Thursday, March 29, 2018

Political Update

Focus (the German news magazine) brought up an interesting short analytical piece this morning. 

The new Merkel-led coalition government is in full swing now.....and you'd expect some really good numbers.  Well....they don't exist.

A polling group at YouGov (the institute) covered Germany, and found only 11-percent of the public buys off on this coalition being good or very good.

43-percent of the public says the new coalition is average or mediocre.

Then you come to 39-percent who rate the government as bad or really bad. 

If you were looking for a bad sign on public skepticism.....this is where you'd start.

As for the SPD public numbers?  They are pulling around 17-percent right now....having bumped up two points in the past month.  The AfD still holds strong at 15-percent, and the Greens hold at 11-percent.  Linke Party?  11-percent.  FDP at 8-percent.

What all of this leads onto?  Both major parties are desperate to get immigration and migration off the public view, and for the rest of 2018, I expect dumping Hartz IV (the welfare program) to be topic number one. 

The problem with the dumping....you'd have to come up with at least a billion to two billion extra Euro to 'gift' people to a higher rate of welfare.  That means more taxes and the public will quickly grasp how this gimmick will work.  The sad thing is that they will probably end up with a slightly enhanced welfare program where everyone on the program gets a 15-percent bump-up, and job-wise....no better improvement.

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