Rising social security contributions: The middle class is threatened with overburdening

Many employees are currently receiving mail from their health insurance companies. Additional contributions are rising, with some providers charging their insured members up to 1.25 percentage points more. Average full-time earners are losing more than €300 net per year as a result – just a few months after the last wave of increases.

There's a good chance things will continue in this direction – and not just with health insurance. The chronically cash-strapped nursing care funds are also considering higher contributions, unemployment insurance is expecting a billion-dollar deficit, and not even the responsible minister and leader of the SPD believes that the coalition's generous pension gifts will have no impact on contribution rates.

There's no doubt: Social security contributions, which already constitute taxes on low-income earners, threaten to overwhelm the middle class as well. It's not scaremongering when economist Martin Werding predicts taxes amounting to 50 percent of gross income. It's math. Employees would lose every fourth euro earned, and employers would also have to prepare for massive additional burdens.

It's astonishing and even outrageous how little politicians care about this problem. On the contrary: Instead of resolutely modernizing the social systems, the CDU/SPD government is contributing to their decline—see pension resolutions, see planned adjustments to hospital reform.

This is not only irresponsible, it is also short-sighted. The relief for people and businesses, which Chancellor Friedrich Merz is only managing to deliver with difficulty and on a smaller scale than announced, will be more than offset by rising social security contributions. Frustration is inevitable. And it is justified.