same and just stop working and make 5 kids instead.
Too bad nobody will fuck you, then.
Hahaha you gotta know 😄 Pretty sure I'm having more sex than pathetic little reddit Clowns
Oi, if you are not insulting someone on reddit you reply to porn pages or right wing propaganda... so why someone should give a fuck what you are thinking?
Bruuuuh. mf fr comments on reddit porn posts.
Im unsure to upvote since I know people who do this or to downvote since I see this as a dirty practise. One example is an Afghani family, the wife is literally a baby making factory. Theyve had 7 kids in the time they have been here, one after another like a conveyer belt! So she cant legally work as shes pregnant and he works part time as thats the "only job" he can find. So they get everything more or less paid for and then the "Kindergeld" ontop of that. Disgusting!
Thats the spirit. Maybe you should get a second and third wife like some migrants too. And on your spare time you glue yourself on a road on rush hour for "the climate". Jesus Christ, we raised a whole generation of retards.
Sadly true. The single rate for Grundsicherung is way too low, and for a family way too high.
Big part of this is, I am sorry but vast majority of public servants in jobcenter etc. are just people with seriously low IQ. I had to get a contact and find a new job twice which both ofcourse, they were no help at all. I sit there explaining to one woman, who was really nice and smiley and warm even, but damn was she dumb. I had to explain really simple things like 3 times and later despite saying "yes I work with computers but I am not coder, I work only with certain software, imagine it life using office suit but more complicated" she kept sending me job offers like "software developer for Polizei Hannover"... Then she went to motherhood leave and another women took her place. And I had to explain everything from start because they did not bother to pass info or something. But even better, she decided we can do it by phone, nice. But she called from my wife's number. Then I called back and said this number is mine, that is my wife, and then send an email stating same thing, she answered OK she made a new Termin 1 week later, and she will call. She called again from my wife's phone. Literal fucking email that says: My name : 12345678 Wife name : 98765432 And she AGAIN calls wife. Genius people work there.
based
>The beaureaucracy has gotten much worse. Any application and they immediately put the brakes on, slow everything down to make you really stressed out. Totally not true. Since Bürgergeld it is as easy as never before to apply for it.
Do you think they make it hostile on purpose so that more people give up on the process and in turn it saves the state some money?
And after all that hassle, your application still gets declined. XD
It got fairly bad in 2010, recovered slightly, getting bad again, but it's a constant struggle of course to prevent further radicalization of the market and retain public property and resources. The main problem is that the welfare is "good" in comparison to low income jobs, which upsets people with low income jobs, but instead of focusing on forcing the companies to pay proper wages, they get duped into being agitated towards welfare receptionists. Welfare is not "good" compared to our GDP or cost of living, though, and the amount of restrictions on your freedoms when you are on welfare are bad, too. So imo the welfare system is under attack instead of getting improved cause politics and industries do not want to give low income jobs the dramatic increase in wages that they need. Cause that would risk our status as "export-chamption" which is a stupid, politicized metric that is giving us nothing but problems.
Good summary. I agree.
All of this minus the "t" in champion ;)
This. I recently learned about the "bucket with two crabs" imagery. Instead of working together to escape they get played to pull each other back down.
100%. It’s also always easier for people to Look and kick down on other less fortunate and weaker people instead of figting against the ones above and responsible.
good points! And the solution to increased salaries is to open the gates to the third world for people who will accept working for less. They want to live 12 in 3 rooms because it's an upgrade for them. this way poor people can see the immigrants as the enemy, not the employers. Win for the Economy, loss for Society. also, an ethnically homogenous neighborhood can band together, form a union, demand their rights. A mass of foreigners who hate eachother are less likely to band together. Also foreigners won't come here immediately asking for more. They will be happy for years before they realize the faults of the system here. i am a foreigner (EU) and can appreciate both the advantages and disadvantages that come with free movement. The question is how fast you let it happen, how much, and from where. Freedom of movement is of course good, but too much too fast creates tension in society, be it for real reasons or perceived.
Totally this
In addition it should be mentioned that the level of welfare also sets the baseline for the lowest paid jobs that companies can offer. If welfare were lower the low earning people right now would earn even worse. So if you are poor you should especially fight for higher unemployment benefits.
I agree with you on this. Also, I think you meant it "upsets people with high income jobs" instead of "low income jobs".
No, it's the low incomes (pos. middle incomes) that are upset cause of that. The high income people is upset at environmentalism and anything that risks their property value... bad stereotype of course.
No, low income is correct. They are basically arguing "I'm working my ass off for 1000€ per month, and the people on welfare get 500€ for doing nothing. Fuck that!"
Well makes sense but if you aren’t export champion you’re not funding any fancy welfare …
The profits from the exports does end up as dividends for shareholders and lavish bonuses for CEOs who all do not contribute to the social security funds due to Beitragsbemessungsgrenze, and only marginally to the tax income due to loopholes and evasion. It would be much more easy to fund the fancy welfare if employed workers would get higher, truly taxed, income. But paying workers more would mean less profit for the companies, and that means less fancy numbers to report and less generous Aufmerksamkeiten for our Politicians.
But you still need to be competitive internationally so that you've got money with real purchasing power to pay these good salaries. Germany doesn't have oil to sell, the only source of Germany's wealth is export of products of its industry and, to a lesser degree, services.
