Hi!
I thought Germany was the most successful country in Europe?
Living off the success of the past.
The system we have right now is outright suicidal:
1. The state provides for people via social security, ensuring that everyone got enough to eat etc.
2. However, if you want to get that support, you have to be willing to take any employment, regardless of pay.
3. If you are employed and get less wage than social security, the state will pay you the rest.
Guess what - the number of people in jobs that can never pay for their food and rent has been steadily going up. And the cheap labor (remember, you don't have to negotiate with your workers, you simply have to order them from the state and they will have to work at the wage and the conditions you dictate) puts pressure on businesses to join the crowd.
However, people receiving so little wages do not pay income tax. Any consumer's taxes are effectively taken from money the state is handing out to them. And taxation on businesses and managers has been getting more and more lenient over time. So, no one is paying taxes, but the state has to pay the wages => the perfect mixture for getting the state getting broke. And just to make sure that things go down the drain, the current government is a coalition involving a party of extremists who think that lowering taxes (especially for the top earners) will make the world good again and fill the state's coffers. And since that party has no other message and the bigger coalition partner does not have the spine to clearly tell them to can it ......
It seems that in Germany, there is the common belief that a work place is a commercial good while in reality, the work force is the good. If a firm hires some people, the firm gets praised for their charity as if they did not make any profit by having people work for them. It is really absurd.
Deathworks
EDIT: For an example of the stupidity of that extremist party, look at our foreign minister: He wanted to get that job for several years before he got it, but somehow, he never found the time to learn even basic English. Yes, he was well-prepared. And he then calls social security a sign of decadence similar to the late Roman empire - while the managers of a bank that had to be bought up by the state get ready to raise their wages significantly...