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Protest on the sidelines of the exploratory negotiations by the SPD, Greens and FDP in October 2021
Photo: Chris Emil Janßen / IMAGO
Perhaps it is the
déformation professional of
a capital journalle who is sometimes in love with a riot, but I am sorry that the ladies and gentlemen are slowly getting on my back in the coalition negotiations. You want to do everything better than before, fine. You want to be nice and discreet to one another, for me. And you want - strategically most important - to treat each other to many points in the fields that are particularly important to the other. So the whole of this traffic light coalition could result in more than its individual parts put together, recently prosate Christian Lindner, the FDP leader. Nevertheless, in my world, the several hundred negotiators are not just there to blow each other on the sore knees, are they? Treating each other a lot can also be gaga. Or poison.
In any case, in a place that is only thinly scabbed in society as a whole, the "you treat me, I'll treat you" does not open up, but backfires.
What is being discussed there, with the welfare state and immigration (vulgo: more support and more open borders), scratches this scab.
And once he's gone, there's bad blood, so please don't be surprised.
More than 40 years ago, Nobel laureate Milton Friedman related the welfare state and immigration as follows: The fewer benefits a national welfare state provides, the more open the limits to immigration can be, because this necessarily follows the start of work out of self-preservation.
And vice versa: the more adequately the (national) welfare state is equipped, the less open the (national) borders should be.
To be honest, Milton Friedman put it a lot more drastically, his thinking would neither be called warm-hearted nor empathic. But the logic cannot be completely dismissed, which should be considered by everyone who wants to change something in the politically extremely delicate relationship between the welfare state and immigration. And the various traffic light coalitionists want to be powerful.
In order to overcome Hartz IV, the monthly rates should increase and the terms of reference should lose much of their sharpness, so the SPD wishes. As evidenced by their election platform, the Greens want to delete the “Asylum Seekers Benefits Act” and thus noticeably improve the situation of all asylum seekers from day one, especially when it comes to cash, which has so far been skimpy. In addition, German health protection continues to look for its equals worldwide, which is probably also known to people from countries whose asylum recognition rates are well below ten percent. You come anyway, it takes some time before the rejection is issued.
On the other hand, the FDP, among others, is pursuing plans to facilitate immigration or to make it easier for officially rejected asylum seekers to stay, while the Greens also want to increasingly accept unskilled workers as immigrants.
At the same time, an increase in the deportation of rejected asylum seekers is not to be expected under the new government, and neither is the process of shortening the process of naming other "safe countries of origin".
So we can summarize: Well-known forces among the coalitionists want to expand the welfare state and facilitate immigration.
Traffic light negotiators have thus shown themselves to be much more compassionate than Milton Friedman once did.
But possibly also much more stupid.
A large number of workers are lacking, the Federal Employment Agency (BA) estimated 1.2 million at the weekend, two thirds of them "skilled workers", which does not only mean rocket technicians, but also truck drivers or staff in geriatric care, according to the BA. So, in principle, immigration is the right thing to do. Alone: What do the 65 percent of all working-age Syrians in Germany who currently “live wholly or partially on Hartz IV” (“FAZ”) tell us? For people from Afghanistan, this rate is just under 44 percent. And now I ask myself why people who came to Germany years ago as war refugees or asylum seekers cannot make a living in a simple care job, as a truck driver or in some other way?
The answer that Milton Friedman would give (see above) should not please the traffic light coalition, not even the liberals.
Nonetheless, one thing is needed - before immigration is facilitated on a broad front and at the same time stimulating parts of the welfare state are further expanded.
But maybe the SPD will come up with it: The Social Democrats have recognized climate protection and its costs as a "social question".
So are migration and its possible costs.