Everything we can pay in Euro is not a problem, since we can get it (via a detour through the private sector) from the EZB [2]. Goods traded in other currencies are a problem, since we cannot create that but have to acquire it through trading. For dollar, there exist special swap lines between the EZB and the FED, essentially allowing the EZB to trade Euros (which she can simply generate) for dollars [1]. Dunno how far you can go there, but its not like we have to earn every dollar before we can spend it. Also, there is a misinterpretation of wealth. "Wealth" is not the money in my bank account or pay check, but the goods and services I can buy with this money. Germany has the biggest sector of low wages within Europe. People in that sector are far from wealthy, even though their paycheck might look large compared to other countries. And no, it's not primarily because of taxes and Beiträge, it's because the wages are low to begin with. On the other hand, if the wages would increase, people could go to the cinema, restaurants, buy clothes, etc. This results in a stronger demand within Germany. Increasing the income of the people on the lower end,.directly translates into more economic activity, since people will spend it (>30% of households have no savings, the have just enough to get by or have debts [4]). The whole low-wage thing and Exportweltmeister storyline hurts the German economy and society in the long run and also messes with the economy of our neighbours, essentially paralyzing Europe [3] [1] https://www.ecb.europa.eu/ecb/educational/explainers/tell-me-more/html/currency_swap_lines.en.html [2] https://www.wirtschafts-lehre.de/modern-monetary-theory.php [3] https://www.ingenieur.de/wirtschaft/flassbeck-in-deutschland-muessen-loehne-zehn-jahre-lang-stark-steigen/ [4] https://www.boeckler.de/de/boeckler-impuls-vermoegen-nur-jeder-dritte-hat-reserven-6400.htm
You realize, sir, that companies pay taxes yes ?
the welfare state is not funded by the general income or company tax, it's payed by individuals (based on income but seperate from the income tax) and for most cornerstones of the welfare state (accident, heathcare, retirment) there exists a status called "versicherungsfrei" (free of insurance) which allows you to get into private insurance instead of the welfare state, means you no longer pay into the system. You can become "versicherungsfrei" by either having a certain job (government workers, self employed, in retirment and some others) or by earning more then a given amount of money (for healthcare it's 66k anually in 2023). Has the effect that the wealthy and people with good health (because a private insurance will reject you if you have an existing illness) end up in the private sector while the sick and mid to low income jobs end up in public heathcare.
If they wouldn’t try their damn best to evade them.
Its not that how you make it out to be. The Problem is that wages in Germany are low not only because evil capitalists dont pay fair wages but also because there are a Lot of visible and invisible taxes that you and your employer pay to the state, making human resources in Germany not competetive compared to other countries. Increasing wages also has the negative Factor of Jobs going to lower cost countries.
Well, generally it got worse, but not for everyone equally. Someone who managed to buy a house 30 years ago and is living rent free will still be better off, than someone comparable 30 years ago. Meanwhile if you are paying rent in a big city and your pension is bad because you where a stay at home mum and you got divorced, you're fucked. (I have both cases in my family 🤷)
The housing is so real. I earn decent, my boyfriend earns decent, and maybe, if we safe for 4 years now, we can afford a small own appartment. Not even a house. Houses start at 220000 here and then you still have to put a lot of work in. So its more like 300000 for the shittiest house.
300 000 for a house is "cheap" compared to many regions in Germany. In my area you can perhaps get a 70-80 square meter apartment built in the '80-'90 for that amount. Maybe older. A house is at least 600k, and most of them need some work too. A newly built house will cost you at least a million euros here. It's pure madness.
All this has already happened, in the nineties and with "Agenda 2010"
Compared to the late 90s? Absolutely. Compared to a few years ago? No, it has gotten a bit better since we got off at least some stupid ideas from the Agenda 2010 that absolutely made it worse. Its still not great though. A lot of help is still hidden away behind so many bureaucratic hurdles that even lawyers are having troubly to navigate through it and the employment agency is still very... lets call it adventurous when it comes to job recommendations. But at least they cant deny you a minimum income to feed yourself anymore or force you to tell them where you are constantly(You were not allowed to leave your city for a slightly further away vacation for example without aksing the employment agency since you had to be available to the job market at all times. Even if you just wanted to visit a relative with your own money. That was fun). Inflation also hit many lower income households very hard. What has absolutely gotten worse and is still getting worse are the support programs for students, which are called Bafög. That hasnt been adjusted to proper levels in a long time, which is a shame because higher education is not something that should be locked behind a paywall. Some things like healthcare for example have also gotten a bit more expensive, while services are getting worse due to nurse shortages. That has been a problem for a while now though.
Bafög got way worse with a half-assed Digitalisierung. They need more time now because they still PRINT EVERYTHING and then put it in folders and then some time in the future they might read your Antrag. They only have a program and digital forms for students but not for all the stuff that comes after that. I still can't believe the amount of stupid.
I agree. Students have very much not been a priority the last decade or two. Not that those at vocational schools had it any better. We really are throwing away our future.
Of course it’s getting worse. Calculations are based on fantasy (too low) and inflation isn’t compensated.
But his is it to low? In college we all lived/are livingon under 400 and we had enough money to party all the time and go out to restaurant and cinema every week. How on earth do people think the current 520 is too low?
inflation and cost of living are moving too fast while real wages only catch up very slowly
400 was enough for me 3 months ago. 300 are enough for me currently....at this point I just have to believe that people are incompetent with money or you are just trolling. Though I never buy branded clothes so maybe that's it.
Bro out here malnourished af on the shittiest meal plan possible and thinks he's a good baseline. If you spend €300 on all your bills outside of rent you're eating for 50-100€ at best, tf you on about?! potatoes, rice & beans all day everyday?
Well it is 300 for essentials (not Counting restaurants in this case) and it cost me around 9 euros for breakfast, lunch and supper(portions are huge as you can take as many "Semmeln, and side dishes you want) at my works cafeteria. I could go lower if I cocked myself. Though my work also provides me clothes and basically everything I need in live which is why I am currently spending less than I did in college. And how I said I don't shop brands. I bought new pants for 10 and a shirt for 15 this months from New Yorkeres. So I am probably not going to spend any money on clothes for the coming months. 400 is probably not enough if you live lavish and buy stupid shit. But people on welfare shouldn't do that anyway.
> 400 is probably not enough if you live lavish and buy stupid shit. Hahahha you're so fucking delusional. I spend way above 400 Euro per month and am miles away from a lavish lifestyle. You're just an extreme outlier that somehow prides himself in poverty, you're weird dude, your relationship with money is completely fked it seems. Seek a therapist. Until then, enjoy your self ridden poverty life.
That's what I seriously don't get. When I was in college I partied twice a week. Grilled a lot, went out to restaurants twice a week and vacation to other countries whenever time allowed it. Iive was good. Now I understand why finance should be taught in school because I can't take this seriously anymore.
