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Monday, September 04, 2006
Germany: The Stagnation nation? "There is simply no popular majority in favour of liberal reforms, because in the near term such reforms would create too many losers.” Losers aren’t allowed here. And there would be a whole lot of them, he figures. Germany's monstrous welfare system spends 31 percent of the nation’s GDP on entitlement programs operated by the government sector - which is even more monstrous. He writes that no less than 41 percent of the voting-age adult population lives primarily on government transfers such as state pensions, full-scale public stipends, unemployment benefits, disability benefits, and social assistance (In East Germany, the figure is a whopping 47 percent). Is this a new and better form of heroin addiction? And among those who vote, recipients of these public transfers form a clear majority. “Indeed, the upper 10 percent of income recipients pay more than 50 percent of aggregate income tax revenue, and the upper 20 percent pays about 80 percent, while 40 percent of income recipients pay no income taxes whatsoever.” Is it any wonder then that a huge majority of the population prefers a strengthening of the welfare state to a more market-oriented system? Nope. But what about the long term effects? They’re here already. It’s called being broke. Or cold turkey, if your prefer. Come visit me at Observing Hermann... Blogger News Network is advertiser-supported, and your visits to our advertisers help BNN to meet its expenses. Help keep us afloat! posted by Clarsonimus at 12:41 PM |
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