The erosion of the center of society and the search for new security

The current political and economic situation requires more than just a short-term diagnosis of acute crisis symptoms. The question of which long-term social developments are behind the current unrest is much more decisive. Here it is necessary to examine what the new attractiveness of simple answers and authoritarianleaders actually justified. The voters in the United States did not elect a certain political figure because they believed the majority of coal mining in a particular state represents the country’s future. Nor do the European Central Bank’s programs to buy government bonds alone drive voters in France intoThe poor populist movements.

The faded ideal of the leveled society

At its core, behind such and similar phenomena of our time is something much more fundamental than mere political upsets. The so-called leveled medium-sized society, which the sociologist Helmut Schelsky invokes more than described in detail in the middle of the twentieth century, has slipped enormously in recent decades. Conservative traditionalistsMay rather combine a number of lifeworld symbols with this term. This includes the classic family of father, mother and two to three children, with the man being the sole breadwinner and the woman responsible for the household. In addition, there is the single-family house with a front yard on the outskirts of town, the well-kept but not ostentatious mid-range car, the summer holiday in the south and theChristmas days with the grandparents.

The discrepancy between statistics and reality of life

The joint dinner at 7 a.m. and the Sunday roast with dumplings were just as much a part of this picture as popular television programs that promised the children a better future. The problem with this sentimental idea of the middle class, however, is that even those who dream of it know that hardly anyone lives this way today. The definition ofMiddle class by sociologists and economists, however, does not really help in analyzing this discrepancy. If this group is defined by so-called median income, the middle class has been stable for decades, more or less in all western industrialized nations. This value denotes the amount at which the upper and lower half of allShare income exactly, which currently corresponds to about one thousand and forty-five euros net for singles and for couples with two children three thousand forty-forty euros net.

The growing gap between rich and poor

With an income of eighty to one hundred and fifty percent of this median value, fifty percent of all people belong to the middle class. If you go up to two hundred and fifty percent of the median income, which means about eight thousand six hundred euros net for a family of four, it is already four out of five people. with individual findings, such as the comparatively moderate coffee pricesIn meeting points of the cultural scene of Berlin or the rents that are unaffordable for many average earners in the entire city of Frankfurt or Munich, this statistical finding can be either brightened or dramatized a little. Black painting in terms of middle-class works best if you set the most colorful outbursts upwards as contrasts. still twentyFor years, a CEO earned on average for forty-five times an average employee, while today he collects a hundred and thirty times as much as his accountants.

The illusion of material comparisons

According to a regularly published study by the International Labor Organization, the ten percent of the highest paid top earners currently earn almost as much as the lower half of all employees. This may be terribly unfair or just unnecessary, but in the end things are no different than that of the tenth of large companies, the eighty percent of allgenerate profits. Here, a handful of overpaid functionaries have so much money that they don’t know where to do it, which is why they also have to carry it to the bank as play money for others. Our impression is that with such numbers, one usually only ends up with academically upgraded comparisons from the department of purely material possessions. According to this pattern, they would haveFirst protest voters just afraid of their car, the last ones finally feared for their boat.

The historical promises to the post-war generation

Let’s take a look just behind the veil of the purely material, because in our opinion the questions have to be different. One has to ask oneself what the central promises to the middle class of post-war society were and whether they still apply without restrictions. The first promise was that social advancement is possible for everyone and both more diligence and moreEducation not only enable this advancement, but almost guarantee. Anyone who works diligently and regularly undergoes further training can rise individually in the salary structure, in the deeply staggered corporate or authority hierarchies and finally also in social status. Whoever invests as large parts of his wealth gains as possible in the education of his children will be the nextpromote the generation to the next higher orbit, so that they will actually be better off.

The stability and the new professional horizons

The second promise said that social advancement is finally, but in principle it is a one-way street. As long as a failure of fate that is not out of place or even infringement is thwarted by the bill, income levels, positions and social status are retained once. Only a few still come up, in the middle are for itPlenty of posts to distribute, and only a few fall down the career ladder. The most well-known rule of leadership of this epoch was the principle by which everyone is promoted in a hierarchy to the level of their personal inability and then also remains there. The third promise was that modern capitalism is not only constantly new things, but also constantlyinvents great new jobs.

The break of the old certainties

Preferably for office job holders, there were therefore over-the-counter career options, on the one hand in the administrations of the companies themselves, who needed more and more staff for organizational and financial control. Secondly, in the area of business-related services such as engineering offices, advertising agencies, law firms, auditors andmanagement consultancy. And thirdly, in a long-standing state sector. The fourth promise assured that you don’t have to change the sport, but the rules of the game and the game technique can sometimes change. Anyone who has learned a specific profession will practice this profession all his life, often even in the same company that, by the way, after forty yearsstill called the same as back then.

The systematic dissolution of the opportunities for advancement

Everyone should constantly expand their professional qualifications, and those who are willing and able to bear more responsibility will also have more skills. On the payroll or business card, however, only the title names before the job title will change, which applies to engineers, managers and skilled workers alike. All four promise to theSME company, however, were and will continue to be collected step by step. This is done through technical progress, especially through the digitization of all areas of activity, not least of many administrative functions that we believed for decades that only human decision-makers were able to fill them. In addition, there is the stillUnabated increasing speed of this technical progress, thanks to which the idea of a halfway unbreakable working life has long since degenerated into a pure illusion.

The need for new security mechanisms

This change is also accelerated on demand by the economically and technically enforced trend towards flat hierarchies, temporary teams and myriads of external service providers. Finally, some of the useful, sometimes only financially enforced slimming treatments in the public sector contribute to this development. All of this is not just about the speed and extent of thetechnical and social progress could gradually exceed the thirst for experience and the processing speed of an average human life. It is much more about the fact that higher speeds need a much greater degree of security. The very first automobiles still did not require a windshield, but beyond the eighty horsepower or the hundredThe belt requirement was required by the hour kilometer.

The basic income as a shelter

Today, the airbag, anti-lock braking system and navigation device are standard equipment for every normal mid-range car, and all vehicles may soon be steering themselves. To do that, it takes a lot of intelligent technology, and far more and far more intelligent technology will take it to control the vehicles in their driving. One could have the idea of aSo think this way, as an accident-proof passenger cell and the outlet zone of our global high-speed economic system. In this strange sport, the devices are many times more powerful today than thirty years ago, and the accidents look no less dramatic, quite the opposite. But there are hardly any fatal accidents anymore, because almostThe drivers always climb out of the rubble of their cars unharmed afterwards.