Cliff-Diving into Dependency, and Trolling for Democratic Votes
To paraphrase Col. Alan West, they don’t want a safety net, they want a fishing net. This vote buying system is far more advanced in Europe; look where that got them. They subsidized themselves into insolvency. If you go to a lot of the less well off parts of Hamburg, government welfare buildings are the largest and most prominent thing dotting the landscape. The German welfare system officially refers to recipients as “clients” and provides a standard of living most of them could not afford if they chose to work. It’s not surprise that most of them decide not to. Who would really want to work for significantly less money than they receive for doing nothing? When the benefits were lowered slightly, many of them decided to sue based on the fact that their benefits should provide a standard of living equal to that of the German taxpayer.
If anything gives me hope, it is that people have successfully beaten back the welfare state a couple of times. The next time we fight it, we should do more than pruning the hedges.
