Around two-thirds of Germans think their levels of welfare spending, one of the most generous systems in the world, is “no longer financially sustainable”, while the West tousles with the impact of mass migration and the guns versus butter debate for the first time in a generation.
A strong majority of 64 per cent of Germans believe the “welfare state in its current form is no longer financially sustainable”, with 34 per cent dissenting. A surprisingly low two per cent said they have no opinion, suggesting the ongoing debate about how generous Germany’s handouts scheme can be and how it should be funded is one discussed across dinner tables nationwide, not just across Parliamentary halls.
The Forsa poll published by left-leaning German news magazine Stern states that while right-leaning parties like the centrist Christian conservatives (CDU) and the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) are most likely to say the welfare state has become unsustainable, the Social Democrat left (SPD) party’s supporters also agree. Only the fringe-left Greens and Left parties have supporters who believe Germany’s handouts are sustainable.
Perhaps befitting Stern‘s politics, the poll was followed up with an editorial that posited the answer to these problems is for the government to take more money for welfare by cracking down on the “super-rich”. While acknowledging on one hand that Germany’s welfare state is one of the most expensive in the world, Stern moved to deny the generosity of the system is the source of the instability.
The problem instead is that wealthy people aren’t taxes hard enough, comments which bleed into a wider discussion on the left in Germany that individual’s income from investments, rental properties, and stocks and shares should have an extra tax levied upon them to boost the welfare state. As claimed: “Those who work a lot pay a lot. Conversely, those who own a lot pay comparatively little. That is the fundamental design flaw.”
There are other perspectives on why Germany’s welfare system has become so expensive. As reported in 2024, 48 per cent of all recipients of out-of-work welfare in Germany aren’t German citizens at all, with some migrant groups so dependent on the state, a majority of nationality residents being recipients. As stated, there were 2.7 million foreigners claiming the Bürgergeld — ‘citizen’s allowance’ — with 55 per cent of Syrians in Germany getting the welfare money.
Some 33 per cent of long-term unemployed in 2024 did not hold German citizenship.
That European states long ago had decided on their answer to the guns versus butter debate — that a government can defeat external threats by spending on the military or defeat internal ones by buying compliance with welfare — is now under question as the NATO alliance undergoes a period of transformation. Long the protective shield that allowed European capitals to make the butter decision because their defence needs were largely met by the United States, now Europe is having to revisit its assumptions about where taxes are spent.
This dichotomy has been made explicit by the NATO leadership, with guns versus butter cited by name, and a top alliance Admiral saying amid the Ukraine war: “if you ramp up your deterrence and if you ramp up support to Ukraine, there will be less money to spend on other things. It will take away some of our luxuries, it will require sacrifice.”
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