If you are a German, and on the level of poverty.....you are hooked up to Hartz IV (the German program to provide a 'safety net' for the general public).
So there's this curious piece of the Hartz IV deal. If you are a kid in school....once a year, the German government provides you (the welfare kid) 100 euro to pay for school supplies.
About twenty years ago, with my son in the German school system, I came to look at the August routine. My wife would spend a week shopping at five or six different grocery stores and have a box of twenty-five items at the end. School supplies.
It wasn't cheap to run through this routine. At this point, prior to the arrival of the Euro....with the Deutsche Mark in the mix.....this was near 180 Marks (figure around $90 in 1999 cost). It was a fair sum of money.
This week, the Germans agreed it was finally time to raise this allotment. It went from 100 Euro as the school-year 'gift'.....to 150 Euro (roughly $180 in US currency).
Yes, it is a big chunk of money. But that's the thing about the past decade. Escalation of expenses has generally gone up. Whatever you could buy for 10 Euro in 2010, is probably near 12 to 13 Euro today.
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