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This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): ElaineLiu.
This article definitely needs a history system, starting with:
Bismarck's social legislation system, which was modified in various ways up until 1945, but from a post-WWII POV, largely stayed the same at least up until 1933.
The next phase would be the 1949-1966 ordoliberalism aka social market economy under chancellors Konrad Adenauer and Ludwig Erhard. One notable development was the Sozialhilfe of 1962, which would exist up until 2005 and, while one had to apply for it and qualify by actually being poor, worked largely like some modern Basic Income schemes, as such as that one could benefit from it lifelong under the sole condition one stayed poor and regularly re-applied (which is a large difference to today's Hartz concept, see below), without any necessity to do anything but be poor and regularly re-apply.
The fourth stage would be neoliberalism that began in earnest with Helmut Kohl's chancellorship in 1982. First major cuts in welfare spending and the taxes funding both welfare and the public or state budget overall. After German re-unification in 1990, also a huge wave of privatisations.
And finally, the fifth stage as a natural radicalization of neoliberalism, which came into being with the Hartz concept in the years 2003-2005. Not necessarily as it had been written down by Peter Hartz, as its eventual implementation was based largely on the so-called Lambsdorff paper (see de:Konzept für eine Politik zur Überwindung der Wachstumsschwäche und zur Bekämpfung der Arbeitslosigkeit) instead, namely the parts that had not been implemented by the 1982-1998 Kohl administration. When it had been originally presented in 1982, the Lambsdorff paper had led to the end of Schmidt's still largely countercyclical chancellorship by means of a motion of no-confidence, when Kohl's CDU party promised the economically liberal FDP to implement it.
In hindsight, the 1949-1982 stages of ordoliberalism and Keynesianism (basically the West-German equivalent to the UK post-war consensus), and even still partly under the Kohl administration, seem to be much more similar to each other than to the neoliberalism that followed. Under current neoliberalism, the economical policies of West Germany of 1949-1982, and partly even up until 2005, are widely denounced as "socialism akin to East Germany" nowadays.
Oh, and in case any supply-side neoliberals wonder what much of the above actually has to do with welfare: In the era of 1949-1982 (and partly up until the early 2000s), people still remembered that a working economy needs consumers with a high spending power, also thanks to welfare and related tax-funded economical policies (regulated agreed wages, nationalised industries, economic stimulus, strict employment laws, etc). All of which were various forms of demand-side economics by concentrating on consumer spending power (rather than output levels of private industries, aka supply-side economics), with welfare as an important factor among them. --2003:EF:13CC:B636:C539:D896:48CB:CE23 (talk) 04:10, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): ElaineLiu.