How we became a nation of slackers.

last updated 8 January 2015

Germany

Andrea Seibel

Decades of welfare-state coddling have created a permanent German underclass, says Andrea Seibel in Hamburg’s Die Welt. The stereotype of Germans as hardworking, even overly diligent, held true until recently. But now, even the head of the Social Democratic Party, Kurt Beck, has admitted that many of his countrymen have become “apathetic and lazy.” Nearly one-third of Germans lag far behind the rest of us. These people—most of them unemployed, others underemployed—lack material wealth, certainly, “but worse, they lack initiative.” When the state provides all your needs, why should you look for a job? Only now are we coming to realize that the “benevolent paternalism” of a generous government did more harm than good. Whether we can shake this paralysis is an open question. “Fear of freedom” is now a key component of the German mentality. At least, though, the left as well as the right has finally recognized the downside of welfare. “Better late than never.”