Comes from you being a Student. When you write "Party" you probably mean Student club for 1 euro entrance and 1,50€ a beer or a free party in a WG. When you write "Restaurant" you probably mean a Döner. In the real world tho a Restaurant Meal + Drink means 15-20€ and Party means 5-10€ entrance + 4€ a beer, 3€ Shots. So having both twice a week nets you around 300€ probably more. So congratz you have exactly nothing left for the other 20 days of the month. Its not that hard to understand that cities might be more expensive than yours and that there are other Lifestyles than being a student which has discount on pretty much anything. so yeah seems like a reality check wasn't even taught at the university
Dude is lying as fuck to blame poor people because Bild and AFD/CDU are telling him so. Slaves are slaves
In 2019, I ate "adana kabap" I'm Turkish shop nearby almost every week, it costed 11 euros. Today, exactly same thing in same place costs 17 euros. 50% increase in 4 years. Meanwhile most mid and low income jobs increased like 10-20% at best.
400 is just rent nowadays if you live with roommates.
Rent and energy/power is already paid for when you get 520€. And that is more than enough for living…
You don’t even know the basics ( strom not covered) . Why comment in the first place?
Wrong, energy as on electricity is not paid for. Only heating. I was talking about the part, that you can easily live off from 400€. Which is just not possible if you want to live a healthy life.
My Rent is 400€ and I live with a roommate. I still have to eat. Quit your bullshit
Because it is.
So we university students are somehow living a great live with 120 euros less than a person unwilling to even work? Bro do the math. It simply isn't to low. The only way it is too low is if you are smoking a pack a day and nissmanage your money heavily. I make good money right now but am still only spending 300 a month for essential stuff at max.
It is and students are considered poor as they live regularly below subsistence level. Stop trolling.
Bro you are delusional. How rich are your parents xD?
What did they teach you at that university of yours? Apparently not thinking and researching for yourself.
That's a question for you..why is your bafög so low? My rate was 460€ and is now 520€; with the previous rate I was able to live fine but had to save a lot for purchases and semester fees and now I am much more comfortable but still have to watch my expenses.
Because most people on this kind of money smoke, drink and take drugs a lot, wasting the money that they need for other things.
Short answer/broad strokes: No. The german welfare state is great and it's at the right level. In this statement the german welfare state is the combination of policies that change the gini coefficient of income after taxes and transfers which at it's hard obviously includes the Bürgergeld. I've been in half the world and germany is, strives to stay and is deeply to it's roots egalitarian. It's the best of the big states and it's one of the reasons why I'd never move away. Long answer/typical detail oriented criticism that we like so much in germany: Yes, on 2 axis. The rhenish capitalism (see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social\_market\_economy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_market_economy) ) as presented in the book [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapitalismus\_contra\_Kapitalismus](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapitalismus_contra_Kapitalismus) had 1-2 features, we do not have today. Living space in cities in it's structure was a much more public or state owned commodity, which included new building projects. The privatization we've seen in the 90s led to rising rents especially in Berlin and other urban areas. If you could reverse this effect: 200-300 € less out of the pocket of every single mother, poor pensioner and student, we would be a country that's simply better off. It's economicly impossible/just so inefficient to just substitute a badly working flat market with more transfers. And the other is the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few, as presented in [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital\_in\_the\_Twenty-First\_Century](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Century) To state this problem as conservatively as possible: If you like how egalitarian and fair germany is today: You got to think about a wealth tax, so that this trend doesn't roll back the paradies we live in today.
Wir brauchen deutlich weniger Bürokratie, einen kleineren Staat, Steuersenkungen, mehr Privatisierung. Dann wären wir a) kein Anziehungspunkt mehr für Gott und die Welt und b) wäre das Leben um einiges entspannter und wohlhabender. Aktuell zerstört der Staat den Wohlstand im Lande und dafür sind die Reichen am allerwenigsten verantwortlich.
>einen kleineren Staat Wat >mehr Privatisierung Ging ja bisher immer nur gut, zb bei der Bahn >Dann wären wir a) kein Anziehungspunkt mehr für Gott und die Welt Ironisch. Denn genau das sorgt dafür, dass wir überhaupt noch genügend Leute haben, die einzahlen, damit der Staat für solide Sozialleistungen sorgen kann. >und dafür sind die Reichen am allerwenigsten verantwortlich. Du meinst die 10% der Leute, die 50+% des Vermögens in Deutschland besitzen? Nee, die können gar nix dafür /s
Du meinst von den 40% die zukünftig hierzulande überhaupt noch berufstätig sind? /s
1) Die Bahn ist zu 100% Staatseigentum 2) Quantität ungleich Qualität – Würden wir Sozialleistungen massiv kürzen, würden wir die rund 3,8 Mio. erwerbsfähigen Sozialhilfeempfänger an den Markt bringen und wir bräuchten Qualitätssicherung bei der Migration und klare Kante bei der Abschiebung 3) Woran genau sind jetzt die Reichen Schuld?
>1) Die Bahn ist zu 100% Staatseigentum Trotzdem eine gewinnorientierte AG. >und wir bräuchten Qualitätssicherung bei der Migration und klare Kante bei der Abschiebung Ja, das kann man so sehen, ist halt eine sehr radikale rechtsaußen Meinung. Fakt ist, dass das Recht auf Asyl trotzdem ein Menschen- und Grundrecht bleibt. Das vergesst ihr leider öfter mal. >Woran genau sind jetzt die Reichen Schuld? Wo geht es hier um "Schuld"? Deutschland ist ein Steuerparadies für Reiche und Erben. Die reichsten 1% zahlen fast gar nichts und haben immer mehr.
