Germany’s tough choices

Germany’s tough choices:

Michael Birnbaum wrote a great piece on how tough choices Germany made to reform its social safety net a decade ago have helped it endure the economic crisis without having to make painful cuts. But it’s also worth noting that no American would recognize Germany’s state as austere, or its social safety net as the product of tough choices.

To live in Germany, even at a time when the state’s belt is tightly cinched, is to live in a country where health care is guaranteed, where unemployment benefits will replace more than two-thirds of your income for the first year and 59 percent of your income in year five, where parents get 14 months of guaranteed leave at two-thirds pay, where the state will pay your employer not to fire you, and where you’re assured 20 days of paid vacation. By our standards, the social-welfare system is absurdly generous, not admirably spare.

In order to fund all that, taxes are almost 40 percent of GDP in Germany — as compared to about 28 percent of GDP in America — and the decision to raise taxes that high is certainly something Americans would recognize as a tough choice. But that’s really the major decision Germany made to secure its welfare state.