The Dismantling of the Social Welfare System and Its Consequences

From the broadcast of November 4, 2011 Medical sociologist Professor Johannes Siegrist from the University of Düsseldorf surveyed several thousand people in 15 European countries: "In countries with well-developed social and labor policies, the effects of work-related stress on health are, on average, weaker than in liberal countries where everyone is exposed to the market anyway." Siegrist arrives at similar conclusions to his British colleagues Wilkinson and Pickett, who analyzed UN and OECD statistics on crime, illness, and education in industrialized societies. "We know that people need a certain degree of security and stability in their social relationships." However, when this is threatened, for example, by job loss, people react not only with illness, "relationships break down, and competition, envy, and violence arise." "In the last ten years, Germany has changed enormously, more than any other Western European country," says sociologist Professor Michael Hartmann from the Technical University of Darmstadt. "The income gap between top and bottom, between rich and poor, is wider than in any other Western European country. Germany has moved much closer to Anglo-Saxon countries like England and the USA in a very short time." Hartmann examined statistics from the German Institute for Economic Research, the UN, and the EU. The relaxation of job protection laws has not been without consequences. Generally, education has not deteriorated, "but the gap has widened," says Hartmann. "We have a constantly growing proportion of children who are completely left behind. It's estimated that one in six or seven children no longer graduates from school at all. This is a problem group of a size we have traditionally never seen. The USA has had this problem for a long time." "Politics must become independent of economic ideologies and, above all, recognize that we have almost become slaves to a development I would call the economization of our society," warns former Federal Minister for Family Affairs Heiner Geißler. "If this gap continues to widen, then the triad of democracy, welfare state, and market economy, which has thus far formed the basis of our political stability, is in danger." If one of these pillars collapses, the whole system is jeopardized. Social injustice regularly determines life and death: In Australia, Aboriginal men live on average 17 years less than other men. Children of Bolivian mothers without formal education have a 10 percent mortality risk; if the mother has a high school diploma, this risk is reduced to 0.4 percent. And almost 900,000 deaths in the USA could have been avoided in the 1990s if Black and white Americans had the same life expectancy. The World Health Organization (WHO) compares the billions of dollars spent on medical advances to nearly 180,000 lives in the US during the same period. A 2008 report, for which an expert commission led by Michael Marmot of University College London collected data over three years, calls, among other things, for a fairer distribution of money, power, and resources globally, nationally, and locally. The report states that while globalization over the past 25 years has led to an enormous increase in global wealth, the gap between the poorest and richest countries has more than doubled: In 1980, the gross national income of the countries with the richest 10 percent of the world's population was 60 times higher than that of the countries with the poorest 10 percent. After 25 years of globalization, this difference has grown to 122 times. According to the commission, the Nordic countries are setting a shining example. They pursued policies that promoted equality, full employment, equal access to social benefits and services, and the minimization of social exclusion. "This is an outstanding example of what needs to happen everywhere in the world," the experts emphasized. Overcoming the justice gap is possible with determined global efforts—although the timeframe of a generation is more of a hope than a prediction.