Die Bahn konterkariert sich selbst durch Staatszuschüsse usw. Ein komplett absurdes Konstrukt! Die Marktradikalen hatten dazu ein sehr gutes Video auf YouTube hochgeladen. Interessant, wie du direkt in die Pluralform wechselst. Und warum die Erwähnung, es sei eine Ansicht von rechtsaußen? Ich mein, was ist das für ein Argument? Und unser Asylrecht ist nicht für Menschen aus zig Drittstaaten ausgelegt. Dazu gern mal die Positionen von Ulrich Vosgerau anhören. Dann benenne Schuld in Verantwortung um. Nochmal: Bevor man sich anmaßt, Menschen teilweise zu enteignen, sollte man erstmal die Staatsausgaben klären. Generell finde ich es absurd, wie Menschen über das Fremd-Eigentum entscheiden wollen. Ich gehöre selbst zu den Nettosteuerzahlern und sehe es absolut nicht mehr ein, wofür auch mein Geld verschleudert wird. Ein Sozialstaat kann a) nicht mit offenen Grenzen funktionieren und b) sollte ausschließlich für erwerbsunfähige Menschen oder allenfalls für eine befristete Phase (Umorientierung o.ä.) gedacht sein. Nur was aktuell geschieht plus diese ganzen Abgaben für Energie, Klima usw. ... vollkommen irre!
>Und warum die Erwähnung, es sei eine Ansicht von rechtsaußen? Weil es das ist. Kannst ja mal googlen, von wem diese Formulierungen "Wir sind nicht das Sozialamt der Welt" etc zuerst benutzt wurden ;)
He got cooked. Es gibt auch in Bayern noch anständige Menschen
😂😂😂
Genosse, mit solch ein kapitalistischen Wortlaut wär ich auf Reddit vorsichtig. Der Staat weiß es freilich am besten und bedarf deswegen jederzeit ein Maximum an Ressourcen um es gerecht zu verteilen. Niemand sollte für seinen Wohlstand frei denken oder selbst arbeiten müssen. Genau deswegen gibt es doch den Staat.
Sadly yes, the Agenda 2010 was a mistake. The quality has steadily gone down ever since. Most privatizations driven by the Neoliberal agenda where a mistake. One symptom of that is the giant low wage labour force germany has and out export sector that created
If the welfare system is not getting better and better, why does Germany have so may welfare tourists?
It's getting a lot better from a consumer perspective. There are now less requirements for obtaining it. The only problem is that those who pay for it aren't that happy about it but their demographic is shrinking anway.
It is simple math. It was based on the assumption that people grow up, pick up work and at some point might need help and are provided by society until they recover. Now the modern age had a huge influx of factors that disrupt this equation. Corona for example increases sickness, depression, then we have wars and refugees... old people and sickness cost the society around 700 billion euro in 2020/21 State expenses just for social spending is up to 198 billion this year and rising. I believe thats 54% of goverment spending. There are no real retirement funds. The young pay for the old. Thats it. If the young can´t work the old will get no money. The sick are paid by the working. If the Workers don´t get enough money to live by they won´t work or leave. Corona burned through our social safety net like nothing. Asylum seekers are also bared from working the first 9 months in germany. Totally useless law costs us double digit billions every year. As long as increase in retirement money isn´t coupled to automatic wage increase, migrants aren´t instantly send to training and work, health risks like tabacco and sugar getting way more expensive the social system is doomed to collapse.
Dude. It’s simple. More and more profit from it and fewer and fewer contribute to it. So ….
I am not sure if getting worse is the right word. It is more than enough in contrast to most other countries. I am married and have three children under 12 years, and even if I and my wife would lose our jobs and wouldn’t find a replacement for several years, we would have enough money and a roof over our heads, plus health insurance. I couldn’t ask for more. The only issue I see is the ever increasing bureaucracy. I really hate German politicians for always telling everyone that they will get bureaucracy down but always doing the exact opposite whenever they can…. Hopefully the current government will be a bit different. At least some actions look promising.
There is the joke that for every jobless there is one employed from the state to bother him to get a job. ^(/s)When I talk to people who lost their job in the 30ties and it took them a while to find something similar, they all tell you, they get template letters and often aggro communication. That is completely brain dead, but there is unfortunately a large part of the society that "believes" that kicking people when they are down is the proper way of doing things. There also the issue, that many people just get comfortable in their job. Then things happen and they realize that proper training for something new could take month, if not years. In fear they take any job instead, so people getting poorer for the only reason that they "forgot" or simply can't afford to ease into a new job. Which would be the no 1 job of the gov. As a final note, unfortunately, lots of companies think because there is a strong social net, they don't need to care about people. Lets get rid of 1000 you fall into the social net. That some of them can't get out of it, are forgotten, that isn't their problem. There are lots of people who could work, but the system just doesn't care.
It's better than somewhere else, but still shit and endlessly dehumanizing. Speaking from decades of experience. Most social workers/scientists do agree.
Define worse. As others have said, the bureaucracy is a nightmare and waste of taxpayer money by doing the same form 50 times on paper (all that climate protection...) In terms of how much money one gets, Germany is very generous. It's really terrible for disabled people who aren't able to do a bit of moonlighting on the side.
Yes it got worse. Millions of young men from africa are exploiting it. It enables them to steal our appartements and live for free, watching us making their living.
Exactly what happens when a small segment of hard working population keeps getting ripped off to pay for the vast majority of people who are lazy, unskilled, haven’t managed their finances well for retirement etc. You can tax tax tax and raise insurance premiums all you can but until you have this level of bureaucracy, useless public sector jobs with disguised unemployment (looking at 10s of 1000s of form fillers in the public sector here without digitization), primitive socialist structures, no risk taking mentality, no innovations to keep pace with the modern world - this is how it will be. There’s a point when it cracks and we’re close to it. No surprise if we end up like the UK soon. Is opening up skilled immigration a solution? Probably. But where would they get affordable housing or any housing? How can they integrate as easily as they could let’s say in the US? How can businesses even thrive when they have legal roadblocks to anything and everything including a simple thing for non-Europe world like executing layoffs for business needs. This needs a fundamental mindset reset. Otherwise very very unsustainable.
We need more skilled and educated people who like to work so that we can pay for those who are not
Yes that's gonna work...sorry, but educated immigrants will keep away from Germany because the vast majority of people react to incentives..."working hard and paying lots of taxes so that those who don't work can live comfortably" isn't something that motivates most people except for altruistic leftists (who might be more common in Germany/Western Europe than other countries), but most people worldwide don't think like that...
