Mayor of Bremen: The welfare state has a future

There is a crack goes through Germany. While the economy is booming, jobs and prosperity, to grow, to stagnate, the proportion of those who are dependent on Hartz IV. Almost six million people live on social benefits of the SGB II, the recovery is not. As in the other, from the structure-changing cities, Bremen and Bremerhaven, as if under a magnifying glass, how fragile the trust in the welfare state has become. And, although our economic growth exceeds the national average.

Despite the lowest unemployment rate since reunification, and nearly 50,000 new jobs in the last ten years in the Land of Bremen to 16,000 long-term unemployed and nearly 35,000 children in Hartz IV, More than 75 percent of the unemployed Hartz IV and not the status-securing unemployment benefit (ALG I) relate directly. All of the current System can offer no real perspective.

It is, therefore, at the time, the welfare state, to give a future to. He has to provide new collateral and opportunities, must give answers to the challenges of time and the increasing shortage of skilled workers, such as the descent of the fears of many people encounter. The question is: How is it possible to withdraw Hartz IV, the basis?

first , and this is particularly important to me: children, a stand-alone basic security earn. A third of the people in the SGB II are children and young people. This is absurd, because you have to look in to the Unemployment. The current System divides our children, in fact, in the “social beneficiaries” and “Non-social benefit recipients” on the class trip, in a club or at lunch, in kindergarten and school. Germany must stop to bring the social divisions already in the everyday life of our Small. Therefore, all the previous children are merge-related cash benefits in a increasing income to melting of the Children. Two million people are on a shock-less, in Hartz IV, and the parents can leave the power easier.