Social policy | No social justice without equality

Even Chancellor Friedrich Merz admits it: There is social injustice in Germany. This is causing more and more outrage because poverty is penetrating the middle of society. Photo: dpa/Hannes P Albert Even the Federal Chancellor, multimillionaire and former BlackRock manager, admitted after his party's recent defeats in three state elections - in a moment of realization or for purely tactical reasons - that there is social injustice in Germany. Friedrich Merz gave the example of the different opportunities for those with statutory and private health insurance to get a timely appointment with a specialist. Although this form of two-class medicine hardly exists in other EU countries anymore, he rejects the call for solidarity-based citizens' insurance, into which the self-employed, freelancers, civil servants and professional politicians would also have to pay.

Other forms of injustice are even more serious. The biggest one in the capitalist economic system of the Federal Republic is that a small minority of the population owns the companies, banks and insurance companies, while the large majority of the population mainly owns their labor force. She has to sell them on the labor market for wages or salaries, which is difficult if she has health or mental impairments or qualification deficits.

The fact that social injustice is causing more and more outrage and benefiting ultra-right demagogues is due to growing material inequality, which is increasingly reflected in the cityscape: shops selling luxury items are indeed booming. Debt advice centers, food banks and train station missions are also busy. More and more people are reaching into trash cans, entire neighborhoods are being left behind and some neighborhoods are in danger of falling into disrepair.

Prof. Dr. Christoph Butterwegge taught political science at the University of Cologne from 1998 to 2016, was an nd columnist for years and most recently published the books “Germany in Crisis Mode” and “Redistribution of Wealth”.

What are the reasons for this? Poverty has been penetrating the middle of our society for some time now, while wealth is increasingly concentrated in a few families. On the one hand, poverty in this country reached a record level in 2025: 13.3 million people (16.1 percent of the population) had less than 60 percent of the needs-weighted median household net income available. According to the Federal Statistical Office, this was 1,446 euros per month for single people last year.

On the other hand, the large private assets are in a few hands: The five richest German entrepreneurial families (Albrecht/Heister, Böhringer/von Baumbach, Kühne-Erben, Quandt/Klatten and Schwarz) together own around 250 billion euros and therefore more than the poorer half of the population, i.e. well over 40 million people. Many of them - strictly speaking - live from hand to mouth because they lack the reserves that are needed in a financial crisis situation and are essentially only a layoff or a serious illness away from poverty.

Redistribution takes place every day from the bottom - from those who work hard - to the top, to those who have a lot: corporate profits, sales and share price gains of shareholders, dividends, interest as well as rental and lease income from real estate companies predominantly flow into the pockets of those who are materially better off. But they are usually created by people who have significantly less money, often not even enough to live with dignity.

By redistributing wealth from top to bottom, relatively few high-net-worth people and top earners would lose something, but very many have-nots, low earners and transfer benefit recipients would gain something. In addition to a different tax policy, strengthening public services and health care as well as expanding the social, educational and care infrastructure would make sense. If political decision-makers, as they never tire of emphasizing, want to strengthen social cohesion, their policies must make a visible contribution to closing the gap between rich and poor.

Apparently the majority of the population has recently become more sensitive to social inequality. Today it assigns the state the task of limiting the existing differences in income and wealth, i.e. ensuring not only the internal and external security of the country but also the livelihood security of its citizens. Public calls to think carefully about the income differences in Germany are also increasing. What is much more important, however, is the imbalance in the distribution of wealth, which poor people only have in its negative form - namely debts.

Equal treatment of rich and poor is not fair, as the watering can principle makes clear in the fuel discount once again decided by the Bundestag and Bundesrat. Drivers of big sedans and expensive SUVs benefit significantly more from this than people who can't afford a car at all or can only afford a small car. Anyone who needs financial support because prices are overwhelming should receive it specifically and to the extent necessary; Anyone who doesn't need it doesn't have to claim tax resources.

Apart from the problem that oil companies, as experience shows, only partially pass on the refueling discount to consumers, it is also fatal that more petrol and diesel are consumed than necessary when government subsidies are given. In general, equals should be treated equally and unequals treated unequally, as the ancient Greek philosophers knew.

The ultimate goal of a policy oriented towards social justice must be the redistribution of those material resources that rich capital owners and financial investors have so far claimed for themselves, but withheld from society and its members, if not abused in a way that is destructive to the planet and ecologically questionable. Then redistribution no longer appears just as a requirement of social justice, but also as a requirement of climate justice.

In order to achieve greater equality and break the indifference to inequality, it must be conveyed that the redistribution of wealth is not just about achieving social justice, but also about preserving social prosperity, securing democracy, saving the planet and preventing war.

Inequality is neither worthwhile for the economy, which is losing dynamism, nor for society, whose cohesion is dwindling. Redistribution from top to bottom would benefit the economy, strengthen mass purchasing power and stimulate the weakening economy. Above all, permanently increasing the purchasing power of the lowest income groups through a significant increase in the minimum wage and the basic security allowance would not only be socially fair, but also make economic sense. That is why it is in the well-understood interest of the system to close the gap between rich and poor to some extent.

On the other hand, the worsening of inequality is poisonous for both social cohesion and democracy. Economic and social polarization tendencies usually also lead to political polarization tendencies, which are not only evident at the regulars' meetings, in election campaigns and when voting.

The reform projects of the CDU/CSU/SPD coalition that are creating more inequality are neither without alternatives nor irreversible. Because social inequality has been exacerbated by political (wrong) decisions in favor of the wealthy, rich and hyper-rich, there is also the possibility of reducing it through state intervention in favor of the poor and social equalization.

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