I commented in the past week that with the gas taxes coming in....it was the German low-wage earner who was going to get screwed 'royally'.....all in the name of C02.
So I kinda predicted....some pay-back would occur, and all of these lower-wage earners or Hartz-IV (welfare folks) would get 'blessed'.
Today, the German Finanzamt kinda hinted in strong words that they expect revenue 'bump' of around 18.8 billion Euro from the C02 pricing game by 2023.
Then they said the magic phrase....the money would go toward protecting the climate and help solve the pain and suffering on the working-class German citizens.
How? This is left out of the story, and frankly....I suspect that you won't hear much until the end of 2020....when the election cycle starts and the anticipation of the fall 2021 national election occurs.
The odds that the bulk of the 19-billion Euro will be for pension reform and welfare reform? I would go and bet that more than 70-percent end up in that category, with a few gifts along the way for certain urbanized areas to get grants for mass transit or climate-saving agendas.
So in some clever fashion.....you simply created a tax gimmick that took funding out of the pocket of the rich and middle-class....redistributing it to the two other groups, and using a simple populist-agenda to create a vote-wave in 2021. Lets face it....the SPD is in serious vote trouble, and need some type of gimmick to recapture the interest of the public.
The threat here? This all works well in a non-recession period, without massive unemployment. If a serious recession occurs or a 8-percent or higher unemployment rate pops up....the whole C02 tax gimmick will be the first thing to go.
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