介绍： Inequality and education: Germany’s Sandernistas
Expect it to come up in the federal election next year
From The Economist 20161029

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THE refugee crisis is not the only issue that could decide next autumn’s election of the Bundestag. If Germany’s three left-wing parties get their wish, so...

介绍： Inequality and education: Germany’s Sandernistas
Expect it to come up in the federal election next year
From The Economist 20161029

Audio:

0:00




THE refugee crisis is not the only issue that could decide next autumn’s election of the Bundestag. If Germany’s three left-wing parties get their wish, social justice may become just as contentious. The Social Democrats (who currently govern as junior partners under the chancellor, Angela Merkel), along with the Greens and The Left, which descends from the Communist Party in the former East Germany, are hoping to form a leftist coalition on this issue to unseat Mrs Merkel in 2017. Their dream is to spark a Bernie Sanders-like movement that—this being Germany, not America—could sweep them into power. So they have begun reciting a menacing-sounding metaphor: the “scissors” (ie, the gap) between rich and poor will keep widening unless they get to run the country.

Whether or not the divide between haves and have-nots is increasing is debatable. Compared with the 1990s, income inequality is higher as measured by the Gini coefficient. But it peaked in 2005 and has since remained broadly stable. Within the EU, Germany is a middling country in terms of income inequality, behind a few more egalitarian countries, such as Sweden, and well ahead of more unequal societies in southern and eastern Europe, as well as Britain. But when it comes to the distribution of wealth, Germany is near the top of the inequality scale, behind only Austria in the euro zone. The top 10% of German households own about 60% of the country’s wealth, whereas the bottom 20% own nothing, or are in debt (this is largely explained by Germans renting homes more than owning, and by relying more on government pensions).

Whether all of this amounts to a crisis depends on one’s vantage point. The Institute of Economic and Social Research (WSI), which is affiliated to the trade unions, concludes that Germany has a big problem. The Cologne Institute for Economic Research, which has ties to employers’ organisations, argues the opposite. Nonetheless, the perception of growing inequality is widespread. And according to a study in 2013 by the Allensbach Institute, a polling outfit, 69% of Germans think that income and wealth are unfairly distributed. But they may in fact be confusing actual inequality with something else: declining social and economic mobility. The WSI has found that moving either up or down has become harder since the 1990s, and much trickier in eastern Germany. Compared with other countries, intergenerational mobility (children ending up in a different class from their parents) is low.


Much of the problem lies in the education system. In Germany success at school and university is more strongly correlated with the education of parents than elsewhere in Europe. There has traditionally been little emphasis on pre-school education, even though it has long-term benefits, especially for children from poor families. And Germany, like Austria, has an unusual school system that sends pupils, usually after the age of ten, either on an academic track or a blue-collar career path.

The Allensbach study found that what Germans mean by “social justice” is a fair chance of success and fair (but not equal) rewards for achievement. They are also concerned about young people not being overburdened by providing for the old. Brute redistribution ranked lowest as a definition of the term. As such, just promising to soak the rich—by calling for new wealth taxes, say, as the leftists are doing—misses the point. It makes more sense, for any political party, to invest in better schools and, as the centre-right parties argue, to keep the employment motor humming. That may be why, even taken together, Social Democrats, Greens and The Left would not be able to win a majority of the Bundestag if voting took place today. Like Mr Sanders, they may be doomed to succeed by raising the issue but letting somebody else, most likely Mrs Merkel, find the solution.


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