display
It has become somewhat unusual that it is not English or words derived from Latin and ancient Greek that make a career in a current discourse, but rather an ancient German word.
We are talking about "rich", which was called "rik" in Gothic and meant "mighty" - but soon took on the meaning "wealthy".
Middle-class children use it just as inflationarily as journalists who want to use it to make a social problem plastic.
A Berlin newspaper recently complained that the “rich” in particular would benefit from the rent cap of the red-red-green city government.
A current study by the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) sees the "rich Germans" in particular as winners of inheritances and gifts and immediately connects this with the demand to change tax law.
Such reports seem to fit in seamlessly with analyzes suggesting that the gap between the richest and poorest people in Germany is growing.
Finally, the union-affiliated Hans Boeckler Foundation found out that the “richest” ten percent of households hold a good 60 percent of total assets, while 20 percent have no assets and nine percent only have debts.
display
In the social distribution debate, “rich” has long since become a battleground.
Rich people are considered selfish, anti-social and amoral and are at most suitable as enemy images in crime novels or saviors from the mountain of debt that the Corona crisis brings to the Federal Republic.
Property and special taxes for the "rich" should fix it, the SPD chairwoman Saskia Esken recently declared.
But the inflationary use of the word “rich” shouldn't hide the fact that apples and pears are lumped together, not to mention the blindness to historical processes that societies are subject to.
Are tenants of a three-room apartment in an old building "rich"?
The “rich” who benefit from the Berlin rent cap are first and foremost tenants, not owners.
Before the red-red-green coalition came up with the idea of using this instrument to get a grip on the shortage of living space in the capital, those for an apartment in an old building in a coveted inner city location had to pay 14 or 18 euros per square meter.
display
This rent has now been reduced by a good half, so that they actually benefit from the rent cap, while less solvent interested parties could not venture into this segment anyway.
But does that make tenants of a three-room apartment in an old building in Prenzlauer Berg "rich"?
The database of the inheritance study mentioned is even more problematic.
Accordingly, between 2001 and 2017, the average inheritance amount in Germany increased by 20 percent compared to the 15 years before, from a good 70,000 to 85,000 euros, in the case of donations even to 89,000 euros.
The authors conclude from this that “the gap between those who inherit and those who miss out is growing”.
So is it already "rich" who has inherited 85,000 euros from their parents?
This is how the richest Germans made their fortunes
Discount items, coffee and cars - that's how you can get really rich in Germany.
This is shown by the list of the richest Germans, presented exclusively by WELT AM SONNTAG.
In first place: Dieter Schwarz, founder of the grocery chains Lidl and Kaufland.
Source: WORLD
To be clear.
There are large fortunes in Germany in the high millions or billions.
As a rule, they are not in the bank, but are tied to companies or holdings.
These are also inherited, but the successors are expected to keep the business going.
display
But this case is not about these "rich".
And there are very many citizens who have difficulties leaving their descendants with the means to pay the funeral expenses.
That's fatal, but that's not the point here either.
It's about people who, on average, are apparently able to hand over 85,000 euros each to their children - usually two in this country - that is, the middle class.
Their “wealth” is blamed for the increasing social imbalance in which German society is said to find itself in the meantime.
The four major asset cuts of the Germans
Which brings us to the story.
Even if Helmut Schelsky's famous phrase has long been questioned to death by the "leveled medium-sized society", one should not forget that, unlike most of its neighbors, Germany experienced four asset cuts in the 20th century: the two world wars, the hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic and in the GDR the state bankruptcy averted only by the peaceful revolution.
Unlike in Switzerland or France, for example, these events ensured that many Germans were virtually zeroed in 1918, 1923, 1945 and 1990.
Since then, two generations in the West and one generation in the East have struggled to build wealth.
But those who call heirs of 85,000 euros “rich” are not concerned with the number itself, but with the gap that separates them from those who do not inherit 85,000 euros from their parents.
But this turns this old German word into a battle term in a distribution debate.
It not only nostalgically glorifies the middle-class society of the early Federal Republic, but poses the system question: A society in which some inherit and others do not is anti-social and must therefore be redesigned.
Inherited “wealth” fits into a discourse that now puts prosperity under general suspicion: because it is unecological, disloyal, inhuman and ultimately also racist, because profits from the global economy can supposedly only be earned on the backs of the underprivileged.
display
This way of thinking arises less from a class struggle in the Marxist sense, but above all from a conflict between parents willing to climb and their progress-tired children.
The ambition of the one is inverted into the critique of prosperity of the other.
The inflationary used word “rich” erodes the concept of society in the West, which is based on the pursuit of material happiness and its handover to future generations.
This inequality, which by the way is a lot more bearable than the equality of North Korea, for example, is also a result of the freedom to live one's life independently.
Generation Z is really that lazy - and this is how their bosses deal with it
Source: WELT / Martin Heller / Viktoria Schulte