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Yachtie -> The German model (11/29/2012 7:13:38 AM)
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Some folks here love to tout the EU as superior. A few even parade Germany as a model.
On September 17, the German Labor Ministry sent a draft report “on Poverty and Wealth” to the other ministries to be rubber-stamped. Only the final report, once sanctified by Chancellor Angela Merkel, would be made public. The draft was supposed to remain hidden. But it seeped to the surface almost immediately. And it was hot. Too hot.
The massive data (PDF, 535 pages) described the tough reality that many people faced in Germany—a reality that got tougher every year. For example, in 1998, the lower 50% of the population owned 4% of all private wealth, while the upper 10% owned 45%. By 2008, the lower 50% owned only 1%, but the upper 10% had increased its share to 53% (at the expense also of the in-between 40%). Other reports have painted similar pictures.
The poverty report by Germany’s statistical agency showed that the “poverty rate” in Germany has been creeping up: in 2008, it was 15.5%; in 2009 it was 15.6%, and in 2010 it was 15.8%. Particularly hard-hit were people under 65 who lived alone. Their poverty rate was 36.1%. For single-parent households, it was 37.1%. The city of Munich issued its own poverty report. By taking into account Munich’s high cost of living, it found that nearly a fifth of its residents lived in poverty.
Poverty data has been stirring public debate for a while, and across most of Europe. Even the largest consumer products companies are adjusting to it by using commercial strategies that were successful in developing countries [read.... The “Pauperization of Europe”]. But now the Labor Ministry’s “Poverty and Wealth” report, as revised by the Economy Ministry, was leaked to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, which then put a grunt to work to compare the two versions. Turns out, the original version had been censured!
It started in the introduction. In the new version, the sentence, “Private wealth in Germany is very unevenly distributed,” has been deleted.
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Even certain data has been deleted, including this sentence: “However, in 2010, over four million people worked in Germany for an hourly wage of less than €7.”
For the whole article with links.
I await the defense of the bedrock of socialism's utopian experiment with great anticipation. [:D]
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