Berlin For the 18th birthday, the state has 20,000 euros at hand for everyone: What sounds like a land of milk and honey fantasy is a well-founded proposal from the Berlin economic research institute DIW.
The DIW researcher Stefan Bach has calculated that this “basic inheritance” and further aid to wealth creation for the lower and middle classes would cost the state 22.6 billion euros a year.
But that would also benefit: The inequality in the country, which is not only inherited from generation to generation but also continues to grow, would be alleviated or even slowed down.
If the lower and middle classes could improve their wealth situation in this way, the Gini coefficient – the measure by which economists express income inequality – would fall by five to seven percent.
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The lower half of the population currently has hardly any wealth, while the richest ten percent have 67 percent of total German private wealth. 35 percent concentrate on the richest top percent.
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