Pay, pay, but it’s all broken: we should go on a tax strike

The director general of the equality welfare association, Ulrich Schneider, sees Germany on the road to the almsgiving state. Exploding energy prices, rising cost of living, rising burdens – society is on the verge of collapse, says Schneider.

He has the numbers ready. 13.8 million people are already at risk of poverty. Due to the current crisis, another 12 million households would be added.

This is a total of 38 million people below the poverty line. Germany – the new Cuba. If I were the president of a charitable organization, I too would raise the alarm.

Where has all the money that the German state takes from its citizens gone?

I don’t want to contradict at all. I have only one question: where is all the money that the German state takes from its citizens? Tax revenues will amount to more than €880 billion in 2022, more than originally forecast. This is more or less what the bottom 90 of the world’s 192 countries generate together.

where did the money go?

On the train? I’ve lost count of reports of travelers who trusted the railroad’s promises to get them from A to B and ended up stranded somewhere because their train broke down en route. By now it is news when, contrary to expectations, you arrive on time at your destination. A big hello then on social media: “Imagine what happened to me! I arrived without delay!

Now I suspect that the traffic reversal doesn’t mean a switch from cars to trains, but a switch to horse-drawn carriages: “Volker, hook up the car, watch the wind make it rain all over the land.”

Is the money in the schools? It can also be excluded. So many teachers are missing that in some places only a kind of emergency operation is maintained. In the case of school buildings, you can get lucky if the parents’ association doesn’t approach you and ask if you don’t want to help out on the weekend because it’s raining off the roof or something urgently needs painting.

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We are not at the top only in terms of the degradation of public infrastructures

Did our fees go to hospitals? The question answers itself in a country where even small children have to lie in the hallway during a flu outbreak.

Is the money on defense? The connoisseur laughs. We are taking the lead in NATO’s Rapid Reaction Force this month. During a practice maneuver, all 18 Pumas failed. And the Puma is not just any tank. It is the most expensive infantry fighting vehicle in the world. As the Bundeswehr army inspector said: You have to have a very good day if you want national defense to work.

So where did the money go? Apparently, it didn’t even serve to alleviate poverty, if the man at the Parity Welfare Association is to be believed. Almost half of the population needs it, and this in a country whose tax rate after Belgium is higher than anywhere else in Europe. Not only are we at the forefront of deteriorating public infrastructure, but we are also among the record holders when it comes to getting into citizens’ pockets.

It’s a puzzle. Which of course doesn’t stop any politician from demanding more power and influence and therefore an even greater share of the income of those he governs. It is precisely in these difficult times that it depends on the state, it is said as a possible justification, and the state, i.e. politics, should not be underfinanced.

After all, anyone who pays their debts to the mafia gets the protection they were promised

Basically, the typical German social politician speaks like Donald Trump. Precisely because he shows himself incapable of managing the money entrusted to him well, credit must be granted. Your own uncertainty as proof of particular reliability – you can only get away with it in German real estate and high politics. Any decent mobster would be ashamed to do this. After all, anyone who pays their debts to the mafia gets the protection they were promised.

The connection between the tax rate and a community’s ability to function is overstated, particularly by the people who tell us everything would collapse without their redistributive ambition.

In Switzerland, the top tax rate for federal tax is 11.5%. In an example calculation I found for the municipality of Bottighofen in the canton of Thurgau, a father with an income of 100,000 francs pays 13,900 in taxes, including all cantonal and municipal taxes. That’s about half of what he would have to pay in Germany.

Do you have the impression that everything is falling apart in Switzerland? Not me. The trains arrive on time. The roads are in excellent condition, as are the bridges. There is reliable WiFi, even in places where you shouldn’t expect it. The police and the judiciary are doing their job smoothly. Hospitals work despite the flu epidemic.

It is not so easy to navigate in the thicket of inflows and outflows

Years ago I took the trouble to explore the subsidiary paths of the German welfare state. It is not so easy to navigate in the thicket of inflows and outflows. You should not. Then you can console yourself with the hope that in the end you will be among the winners and not among the losers.

What started out as an event to protect against life-threatening risks such as illness, injury and unemployment has turned into a pass-on scheme and nobody is able to provide information on the distribution effect.

Meanwhile, all those who can even be suspected of suffering from an officially treatable disease are placed on a drip by the social administration: married couples, childless or many children, single parents, divorced and widowed; Employers, employees, the unemployed, night workers and professionals working on Sundays or shifts; Tenants, landlords, builders and those who want to become one.

women who have worked at home all their lives; women who are about to enter the world of work; women who obtained the wrong university degree; multiparous; pregnant women; Pregnant women who no longer want to be pregnant; Women who only love women and women who are actually men. For social reasons, everyone is granted additional special rights or additional rights to cash and non-cash benefits or tax breaks or cultural sponsorships or all together.

Fridays for Finance: We should go on a tax strike

The model of the modern welfare state is the citizen as a border. Therefore, it is offered to this in almost all situations as an appeal instance. The German welfare state offers cheaper opera tickets and language trips to Tuscany, as well as free marriage counseling and socially appropriate telephone rates.

Adopt mumbo-jumbo, like taking sugar globules to relieve back pain, offers compensation for hurt Wetter and freezing winters and decided itself the question whether the unemployed have a legal right to assumption of interest payments for their own house or whether tourists can (can) count on being transported back in the event of a pandemic.

Only a small part of the huge social budget is still used for the care of the poor, “protection and assistance in emergencies”, as the “German Legal Lexicon” says with the term welfare state. Compared to the total budget, this part is getting smaller and smaller.

I have a suggestion. We will go on a tax strike. And that is until someone tells us why Germany is in a state that is more reminiscent of a third world country than an industrialized nation, even as tax revenues have been hopping from one record to another for years. Fridays for Finance – maybe then we will have an explanation.

• Read all of Jan Fleischhauer’s articles here.

Readers love him or hate him, Jan Fleischhauer is minimally indifferent. Just look at the comments on his columns to get an idea of ​​how much people are moved by what he writes. He has been at SPIEGEL for 30 years and at the beginning of August 2019 he moved to FOCUS as a columnist.

Fleischhauer himself sees his task in voicing a worldview that he believes is underrepresented in the German media. So in doubt, against the instinct of the herd, clichés and thought patterns. His lyrics are always funny – maybe that’s what provokes his opponents the most.

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