Well....politicians have been hyped up the past couple of weeks (even before the war) over escalating prices for heat, gas, etc.
So the coalition government worked up this plan. The five key components?
1. Every family unit that works....would get a 300 Euro 'check' for energy escalations. It'd be through your job and monthly pay.
Now before you get excited.....it's taxable. So if you do the math....in reality, you are only getting around 250 Euro.
Also, retirees don't get the 300 Euro (you have to be working).
2. Got kids? Each kid would entitle you to 100 Euro.....not taxable. It's an offset against the child 'geld' money that you already get.
3. On welfare? 100 Euro per person in the family unit. One-time deal only.
4. Gas tax dumped? The way this is worded....for a 90-day period.....30 cents of the gas tax would be carved off (discounted). So the current price on E-10 fuel (yesterday, I saw the listing) is 2.12 Euro per liter. Once the discount takes place....the same fuel would be 1.82 Euro a liter.
Negative about this? It's only for 90 days, and you will emerge on 1 July....to find a sudden return to normal.
For my wife, the employed one in the house.....she typically burns through 2.5 tanks of fuel each month. It's about 100 liters of fuel per month....so for three months, it's about 90 Euro of savings in her pocket.
The diesel discount? MUCH less, at 14 Euro cents per liter. Diesel car owners will grumble about being screwed by the government on this deal.
5. Finally, this stupid 9-Euro train ticket deal. Starting 1 April, you can go up to a bus/train ticket machine and buy a monthly 'travel-in-your-zone-all-day' ticket for 9 Euro....for the whole month. Yes, for 90 days....you can put down a total of 27 Euro and save a ton of money.
It is a very creative ticket, and I admit for value....fantastic.
But here's the rub on this....it's only for your 'zone'. I live in the outer boundary of Wiesbaden (the 6500 zone). So I could buy this ticket and travel throughout the Wiesbaden/Mainz area, but that's it. I couldn't use the ticket for Frankfurt trips or out to Worms.
The idea is to get people into the habit of using the train/bus system, and in July....you'd go and pay the standard ticket (87 Euro per adult, for the monthly pass). The retiree pass? 70 Euro. The lesser-day-pass (for 9 AM or later travel) is 70 Euro.
The deal is.....after 90 days of use, you might think it's wonderful to travel via the bus/train to work.
I brought this up to my wife (employed to a company in Mainz).....she said it's a NO-GO. It'd take two bus transfers.....a train ride over the river, and a four-minute bus ride to get her to the front-door. She did admit it might be nice to wander into town two nights a week....to experience the metro-feeling (having a wine at a cafe, or a beer at some local pub).
So all this chatter over spending of money and 'gifts'.....how much is allocated by the German government for the whole package? Around 14-billion Euro (figure around 17-billion dollars).
Will this make people happy? Here's the final 'rub'.....for a normal German familly, by the time you figure electrical costs going up, and the total heating bill for this past winter, with gas prices increases for the past hundred days....your family has spent near 1,500 Euro more. So NO, this 'gift' really doesn't resolve the hole that most family units have fallen into. Nor does it resolve anything for the remainder of 2022.
I'll even say this....for each hundred people that jump into this 9-Euro a month local train/bus pass deal....I suspect only ten percent will settle upon it as a permanent thing. A lot of people will test the scheme, but for a majority of Germans....local bus/train options don't fix their 'get-to-work' chaos.
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