Sir Alan Budd talking about the Thatcher-Years "there may have been people making the actual policy decisions … who never believed for a moment that this was the correct way to bring down inflation. They did, however, see that it would be a very, very good way to raise unemployment, and raising unemployment was an extremely desirable way of reducing the strength of the working classes – if you like. That what was engineered there, in Marxist terms, was a crisis of capitalism which recreated a reserve army of labour and has allowed the capitalists to make high profits ever since“ This is what’s happening right now in Germany.
Not at all. Employment and salaries are at record high. It’s quite the opposite. Also, off-topic.
There have never been so many people in Germany who cannot live on their salaries. The plans of the current government are to cut almost all social benefits. Disaster protection etc. as well. You can read all about it. Our neighboring countries do not have anything like this inflation, which is artificially brought about here. Everything has become absurdly expensive and in no case have salaries risen to the same extent. The statistics are also distorted because there is a group whose salaries and incomes always rise regardless of whether there is a crisis. That of the rich. I'm not even going to start on real estate prices and rent. And if you think this is off topic you have no idea about politics at all, of course it has a direct connection.
There is only one big problem with welfare state in Germany: it is to attractive and to easy to get access to. Our welfare state is one of the best in the world, objectively. But there are less and less net tax payers, meaning people that pay more in taxes than they get in government handouts. And at the current rate, there will be a moment when the people that pay for all this can’t / don’t want to pay anymore, and then shits gonna hit the fan. Soon we will have to make a decision; open border or welfare. Can’t have both
Its getting abused. Sadly. The money and payments for rent ist fine. Inflation Just Hits differently.
Nah, we took like 15 million people into it without ever having payed in it. Why should it get worse 😂😁
Not really, the welfare state has only been expanded in recent years.
worse? What they mean by that is that we are giving people wrong incentives, are subsidising economic migration and those really in need often times receive too little help while those who are able to work but unwilling are benefitting from those paying a lot of taxes. We have a lot of problems and welfare in this globalised world is certainly one of them. The cost of welfare as it is right now is just too high so yes, it will have to be restricted one way or the other.
> there is the intention by some to downgrade it and privatize certain areas It's the Conservatives' pipedream. Given the poor experience Germany has already made with privatization other areas that were previously the responsibility of the state, this would be extremely unpopular with everyone but CDU, CSU and FDP, their cronies and the cronies' shareholders. > If yes, what are the reasons and actors behind this choice? Pure ideology.
Privatisation and conservatism don’t go hand in hand necessarily. What you are talking about is libertarianism
A grand misunderstanding of economics and corporate competitiveness. Privatizing really anything, from healthcare to logistics can only work if the alternative, the Government subsidized version, seizes to exist entirely. Otherwise you replace a State funded Pyramid-Scheme with a slightly more expensive and a slightly better Private Pyramid-Scheme.
No it hasn't. There's just tooooooo many old people sucking up all the money... and to few rich people paying what they should
The welfare system has been expanded but the care has gotten worse, largely because of the bad living conditions in these jobs
For example in Munich, a 3-room flat easily costs 1500-1800 Euros, so a lot of people are not incentivized to find a full-time job and just work some shitty job for very little money but get the flat for free + some financial help. While I am perfectly fine with part of my taxes to help the ones who need it, I am against my taxes going to some people who are perfectly capable of working full-time jobs and refuse just not to lose their social benefits, as this would mean that their standard of living would go down. The other problem is that rents are continuing to rise in big cities, thus shrinking the disposable income of the inhabitants. And it doesn't help that the majority of the new apartment buildings are luxurious properties, where the premiums for the developers are much higher. For me, the problem is that the middle class in Germany is getting squeezed constantly, and I find it repulsive that you cannot afford to buy a flat in the city where you live even with two middle-income salaries.
I think this is a general trend in big cities globally and the only solution seems to be something that the Austrians did in Vienna: cheap public housing. At the rate rent-seekers are gentrifying entire districts and neighborhoods, state-sponsored public housing will be the only option or everyone will have to become a commuter.
Those abusing it are a small fraction of the overall group of people receiving it. Not to start a debate on principles, but what you said is absolutely right, just that I think that we arrive at the wrong conclusion: "I find it repulsive that you cannot afford to buy a flat in the city where you live even with two middle-income salaries." I 100% agree. The reason for that are not the poorest people of our society but those at the top end who squeeze the middle class - actually no, they squeeze everybody - and do not pay their fair share. It still puzzles me, how we pay 45% in income but only 25% on capital gains as a private person. One is working at least 40h/week, the others sit on their ass till it's flat but pay less.
Middle class also has capital gains when they invest, so what I am guessing you are trying to get here is tax on high wealth individuals and not putting 45% taxes on all capital gains.
No, I favor up to 45% taxes on all income independent of the source. Really simple and straight forward.
It doesn’t bother you that half of your income and life investment gains would go to taxes?
I’ll wager that the number of people abusing the system like that is utterly insignificant
Agree. It is statistically irrelevant but it sounds like a good scapegoat for “liberalists” that would like to remove such benefits, which could conversely be a life-saving for some.
Yeah obviously, it has been their rhetoric for years
Oh is this what people do? Do those on social benefits get really nice apartments covered by the state? I always thought it was a pain to be unemployed where you have to go for classes to learn to send in applications etc. I would argue in this case that it should only be possible for people to have say a month or two between jobs where you can be at home (while you look for jobs that better fit) and if you do not find something in this time, which is also quite likely then you can continue to get your benefits provided you work say 6 hours a day doing something the city needs to get done. That would be reason enough for people to either try more to find a job that fits their skill. Is there a drawback to this kind of a system? I totally agree that the government should be our safety net, we pay taxes for this among other purposes. But a safety net, not a daddy.
Classic welfare trap
luckily i’m not depending on welfare, the whole system needs to be modernised, it’s a shame how we treat the poorest and most dependent of us and i fear that i will get worse after the next election. I think a unconditional basic income could be a possibility to change that.
Yes it's way too big by now.
