Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Pay Talk

It got noted this morning on ARD news...a topic which the political folks hate to discussions about....their salary structure.

German cities and states....all have a salary structure for their mayors, city council folks, and representatives in each state assembly.  But the Berlin folks are kinda special.

If you serve in the Bundestag in Berlin....you make 9542 Euro a month.   A fair sum of money.

Smartphones?  Free....paid for by the German government.  All of these folks get a phone. Note as well....a tax-free allowance given to the amount of 4,318 Euro per month.....to pay for paper, pens, rent for the second apartment they use in Berlin, etc.  I would note here....that a decent upscale one-bedroom place in Berlin would easily run 1,200 Euro, and could easily go up into the 2,500 Euro range.

ARD also points out that each guy gets 12,000 Euro a year for office equipment (laptops, printers, etc).

If you just went and spent one single year in Berlin as a Bundestag individual....you would get 238 a Euro a year at age 67.  It's roughly figured that with twenty-seven years of service in Berlin....you'd go home with 6,441 Euro a month.

The Chancellor's pay?  238,000 Euro a year.

A lot of this salary talk angers the general public.  It's rarely dragged out in public-chat forums because there's just not a positive way to tell this story, which people believe. I could point the same issues with US representatives or Senators in DC.

There is this one odd aspect with the 2017 election.  If the SPD does slide down to 22-percent on this election....a fair sum of individuals sitting in Berlin....won't be coming back in October, and their 'golden-cow' situation ends.  It's a painful remainder about reality in Germany....you can be on the losing side and really lose more than just the election.

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