German government announces plan for social cuts

[L.J.Solidarity]

The CDU-FDP government of Germany intends to cut € 80 billion until 2014, 11 billion will already be slashed in 2011.
The social budget is the main target for cuts. In the first round of cuts, people receiving Hartz IV (everybody who has been unemployed for at least a year) lose an allowance for heating costs (the govt claims energy prizes have "normalised"), parents' benefit (up to 300€/month for 14 months after the birth of a child) and they will not receive any pensions any more for the years they have been unemployed - making them even more likely to be just as poor as before after becoming pensioners.
Also, many benefits and allowances will no longer be mandatory, but can be given to aid receivers by social security offices at will, so they become even more dependent on the mercy of their local office.

[Rusty Shackleford]

so heating allownaces are going to be cut? meaning, in the cold ass winter the elderly and unemployed are going to be without heat?

[Catillina]

Yeah and as usuel, the rich aren't harmend, FDP doesnt want to raise the richman taxes, and even want to abolish the taxes for ultra riches(>250'000€ year, taxes were 45% of their income).

[MockDoctor]

Gah, stupid social cuts. They've also raised taxes, giving more big bucks to the Greek government and we have to pay some kind of stupid rain or roof tax. What the hell's up with that.

[FriendlyLocalViking]

Neiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin!

Nicht meine lieblingsnation! :(

[soyonstout]

Austerity measures are headed for all of Europe because of the debt crisis in the Eurozone. The FED recently guaranteed dollar liquidity to the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, and a few other central banks, so it can't be long before this crisis heads back here as well.

The ICC recently published an international leaflet on the austerity measures to come and the power of workers to resist them here:

revleft.com/vb/icc-international-leaflet-t136405/index.html?t=136405

-soyons tout

[The Red Next Door]

German winter is not a joke, this just horrible!

[Ligeia]

(^^^Last winter the heater was broken. I had to wear winter-clothes.....at home. I couldn't even type or write properly, I had to wear winter-gloves all the time.)

Anyway, it's not like those social cuts wouldn't have been made without the current situation. The day this coalition government had been elected everybody knew that massive social cuts would be made sooner or later. This is also just the first round, there's more to come. Rhine capitalism is coming to a bitter end.

[Rusty Shackleford]

im sure you all remember what happened in winter 08/09 when russia cut fuel supplies(through Gazprom) to the balkans right?

[pdcrofts]

These austerity measures will be so far-reaching that they will not only affect the poor, but they will begin to hurt the normally placid middle classes. This means there will be more people than ever turning to the left. With these greater numbers perhaps socialist change has more chance of being realised? The worse these cuts are, the more they force people to rebel.

[chegitz guevara]

Britain's next.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Britain's next.


well, once a conservative government comes into power in the US it will happen here too.

if conservatives win in California, say hello to voucher programs for education.

[Buffalo Souljah]

well, once a conservative government comes into power in the US it will happen here too.

:lol:

[Zeus the Moose]

well, once a conservative government comes into power in the US it will happen here too.

if conservatives win in California, say hello to voucher programs for education.

It's already happening in the US. Maybe it isn't showing up on the national level, but things are going into gear in several states. New Jersey is probably a front line for this. To give some background:

In 2009, New Jersey had its statewide elections, electing a governor and lieutenant governor (in the same race, much like president and VP) and the entirety of the state assembly (lower house of our state legislature.) In the gubernatorial race, Republican Chris Christie won the election with 48% percent of the vote, defeating incumbent Democrat Jon "I <3 Goldman Sachs" Corzine who got 45%, independent candidate Chris Daggett who got 6%, and a number of other independent and alternative party candidates. The state assembly, however, remained under the control of the Democrats, though they lost one seat to leave the final control numbers at 47D 33R. So, when the elections were over, the Republicans had captured the governor's office, but the Democrats still had a majority (though not a veto-proof majority) in both houses of the legislature.

During the gubernatorial campaign, Chris Christie ran as someone who would "clean up" the state government, make it "smaller and more efficient," cut state spending, make the state "more business friendly," etc. etc. So, fairly standard free-market rhetoric. However, this comes at a time of economic crisis where people are open to looking for answers on how things got they way they did and options to get out of the crisis. In this situation, combined with the "left-wing" Democrats being in power in New Jersey and not giving much in terms of solutions, the Republican Party in general and Chris Christie in particular came out looking like a good alternative.