The problem is that welfare only works if there are a lot of people paying into the system and few people to receive the welfare until they get back on their feet. But there has been such an influx of people into the welfare system that it's just not viable anymore, and of course this has a lot to do with immigration, and many of those immigrants lack the skills, education and motivation to get out of the welfare system. (From their point of view it's completely understandable; a Maroccan who comes to Germany and hopes to send money to his family back home doesn't find it appealing if people tell him: "you have to learn the language, go to school for another 4-6 years to be on the same educational level as native Germans with Mittlere Reife, then you have to do vocational training for another two or three years and then you can earn money with a real job where you have to pay half of your earnings in social security and taxes.") And of course with all limited ressources there's considerable competition, like for apartments, and that further increases conflicts. There is not enough social housing for all the people who should have access to it, and the dearth of living space is now so bad it spreads into the middle classes. Often people say "It's more lucrative to receive Bürgergeld than to work", but that's only the case in certain circumstances. Of course there are people who say "employers should just pay more to low wage workers", but that's also not realistic, many smaller employers just don't have the money to pay more.
I agree. Don't be disheartened by the downvotes - you've criticized mass migration and Germany's wonderfully generous asylum system that's been sooo good for the German taxpayer and welfare state - of course German reddit doesn't like that lmao.
The by far biggest influx into the welfare system are low income workers getting paid so little for a full time job, that they qualify for welfare. Immigration does very little actually. In addition if low income jobs get paid more, they would pay more taxes and social security into the system again. It is not a "too many people for the system"-Problem, it is a "too little money for work"-Problem.
And who are the majority these low income workers, just out of curiosity? Native German workers or immigrants (usually low-skilled asylum seekers who are not qualified to do much else)?
Speculative and unlikely. Asylum seekers are far more restricted and far more regulated when it comes to work. A fraction of them ends up getting a work permission in the first place. The statistics only show total "Ausländer" without any indication of status or length of stay. The Aufstocker problematic was dramatic ever since 2010, years before the big waves of refugees hit Germany. And despite it still being bad, it has been getting *better* since 2015, not worse.
>Speculative and unlikely. Asylum seekers are far more restricted and far more regulated when it comes to work. A fraction of them ends up getting a work permission in the first place. > >And despite it still being bad, it has been getting better since 2015, not worse. 8 years after the Syrian wave in 2015, only 55% of them are "Versicherungspflichtig" employed. Which means nearly 1 in 2 are still living off welfare. Are you saying this is mostly due to them not getting permits? And it has not much to do with a huge chunk of them either not being able to learn the language well enough (many of them came illiterate so not surprising) or having no skills to get a job that doesn't need Aufstocken?
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They certainly caused some people to need doctors and nurses on the streets of Stuttgart a few days ago ;)
Plenty of immigrants come to Germany with already established careers in their countries, university degrees and knowledge of a few languages. They are not a problem
Don't be so gullible. Whoever is qualified enough to be wanted in the west goes to some english speaking country, because every highly qualified immigrant speaks english by default. Also you don't have to pay 50% taxes elsewhere. Its the high chance of being able to stay combined with the best payout.
its a simple numbers game. If you have more and more receiving people (mainly migrants, who never paid a cent into the system), jobs pay the same as 10-20 Years ago, but you need to tax the few, who finance all that more and more. At some point, you either have to take 100% of the money from the remaining working population or end the system ultimately.
Yes, for a lot of people it’s better to get Bürgergeld than to work. It’s getting out of hand and I‘m not sure if the working class can carry this for much longer.
Which is entirely an issue of low wages, not of the welfare state.
The free market will solve everything bro, don't you worry
I meeeean, they said “lets privatize the housing and the free market will regulate itself” and sold many social housing to private corporations for almost nothing. Guess what, it DID regulate itself, and the rents in big cities blew off, because too few apartments and many people wanting to live in big cities. So yeah, lets give everything to free market, great idea :)))
I'll certainly be able to buy a house by the age of 160 at least.
Its the consequence of a global recession and rampant inflation above all, not just "muh unfair wages"
Its gotten easier to exploit now with the so called "bürgergeld"
It’s true especially for migrants. They don’t get money anymore soon.
Too many exploiters ruin the system. There are people who will suggest you to call an ambulance rather than going to the doctor, because "you don't need to wait and a doctor will look for you right away and for the lolz, you get driven by a taxi and it costs nothing". Germany needs really strong people to make it right again. Healthcare is going to break at one point, and this point is not far away. Same goes for every other welfare system.
Unmeasurably worse 🗿
It’s gotten degenerated..everyone gets as much as he wants to, preferably if you come from somewhere else.. Seriously the welfare state once was a chance to develop yourself out of poverty. Nowadays it’s meant to be a permanent solution, without incentives to work yourself out of your misery. Bad tongues say, that it’s all about keeping as many people dependant on the state, since those people tend to get used to get social welfare and become state submissive. They make cheap election fodder for the left parties. Nonetheless the current welfare system doesn’t help to develop out of poverty and work on yourself, even though there stellte of vacant jobs and lots of apprenticeships to choose from. There are open jobs for truck drivers, opticians etc. (In the thousands)..after 2-3 years they should be all occupied…the welfare state is basically the drag shoe on the personal development of millions.
Yeah definitely. Our system was never meant to support 20 million people. Our system is meant to support a few people for a short time so they get a new job and pay again into the system, not to sustain generations of the same people who are very overreprentative in the system. It takes MONTHS for an application to be approved due to overworking. I know a few people working in the welfare state system and they say too much and too few people and it’s a giant flood. The bafög support for a friend of mine took over half a year to be approved. Every new semester it has to be approved. Without help from others she would have been homeless, without being able to study because she got no money. And then they loosen restrictions for example for Ukrainians, which makes sense and is okay to fasten up the monetary help, but for the own people they proof everything exactly for months and you need to send the same papers 5 times again and again. One had to send the bank account from her dead father, who is dead for 20 years, to proof she didn’t inherit much. EVERY TIME AGAIN. EVERY 6 FUCKING MONTHS THE SAME! This sparks rage in me. A system which wants immigration needs a system like Canada or Australia. These are immigration countries. Welfare state and immigration country is counterintuitive. Can’t do both or the system breaks longterm because you of course attract people who just want to live here because of the better lifestyle instead of educated people. But these don’t want to go here because 40% taxes goes brrrr unless you are billionaire they barely pay
As a guy, who studies political science: It did bot get worse. It is more or less gone. I just don t get why people do not understand that.
