GERMAN FOREIGN minister Guido Westerwelle has said the country’s welfare system discourages recipients to seek work and breeds “late-Roman decadence”.
With that, the leader of the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) launched a second attempt to push through large-scale tax reforms yesterday with an appeal to what he views as Germany’s put-upon middle classes.
Germany has become a world leader at the distribution of wealth, he wrote in Die Welt newspaper, but has forgotten where wealth comes from.
“The recklessness in the way we deal with the idea of welfare worries me deeply, the disregard for the middle classes is systemic and extremely hazardous,” he added.
“Whoever promises the people effortless affluence is inviting late Roman decadence.”
The FDP returned to power last year with a record 14.6 per cent with promises to push through tax and health reforms. Since then, the plans have been blocked as too expensive by Chancellor Angela Merkel and her Christian Democrats (CDU).
Calculations leaked from the CDU-controlled finance ministry yesterday painted the FDP’s two reform ambitions as mutually exclusive. To finance the FDP’s restructuring of the health system, officials calculated that income tax would have to rise to 73 per cent.
Now the FDP is returning fire, arguing that Germany’s taxpayers can ill afford the status quo.
The trigger for Mr Westerwelle’s scorn is a looming overhaul of Germany’s social welfare system, which may result in higher payments.
“The discussion has taken on a socialist quality,” complained the FDP leader. “With a Pavlovian-style reflex, people are crying that there can be no tax relief because we need the money for higher welfare payments. It seems that in Germany we only have people who draw on taxes and nobody who pays them.”
The number of social welfare recipients varies widely in Germany, from under five per cent of the population in Bavaria to one in five in Berlin. Mr Westerwelle says he hopes to bring about a “change of heart” over how Germany views its taxpayers. In doing so, he is anxious to alter perceptions of the FDP as a party for Germany’s affluent. His demands earned widespread scorn yesterday, with opposition Social Democrat (SPD) leader Sigmar Gabriel dismissing Mr Westerwelle of “fiddling like Emperor Nero”.