Joseph Cardinal Höffner CHRISTIAN SOCIAL ... - Ordo Socialis

§ 5 The Adjustment of the Original Income Formation through the System of
Social Security
l. The Extent of Redistribution.
The original distribution of the social product, which takes place in the economic process in
the form of ground rent, interest on capital, earned income, and business profits, is adjusted to
an extraordinary extent through taxes and social contributions in the modern industrial states.
The gross national product of the Federal Republic of Germany, which in the year l975
amounted in absolute values to l,035 billion DM and by l980 climbed up to l,492 billion DM,
was faced in the same year with a tax burden of social contributions in the amount of 247 billion
DM, or 37.2% of the gross national product.
In l975, a total of 347.9 billion DM was spent on social security in the Federal Republic of
Germany . In the years since, considerably more has been paid in the further expansion of
social services. Thus, expenditures for social security increased by 4l.5% by the year l98l and
were estimated at 492.4 billion DM. Different causes probably brought about or favored this
development: two periods of inflation annihilated private savings, so that the opinion entrenched
itself ever more firmly that only social institutions were able to guarantee social security.
The institutions created for the implementation of the social insurance required by law
in the last seventy years have, in virtue of the inertial tendency of everything institutional,
become solidified and have thereby favored the expansion of the system. Finally, it is to be
noted that the First, but particularly the Second World War, plunged millions of people into
hardship, which was caused neither by personal fault nor belongs to the so-called normal crises
of modern society. In order to satisfy the claims of these population groups (war victims,
refugees, those bombed out, victims of Nazi persecution, etc.) to a fair sharing of burdens,
reparation, and indemnification, new and comprehensive institutions of social security had to
be created.
What is typical for social insurance is, on the one hand, the compulsory insurance introduced
in order to encompass without exception all the people to be protected as well as to prevent
the departure from one system of low-risk individuals, i.e. those likely to contribute much
more than they would draw.
2. Objections
Strong objections are being raised today against compulsory insurance as well as against social
equalization. Employees, it is said, attained a position of equality in the industrial society
long ago. Compulsory social insurance treats the employee like a helpless pauper who is not
able „freely to dispose of about a third of his or her earned income.“ The central question is
whether to have „greater social services and a greater determination by others of the utilization
of income or greater personal freedom of decision“ in the sense of consumer freedom. 75
The question must also be posed whether the legislator is authorized to hold „half the dutybound,
so to speak, to charity towards the other half.“ It is not evident why those who earn
less, who are also expected „to pay the same price for bread, meat, vegetables, clothing, and
cinema as do the recipients of higher incomes,“ cannot be expected to make a contribution
proportional to the risk. 76 German social insurance is not insurance at all, but a „modernized
form of poor relief,“ since social equalization is an alms, no matter what form one gives it“
(Heddy Neumeister).
75 E. Liefmann-Keil, „Wirtschaftliche Grenzen für Sozialleistungen?“ Betriebskrankenkasse 19 (1958).
76 W. Schreiber, in the Rheinische Merkur, October 10, 1956
126