Welfare Story

It's a little 12-line story from ARD (public TV, Channel One) that I noted today with some statistical info.

Almost every single day of 2018, via either public Channel One or Two....Hartz IV (the German welfare program) got brought up.  Some watching this continued 'trend'....would say that it must be some national crisis situation and BOLD action needs to be accomplished.

But there's this odd statistic sitting there....the German Federal Employment Agency says that the number of households on Hartz IV....for 2018.....decreased.

For the first time since it's introduction a dozen-odd years ago, it's under three million homes in welfare status. 

The curious second statistic tied to this.....if you compare against the peak of 2008, it's 17-percent less.  And it's even 300,000 (more or less) than it was in 2017.  Course, the negative side of the story is that you still have almost 6-million Germans or immigrants, in some welfare situation.

But here's the odd thing left out of the story, and you have to wonder about this decrease, and how it occurred.  Did people get real jobs?  Did some immigrants pack up and leave?  It's more or less a mystery how this positive story occurred. 

As for this stopping this massive reform chatted about by the SPD Party?  No.....it's full-speed ahead to reform, and somehow pay out more money.  Where will the extra money for the reform be found?  Unknown.  But I noticed commentary made about the soon-to-disappear Solidarity Tax (for rebuilding East Germany's infrastructure).  It's supposed to end in 2021 (the law dictates that).  The SPD folks are discussing continuing the tax in some form, and I suspect they will shift this to pay for more welfare coverage.  It's best not to bring this up with Germans.....they'd just get upset about the tax continuing on in another form.