The myth of the broken state

Berlin A few days ago, the head of the civil service association, Ulrich Silberbach, sounded the alarm again: the judiciary was “chronically overloaded”. Additional positions are urgently needed. In the presence of Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) at the meeting of the civil servants’ association, he had recently grumbled about the “savings orgies” in the public sector.

Such complaints about the thinned-out state are often heard. the judiciary? overloaded. The welfare state? broken saved. The healthcare system? Thinned out.

But the angry speeches are not always backed up by facts. These show that in the past 20 years the state has not been dismantled, but much has been built up. “The state has certainly not been put on lean food in recent years,” says Stefan Kooths from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.

Even the economist like Jens Südekum, who advises the SPD among others, admits: “There was blanket cut-and-dried savings by the state in the early 2000s, but not in the last 20 years.”