So Christie comes into office, theoretically in opposition to both houses of the state legislature. And his proposed budget contains strong cuts. The most publicised are cuts in education funding, but there are others to public transit as well (thus forcing a fare hike and service cutbacks), various state-funded health programmes, and so on. On a certain level the cuts to education may not seem as bad in New Jersey, as most money through education is raised by local government through property taxes (which is its own issue as property taxes tend to be regressive.) However, cutting state funding to education does mean that poorer school districts will be affected more, as their tax base means they're more likely to need state assistance. Add to this is another proposed measure by the state government for capping the amount that property taxes can be increased per year at 2.5%. So if that passed, municipalities couldn't rebalance their education funding on increased local taxes even if they wanted to.

Furthermore, the rhetoric flying out from the administration is pretty horrendous, if not surprising. To whip up support for these budget measures, the administration went after teachers (and public workers in general) with fairly harsh attacks, claiming that they were overpaid, should agree to pay-freezes (despite these wage increases being already agreed in union contracts of previous years), and the teachers' union was putting their own interests ahead of the children, who should be the first priority. At the same time, it should be mentioned that, when students protested in large numbers through high school walkouts, the administration dismissed their protests as "spring fever" or "spirit of rebellion" at best, and some were concerned about the students being "misled by the teachers unions." So it's not like they think kids can form political opinions on their own, at least not when they're in opposition to what the government is saying.

Anyway, getting back to the situation in Trenton, one might think that in an environment such as this, the Democrats are reaping the benefits of standing in opposition to such harsh cuts. Well, they might be, if they actually were standing out with a strong anti-cut platform. However, the prevailing wisdom in the state legislature is that cuts and "shared sacrifice" are necessary in order to keep the state afloat. To be fair, there are some proposals that the Democrats are putting forward, like the "Millionaire's Tax," which would make individuals making over $400,000 a year pay additional income taxes. The trick here, though, is that this already existed in New Jersey, but expired at the end of 2009, when the Democrats were still in control of the governor's office. They could have renewed it then, but they chose not to for some reason.

Basically, it's a fairly concrete lesson on the nature of bourgeois politics, particularly vis a vis the differences (or lack thereof) between the Republican and Democratic parties. Right now, what's needed is a challenge to the logic that cuts are necessary, particularly since these (like basically all) social spending cuts disproportionately hurt workers and students. Of course, these cuts may in fact be necessary in order to keep capitalism going, so I'd argue a consistently anti-cut position naturally leads itself to anti-capitalist conclusions. It's not about supporting or opposing a national referendum on whether cuts should be made ala SYRIZA in Greece (though taking part and a position on the referendum is probably a useful tactic), but rather challenging the whole logic of the system that has led us into these crises in the first place, and creating an organised opposition movement that can actually do something about it, both on the micro level of fending off attacks and winning intermediate victories, and the macro level of bringing the whole system down.

Sorry if that turned into a little bit of a hate-filled and somewhat off topic rant, but I've been dealing with these issues more or less since Gov. Christie came into office.

[L.J.Solidarity]

In addition to the cuts package, the German government announced that from 2013 on, a de facto poll tax of (allegedly) 17,98€ a month will have to be paid by every household. This replaces the current TV/Radio fees which until now had to be paid for TVs (ca. 15€/months) and computers (ca. 5€/month) in case they were registered with the fees office known as GEZ. Not registering them only leads to a small risk of GEZ employees paying you a visit in some more or less clever disguise in order to check whether you really have no TV or internet access.

[BeerShaman]

:blink: Hah! Almost happy! We will live hard times but it's time to revolt at last. This we will realise! For the whole continent!

[L.J.Solidarity]

The funny thing about it is that BILD (tabloid with highest ciruclation in Germany, conservative/reactionary) is leading the public outcry against "TV tax", calling it a "rip-off" - almost looks like a "moderate" anti-population measure is enacted in order to distract people from the social cuts. Perhaps the government is even going to repeal the tax before the next election?