More and more load, less and less performance: The bloated state – how an unleashed bureaucracy bleeds out the citizen

The everyday life of citizens is under ever more severe pressure because the state is constantly demanding new taxes and levies, while the noticeable performance is clearly dwindling at the same time. The individual experiences how more his income is paid to the tax authorities month after month without the supply, the public infrastructure or the reliability of state servicesimprove. The impression of a huge apparatus is created that insatiably reaches for means, but is becoming less and less obliged to ensure order, security, education or a functioning general interest in return. The citizen becomes a pure payer who works from morning to night to finance a system that he is increasingly meeting with shrug when hehimself needed something.

Ministry growth instead of the will to reform

While the citizen is being asked to pay at all corners, the ministries are growing like heavy concrete blocks, seemingly unimpressed by crises, savings demands or reason. New presentations are being created, new jobs are being planned, new responsibilities are invented, all under the pretext of increasing world complexity, while the real problems remain unaffected. reformare announced, postponed, talked up and finally buried in the thicket of the turmoil of responsibility. Instead of streamlining structures, reducing duplication of work and pooling responsibilities, the impression is that every dissatisfaction in the population is answered with a new working group and every crisis with an additional staff that produces paper, but no solutions.The state is getting wider, not better.

The migrating army of officials

The administration is like a wandering army that commutes back and forth between the state capitals, the capital, the old federal capital and the European institutions and exhausts itself in conferences, meetings, round-school rounds and conferences. Business trips, meeting plans, minutes and templates fill the days while the citizens outside the door on a notice, aapproval or a decision awaits. This permanent movement creates the image of a state that is constantly busy without actually bringing anything to an end. The more levels, committees and interfaces are created, the longer the paths become, the more unclear the responsibilities become and the more convenient it becomes to postpone responsibility until no one is tangiblereally wants to be responsible.

Reforms in the quicksand of responsibilities

When it comes to reform, many have known for a long time that this actually means the next game of hide-and-seek. A commission is set up, an expert opinion is awarded, a working group is established, and in the end the knowledge of the quicksand of the responsibilities disappears. What urgently needs to be deslagged, digitized and simplified remains in the state of eternal transition, during theapparatus continues to grow. The citizen sees that his money seeps into administrative classes that deal with each other instead of creating tangible improvements. This creates the impression of a system that has lost the ability to renew and is only busy preserving itself.

A network of regulations that crush the citizen

Parallel to the expansion of the apparatus, an increasingly dense network of regulations, forms, obligations to provide evidence and deadlines is growing, which is focused on the lives of citizens. Every new idea, every new claim, every political outcry is cast into a regulation that creates new obligations for companies, associations, the self-employed and private individuals. The citizen spends more and more timeto obtain certificates, provide information, upload documents, meet deadlines and avoid errors that can become expensive. This thicket is not for clarity, but for the self-preservation of an apparatus that justifies its existence with every further piece of paper. With each new form, the administration creates new work that it as proof of itspresented necessity.

The state as a self-sufficient body of supply

Instead of acting as a service provider that creates the framework for a free, self-responsible life, the state is increasingly presenting itself as a self-sufficient body of care that first thinks of its own apparatus. The impression is that the real goal is no longer to make life easier for citizens, but to protect and to protect their own structure.expand. Budget debates revolve around titles and ask, but hardly about the question of which tasks still make sense at all. New branches of the authorities are created without old ones being abolished. Projects are started without ever being checked to see if they bring the announced benefit. A structure is growing that, although constantly talking about efficiency, but above all itsown inertia managed.

More income, less consideration

The citizen can see from his own reality how unhealthy this relationship has become. Streets are decayed, schools are struggling with a lack, offices are overburdened and hardly accessible, the police are complaining about overtime and a lack of staff, hospitals reach their limits. At the same time, the citizen hears that government spending is growing, that income is higher than ever,that the burden on the workforce is constantly increasing. The contradiction between rising income and noticeably declining performance is deeply immersed in consciousness. It’s like paying for a full-bodied feast and getting a thin soup at the end, while in the background the kitchen is expanded into a gigantic warehouse where nobody cooks anymorecan.

Alienation between citizen and state

This development leads to a creeping but profound alienation between citizens and the state. Those who feel like they only ever pay and rarely get something back lose their confidence in the honesty of the system. The state no longer appears as a joint project in which everyone is doing their part, but as an anonymous boarder who is constantly receivingreports while he is diving at the service at the same time. People experience how basic achievements that used to be taken for granted are delayed, restricted or linked to complicated conditions. Nevertheless, the tax administration reliably receives every deadline, every additional payment, every advance payment. The difference in reliability speaks volumes.

The double punishment of the working center

The working center, which can neither live on generous social benefits nor have assets that protect it from state greed, feels this most strongly. She gets up every day, pays wage taxes, social security contributions, excise duties, fees and duties and at the same time is overwhelmed with growing bureaucracy in companies, families and everyday life. Who runs a small business, whoBuilds, who rents an apartment, who organizes care, who raises children or supports relatives, knows the ever-increasing duties in detail. These people are not only financially but also doubled in terms of time and nerves: They finance the apparatus and at the same time have to fight their way through his loops. The state, which was once intended as a support, feelsincreasingly like a burden on her shoulders for her.

Management without closeness to reality

The further the apparatus grows, the farther it moves away from the reality of life of those who carry it. In the authorities’ buildings, models are designed, regulations are created and specifications are formulated that may seem logical on paper, but are a hindrance, expensive or simply unrealistic in people’s everyday lives. Anyone who in a ministry about new specifications for crafts,Care, trade or family decides, rarely gets to feel the consequences of this in real life. The only thing left for the citizen then is to adapt, swallow, to submit. The impression is solidified that the state no longer listens, but claims what is right and that it uses its power to secure itself.

The silent rebellion inside

A silent rebellion grows under the surface. She shows up in resignation, in internal dismissal, on the question of whether effort is still worthwhile. When the state responds with new burdens for every extra hour of work, for every investment, for every initiative, many people become hesitant, cautious, suspicious. You save yourself commitment, reduce your commitment,withdraw. This is not a loud protest, but a quiet withdrawal that weakens the country in the long run. A state that treats its citizens like inexhaustible resources shouldn’t be surprised if this resource dries out.

A system that undermines its own foundation

At the end, the image of a system that undermines its own foundation is created. Because a state does not live on ever new ministries, regulations and bodies, but on the trust of its citizens that their contributions are used sensibly. Those who lose this trust risk more than bad polls. He risks that people have the inner bond with the communitylose that they no longer recognize the meaning of the whole. A state that demands more and less and does less, who abducts reforms and cultivates bureaucracy, no longer acts in the sense of the people to whom he is actually obliged. He turns into a cumbersome structure that lies on society like a stone instead of giving it a hold. Exactly in thisDevelopment lies the real danger: that a community that is supposed to protect the citizen becomes an apparatus that bleeds it out.