Jobs for Jobless People?
February 21, 2010: Vice Chancellor’s Idea and Partisan Barriers
It was often mentioned several days ago that our vice chancellor and Foreign Secretary Westerwelle wants to disburden the middle class. This is one of the topics he already mentioned at the voting campaigns. Altough being a keeper for industry and the rich, he might not be that wrong saying that government can not only give money all the time. He now uses this point to reason the need of jobless people getting work. Permanently unemployed people should do some social job to receive their unemployment payments, e.g. shovel snow.
If I get him right, then he wants the state to create new public jobs for jobless people. This however, does not really match the usual attitude of the liberal party (FDP) he belongs to: regarding the market as the solution, but maybe he is just pragmatic one time.
Discipline within Parliamentary Groups
What’s now happening is the usual action when problems should be discussed. Both sides are only bashing each other and go round in circles. Instead of negotiating about chances and problems they just see the opponent that has to be fought. In Germany we only know party rivalry: You ought not to agree with the opponent!
This is connected with a principle in German politics which is not known in many other states (except Britain). You usually have to agree with your parliamentary group, e.g. if the leader says “We will agree on law proposal 123”, then you should better vote for this proposal, otherwise you might not be selected as candidate the next period. In the past this was called “Fraktionszwang” (restraint within parliamentary group), but since each Member of Parliament should decide freely it is now called “Fraktionsdiziplin” (discipline within parliamentary group). The values however remain the same.
March 7, 2010: SPD member now agreeing
After some weeks of fights a member of the SPD (the social-democratic party) has now agreed with Westerwelle’s ideas. Hannelore Kraft says that permanently unemployed persons could work—paid by the state—in retirements castles and e.g. read books to older people. Both SPD and the Greens agreed with the Kraft’s plan to create work for permanently unemployed people who have no chances to find work on the regular market anymore.
However, CDU and Die Linke (left wing party) still refuse the plans with the CDU claiming that it was “intolerable” not to give a fourth of all jobless any chances anymore. Considering that such different parties as FDP and SPD agree one time (compare discipline with parliamentary group above) shows that Westerwelle’s, my and SPD opinion might not be too wrong.
Another interesting aspect is that according to Wowereit the whole idea has already been performed in Berlin. Even more interesting is that the government of Berlin consists of SPD (who support the proposal now) and Die Linke (who refuse it on federal level). Seems like Die Linke suffers from a lack of definition about what is social.
Really impossible? Unsocial?
I guess many people would be happy to have a job and get their money exactly for this job. It is a better feeling to know you are useful for something and you have deserved your money instead of just sitting at home. Some people might agree with the latter one, but this is probably the minority.
The thing we have to understand in my opinion is that there is also work apart from the free market. Possibly, you could say that some day some company could use this hole as their base, but why not filling it up with jobless people at first?
Of course you should not choose jobs where future companies will emerge, but there are other branches. Yet, to achieve this goal there is plenty of discussion needed, and that’s where the problems begin, because political parties in Germany are better at fighting each other than working with each other.
Monday, March 15, 2010
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