(By Ray D.)
Der Spiegel Slams Germany’s True Enemy: The Wealthy
This week’s SPIEGEL cover exploits a favorite set of issues that never fail to resonate with the readers: Class warfare – punishing success – Neidkultur. The only thing missing is a swarm of capitalist locusts and maybe Bush doing a Hitler salute:
Der Spiegel: “Inheritance Instead of Work: Of the Unconscionable Luck of Getting Rich with Tax Breaks”
The cover makes it seem as if the the few wealthy German heirs who still don’t have their money on a fast train to Switzerland or Luxembourg somehow pose a grave threat to society. A wealthy little girl is shown sitting on the grave of her benefactor as gold coins rain from the sky and fall into her nightgown. Talk about beating petty German class jealousies to death. The word “pathetic” comes to mind…
Let us make one suggestion: Instead of pursuing its obvious obsession with punishing wealth and success, perhaps SPIEGEL should explore a true menace to the fabric of German society: The chronic dependence of much of the general population on welfare benefits and entitlements and the spiral of high taxes and shadow economies that inherently follow.
A better headline would have read: Welfare Not Work: Germany’s Unconscionable Bureaucrat Class and the Dependent Society. Here’s a proposed edit:
Fire half the bureaucrats now and the other half later, slash the outrageous spa benefits, lower taxes and stop blaming everything on the wealthy and “society” for a change. I know – I know – most Germans will never go along with this. They seem to prefer elegant decay to real progress. You can always dream I guess. In the meantime, we can keep blaming Bush and America and the rich for all the world’s problems if we don’t feel good about ourselves.
Changing the subject…: On January 11, 2007, SPIEGEL ONLINE published an article entitled, “New Iraq Strategy: Republicans Refuse to Follow Bush.”
In fact, a more accurate headline would have included the word “Few”
before the word “Republicans.” But in a world where reporting on the
United States revolves around kicking Bush while he is down, reality
can quickly blur into wishful thinking. Chuck Hagel, long a maverick
Senator, suddenly came to represent “Republicans.” By contrast, the
forty-plus Republican Senators who do not share his views were barely
mentioned.
For SPIEGEL ONLINE and the Democrats, reality
has begun to sink in. Supporters of a resolution to oppose the proposed
surge could not even muster fifty (let alone sixty) votes. So much for
the political “earthquake.” The vote emphatically demonstrates that the
vast majority of Republicans do not support Hagel nor do they support
resolutions to condemn the surge or cut off funding. To its credit,
SPIEGEL ONLINE has acknowledged the facts.
