• Germany edition
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Germans lose faith in politics

Published: 28 Dec 09 08:44 CET
Online: http://www.thelocal.de/politics/20091228-24211.html

Germans have less faith in their political system than at any point in the post-war period, mainly due to what they see as a weak response to the financial crisis, a poll published Sunday showed.

About 70 percent of respondents said they did not feel they could count on political or business leaders, the education system or the social welfare network, the study for the Bertelsmann Foundation indicated.

Nearly one in two said they questioned representative democracy as a political system.

"Even the social market economy is far from being seen as positively as it once was," opinion researcher Peter Kruse, who carried out the study, said of Germany's system of free markets with a strong social safety net.

Costly government packages to rescue crisis-hit banks and shore up the auto industry with subsidies for trading in heavily polluting cars for newer cleaner models were seen as inadequate to revive the slumping economy.

And the poll found an €8.5 billion ($12.2 billion) tax relief package passed by parliament this month had unsettled Germans at a time of record public debt.

Germans hoped to see more investment in easing the burden on families, education and renewable energy.

A separate poll, however, found citizens of Europe's biggest economy more optimistic about their personal finances.

Thirty-seven percent of Germans said they expected to be better off in 2010 than this year, the study by the Emnid Institute for opinion research published in the Bild am Sonntag newspaper showed.

A slightly higher share, 41 percent, said they expected no change while about 20 percent said they were pessimistic about their purchasing power in the new year.

AFP (news@thelocal.de)

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Your comments about this article:

#1
11:29 December 28, 2009 by Celeon
Not the political system is the problem, the politicians that currently represent this system are what people have lost faith in.

Old, tired, idealess , unflexible and absolutely occupied with themselves.

Thats what i see when i look into the Bundestag.

Only a few younger heads with something like a spine sticking out of this 1990's retirement home. Guttenberg , Rösler.
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#2
11:32 December 28, 2009 by michael4096
I thought they had done quite well - no boom or bust, no blood on streets (remember that prediction in Uk's telegraph?), 78% of people think that life will continue as-is or even improve next year - and all immediately following one of the biggest down-turns in the last 100 years. Boring, maybe, but its not only the Chinese who are averse to interesting times...
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#3
19:32 December 28, 2009 by pepsionice
michael4096 is correct.....Germans really don't know how well things are. The same was true in the late 1960s when the RAF started up.....and their lost sense common sense fell to grasp just how well the public was.
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#4
08:57 December 29, 2009 by auniquecorn
Look at the picture, They´re all laughing, (Ha Ha, we got you by the balls.)
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