All that is required now is the taxpayer.

The long-term unemployed must now also be fully supported with basic security if they are not trying to find work.

At least for a year, the SPD and the Greens, with the help of the FDP, which is bending beyond recognition here – as with the minimum wage – are almost completely suspending the cuts that have hitherto threatened Hartz IV recipients, rejecting the offers of the job centers without reason or missing appointments.

From the clever principle of "promoting and demanding" with which the benefit, also known as unemployment benefit II, was introduced by Red-Green in 2005, only the pleasant part remains for the recipient: the money.

The state no longer emphatically demands a return service that protects the solidarity community - although even employment agencies vehemently warned that they should be deprived of this last instrument.

Since a constitutional ruling, the sanctions have been relaxed anyway.

The dreaded asset test also no longer takes place with the first application.

It has not been done since the Corona crisis to make it easier for the self-employed to find their way to the office.

Help in times of need is therefore increasingly resembling an unconditional basic income.

This is in the interest of the Greens, who lure their voters with such freely available permanent entertainment.

The performance ethos is still valid among social democrats, but they are softening their position in order to finally get rid of the Hartz stigma.

They want to convert the Hartz security into an uncomplicated “citizen's allowance”, which then allegedly provides for the user's obligation to cooperate, which is subject to penalties.

Of course, with the unscheduled increase in the minimum wage to 12 euros, the SPD is showing that it will not keep its promises for long.

Unlike in Chancellor Schröder's time, the SPD and the Greens now interpret the concept of the social market economy primarily as a license to expand claims to social security.

Sometimes they burden companies directly by making jobs more expensive, sometimes indirectly through additional social benefits that become a locational disadvantage in the form of higher taxes and levies.

As a liberal traffic light corrective, the FDP is unfortunately not here.