Lip service... and more Angst
According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (Vater Staat und seine Kinder from Ulrike Ackermann), 48 percent of Germany’s budget goes to covering running social expenditures like unemployment payments, retirement payments, health cost subsidies etc. and 14 percent goes to cover the repayment of debt. This doesn’t leave the German government with much room for making needed social reform. And that seems to be precisely what everyone wants. The natives don’t see themselves as being free citizens (in say, the American sense) so much as being privileged members of the German social state. It’s always been that way here, too (since Bismarck ’s time, at least). They value equality and justice more than freedom. And even though everyone goes through this ritual of paying lip service to the desperate need for fundamental social reform these days, they elect a government that mirrors this strange ambivalence: On the one hand, the new government stands for the realization that fundamental change has to finally be made. On the other hand, they stand for the fear of doing just that.
