November 7, 2024
German finance minister declares war on the working class #NewsGerman

German finance minister declares war on the working class #NewsGerman

CashNews.co

Last Friday, Liberal Democrat (FDP) Finance Minister Christian Lindner published an 18-page document calling for an “economic about turn with a partial fundamental revision of key political decisions.” Since then, speculation has been rife that the coalition government of the Social Democrats (SPD), FDP and Greens may be coming to an early end.

Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) in the Bundestag [Photo by DBT/Kira Hofmann/photothek]

Lindner’s document is being compared to the infamous paper with which the then FDP economic affairs minister, Otto Graf Lambsdorff, collapsed the SPD-FDP coalition of SPD Chancellor Helmut Schmidt in 1982, ushering in the 18-year rule of Helmut Kohl (Christian Democratic Union, CDU). It is a deliberate provocation—not so much against his Social Democratic and Green coalition partners, as against the working class.

After decades of social redistribution favouring the rich, of austerity in education, healthcare and infrastructure, and of falling real wages, the finance minister is calling for massive tax cuts for the wealthy, a frontal attack on social services, social rights and environmental regulations, and strict austerity measures.

Lindner wants to halve the “solidarity surcharge,” which has been in place since German reunification in 1991 and now only applies to very high incomes and profits, in the coming year and abolish it altogether in 2027. Corporation tax, the most important levy on corporate profits, is also to be reduced by 2 percent in 2025 and even further in the following years. Both measures will mean substantial additional profits for the super-rich and corporations and a corresponding decline in tax revenues.

The “debt brake,” which restricts annual structural deficits to 0.35 percent of GDP, is to be strictly applied, and Lindner also rejects further “special funds” that could be used to circumvent it. Instead, the falling tax revenues and rapidly growing military expenditures—which, according to the paper, are to be “prioritised”—are to be financed through cuts in social spending.

In the name of “reducing bureaucracy,” Lindner wants to put all legislative proposals that protect employees’ social rights on hold.

Under the heading “Mobilisation of the labour market,” he calls for a significant increase in working hours and a substantial reduction in the “citizen’s income” welfare benefit to “strengthen work incentives.” The citizen’s income cut alone is expected to save €3 billion a year. “Individual disadvantages compared to the status quo are unavoidable, but also to be welcomed in the sense of activation and incentive orientation,” the paper states.

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