Comment: It’s a good thing that people’s income is being disputed

The dispute about citizen income is not just about finances, but about different images of people. So it is right for the centrist parties to struggle for a consensus.

AIn the end there will be a consensus. Exactly what that looks like is an open question, but it can be ruled out that the traffic light will completely bury its plans to introduce citizen income because the Union is completely blocking it in the Bundesrat and the mediation committee. The rifts are not deep enough for that. On the issues that are particularly controversial between the CDU/CSU and traffic lights, i.e. the amount of protective assets, the duration of the waiting period, and the sanctions, there will be agreement somewhere in the middle. How it is in functioning democracies.

Nevertheless, the current dispute over what the SPD likes to call the biggest welfare state reform in twenty years is anything but superfluous. Rather, it was high time that such a dispute took place again. Above all, however, that it is being fought between the parties of the center, between the SPD and the Greens on the one hand, the CDU and CSU on the other and an FDP, which is part of the federal government, but in the question of how much the state does to you has to give help to people without work and how much he can demand of him in terms of performance and sacrifice, traditionally does not stand on the side of red-green.