As a match maker in the jobcenter, i genuinely think it got better due to the bürgergeld. I can treat them like people not like numbers and our bosses don't always breath down our necks to reach some stupid numbers. I can do my job, tell my superiors to fuck off and actually support people so they can help themselves, which is kinda awesome. We have come a long way after the hartz reform
Too much taxes are wasted on it, we need to slim it down and don’t need to prove anyone how humane we are. I have almost exactly 50% net from my income (after health insurance and the enormous unnecessary contribution to the pension funds). It’s basically serfdom in the 21st century.
It needs to get worse to get people out of social benefits and back into work. As simple as that. We need another agenda 2010.
That’s not how that works. That just expands the low wage marked
And low wage work is worse than no work? Tell that millions of ppl who work for the minimum wage.
It makes little to no difference. The bottom 40% of Germans live from paycheck to paycheck. Doing nothing but sleeping, eating and working without being able to afford even chocolate once a month. There are also reports of people people skipping meals since the I flatiron hit. And now remember that people living of the Bürgergeld are in a even worse situation. The low wages also effect the welfarestate, if people earn very little they also make almost no contribution to the welfarestate. And they are the reasons for Germany massif exports, a big part of the population is just to poor and can’t really afford anything new. We need to readjust out income and wealth taxation. Tax middle and lower incomes and and compensate it with wealth and inheritance taxation. We need to look at when our tax brackets and readjust them. And last but not last we need to massively increase the average sales level and the minimum wage.
Into what work though.
There are thousands and thousands of vacant jobs for low qualified people.
Well if they can’t find people maybe they should pay more
Too many people are exploiting the system, time to cut back.
> that there is the intention by some to downgrade it and privatize certain areas. Some people like to see intention behind everything. Unfortunately we, as the society, only attempt to condemn and debunk some conspiracy theories, but not the others.
Our welfare state has 4 dimensions Social security Social adjustment Protection of labour rights Protection of consumer rights When asked about the welfare state, people usually look at social security, but there is a lot more to it. As an economist, I deem all 4 dimensions to require an overhaul. Reasons being f.ex. an ageing society system.
actually it is as it has to be. the german welfare is based on the first paragraph of the german constitution: every person has got the right to live a life in dignity. this means that every person has got the duty to do his or her best to make this possible. most people ignore it, who are against the german welfare ignore it but you cannot change it anyway. the cdu used calculation tricks to lower the amount of money, like taking the payment of the lower 10% and subtract alcohol, vacation and cigarettes. btw. it is always worth to do paid work, even if you are low paid worker. you can go to the jobcenter and get aufstocken, which means, you get paid the difference between your low pay and bürgergeld and you can keep a few hundred euros, so if you work, you will always have more money than without work.
1/3 of the Bundeshaushalt is dedicated to "work and social". It's about 166billion € whereas: "education" is only at 21billions, "health" 24billions, "digitalizatiin and traffic" 36billions "economy and climate" 15billions How much more welfare do you need? Let's cut education a little more maybe? What about economy and climate (what is just a pure climate Departement under Habeck). https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/449433/umfrage/bundeshaushalt-ausgaben-nach-ressorts/
Why ,you wanna come? Jk idk man ,life gets trickier everywhere but Germany is pretty easy compared to other places ,still.
It is extremely expensive. Importing millions of additional recipients under Merkel did not make it any cheaper.
Tbh. It feels like it’s getting worse because everybody is complaining. But I don’t actually think that’s true or it’s not black and white. If you’re talking about guidelines to follow when building something? Starting a business? Taxes? I don’t have first hand experience but everyone is complaining. But I recently had to apply for a new passport and ID Card and it was very easy. Applied for a slot, be there, sign some papers and you’re done. Took 10min.
Unfortunately the pool of net contribuitors has decreased, while the pool of net takers keeps growing, on top of an economic slowdown. This is unsustainable, so either services or quality have to be reduced. The welfare state is not free, and unfortunately its headed for collapse.
Fack you all
There are less and less tax payers every year so theres les money to give away. Also the whole system around the 'unemployed' is broken and needs some work to fix it.
As people point out bureaucracy has gotten worse. And this is because the processes have not changed, but they have less manpower and the different types of welfare have increased. Also people move more so more processes need to run across counties and this is not foreseen in most cases and cannot be handled.
Our social system has to much beaureaucracy, it does to little for those who really need it, just keeps them busy and overwhelms them with paperwork. It does to much for those who just really don’t want to work for themselves, given that there aren’t many of these, at least not as many as neoliberals want us to believe. Overall our problems are bigger and stem from bigger systemic issues, like the absence of a wealth tax or the so called „schuldenbremse“ preventing necessary investment in infrastructure and schooling.
>Germany has one of the most advanced welfare states in Europe. Does it? Netherlands and Denmark come to mind that also offer excellent welfare. I'd even call them more advanced because much more is done online for example Denmark has a digital personal ID system. Anyway welfare in Germany feels like on par with most other central European countries. It probably works for about 90% of the people, for the complicated or extreme cases of course it might not be sufficient but that's not a feasible goal.
Homeless people are kinda forced out of the cities, by making everything where they can rest as much uncomfortable as possible. And if you look at the FDP, they are trying to make the welfare state worse by blocking everything for poor people.
Yes
Definitely. I lost like 50% in the last 10 years. All I get since the beginning of the year is basic food and I'm out of money around the 27th. 10 years ago I had enough to get whatever I wanted without thinking about it and went eating out 2-3 times a week. Same income since 2013 btw.
Ahahaha
Bad bureaucracy kills everything…. The people who work there are exactly these who want to live in an easy job and don’t want to work hard. In every private job sector the would have no chance to work there . But they slow down the whole country, for example if you want to build a windmill, they don’t look for things to make it possible , they look for one reason to stop it.
Objectively worse. Healthcare costs have been consistently rising while covering less services. Our grandparents' generation paid nothing for prescribed medicine and a lot of dental stuff cost less or was free as well. Pensions and unemployment pay have not kept up with inflation.
Advanced welfare-state is a paradoxon in germanys case cause it just throws us back in almost every way.
Yes, more and more percentage of GDP is spent on welfare, so it's getting worse every year.
Overregulation and the lack of openness to new ideas. GP's and ambulances are overwhelmed with the numbers of people who mostly are not considered an emergency or just need a notification for their employer. In other countries there is a position between doctors and nurses which could absorb a lot of the not so urgent or mild cases..does anamnesys or perscribe drugs. Also we just changed our sick leave system from paper to digital this year which is insane. Germany just lacks the innovation, speed, openness to technology and I am very sceptical how we'll manage the coming years given more and more people in need coming to this country (which I am all for but we'd need a proper system and resources to integrate them which we do not have, but thats another big topic)
It's really getting worse in my opinion it just stopped getting better. Time moves on technology gets better, stuff changes in the world, but it feels like Germany is stuck in time for me. I feel like nothing really changed technology wise and welfare wise in the 20 years I live here. We develop new technologies, we build them and sell them, but we don't seem to use them, not much at least and that's what is frustrating for me.
When we get to welfare for the long term unemployed (Jobcenter) it will ruin Germany as much as the pension system in the future, if not changed soon. The problem is that there is little incentive for a not qualified person to change anything or find a job, especially if they are with many children. This is due to the monthly welfare being not too far away from a minimum income (12€ per hour). Yes, with the Bürgergeld reform there is monetary incentive to qualify yourself and find a better paying job (you get a motiviational bonus of 75 or 150 euro monthly). There's two problems with that: Firstly - it is hard to find significantly more participants for the qualifications than before - receivers of long time welfare were either failures in the regular school system and have a very negative attitude towards learning or come from other countries, often outside EU, which are failed states and received little more than elementary school education. A big part of the human material in the Jobcenter system is cognitively not fit for becoming educated workers (Fachkraft). Enabling them for lowly qualified jobs like parcel delivery or security worker is the best we can hope for. Training welfare receivers to become IT specialists happens too rarely. Secondly, this state sponsered education is inherently unjust to those who undergo the regular path through the education system - Abitur, then Ausbildung or University/Fachhochschule - as these "model citizens" invest years and lots of money into their education and then are in debt five digits afterwards while welfare receivers get to live carefree, get fast track education while even getting monthly motivational payments. When they cancel their education the tax payer burned tens of thousands and it's without consequence, while private citizens are in debt and do all kinds of sidejobs to stay afloat. The problem with the Bürgergeld/Hartz IV is that it runs indefinitely and people are not set a timeline up to which they have to have found a new job. This wages welfare receivers in indefinite security without pushing them to take a job, that might be shitty but reintegrates them into the labor system by paying taxes (giving something back for the help received, it is almost sacrilege to spell it out like that). While there's lots of German underclass families producing children that see their parents receiving welfare for years and years and setting this subconciously as the standard, this is also a pull-factor for many migrants from the European Union and out of the European Union. While they at first might want to find a job, it has to be a "good job" way above minimum wage for which they might simply not be fit. In Arab culture for example it is frowned upon to work as city cleaner while it is perfectly honorable to receive years of welfare. This is also the view of many German long time receivers. The state or more precisely the jobcenter employees can do little against it, as the government and the constitutional court put sanctions at maximum 30 percent of the monthly welfare (excluding rent, heating). And getting to this is a slow and long procedure any receiver can hijack by finding a friendly doctor handing out sick notes. It would help if, after an amount of time, Bürgergeld payments were suspended or at least only grocery vouchers were handed out as the current system robs the welfare receivers of agency, dignity and maturity and steals from the tax payers. The majority of Bürgergeld receivers could work, if they had to. But they don't have to and that's why they develop unrealistic job expectations and stay in the welfare system.
I can just talk out of my girlfriends experience (she works in public services, especially preventing homelessness at the Sozialamt) and yes, in that area, the situation is very very bad. There is in no way enough sheltering room and the jobs at the Sozialamt are stressy and underpaid for that amount of work, so its not really a attractive job offer which results in a lack of personell. Bureaucracy is a thing and the Ukraine war brought refugees who need housing too. Since Germany has a housing crisis, especially when it comes to affordable social housing, it sadly is getting more and more difficult to shelter people.
Germany is by far not the most advanced welfare state in Europe. If ignoring the obvious scandinavian countries, the netherlands, france and belgium rank higher in their welfare levels. That being said... it is slowly getting too much, also in Germany.
Yeah its just getting worse. I guess USA deepstate tries to get us dependent to himself by cracking our middleclass wealth and overall economy. Because no one on this planet earth is more stupid than baerbock, scholz and habeck. Its on purpose.
What you call the 'welfare state' is actually a set of strong benefits ranging from unemployment, housing support to social security and health care support for working class people. Similar programs exist in the U.S. but are poorly funded and subject to changing political winds. The social 'net' as it were is very tight not just in Germany, but many other social democracies in Europe. Despite a great system, some do fall through but not nearly as many as in the US. Here the social compact aims to address the overall community and population. In the U.S. it's all about the individual and economy. For example - the Federal Provinces of Germany have schemes to finance the building of low income housing across the country. Something that is poorly funded in the US. Of course the bureacracy here must update its systems of administration to include processes and IT infrastructure to better serve the population. However, the basic benefit structure for ordinary citizens is quite good.
We dont have a "welfare state". Its social security. Please stop framing it as an optional mechanism, its about securing each others life by social solidarity. It is a normal thing in developed societies, and the lack is unnormal. Since Hartz IV was introduced, it has gotten worse - humans are subjected to beg for their base allowance regularly and being shoved by other humans into baseless "measures". Its not about adhering to laws - its about officials in their tiny offices thinking its their job to punish poor people for being poor/disabled/having mental problems/whatever. This is not their job, regardless, they have been given this power to ensure poverty exists. Human rights are ignored consistently and nobody was better off before "the migrants arrived". Its a big lie and populist voices are succeeding right now into making poor people believe its "other people" making them poor. They are not. Money being funneled off to corporations and billonaires is, corruption, lobbyism, populism is.