Maternity to Eternity

In West Germany, mother's milk is a government-subsidized commodity; by law, working mothers get three months' pregnancy leave at full pay, plus more paid vacation if they nurse the baby. Bonn's vested interest in breast feeding is the result of the most thorough welfare state in the West, with the possible exception of Sweden. Though Ludwig Erhard's Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle) has sometimes created the impression that West Germany is a wonderland of freewheeling laissez faire, the German people are in fact pampered and cosseted with social benefits from maternity to eternity. But today, for the first time, Germans are beginning to grumble at the exorbitant cost of all this welfare.

Something Has to Give. For each child, parents receive a government allowance of up to $210 a year. Through secondary school, education is free, and at the university level, heavily subsidized. Federal funds help underwrite both home mortgages and apartment rents. All blue-collar employees and their families are covered by national health insurance. If they are permanently disabled, on or off the job, the government provides a pension for life, and funeral benefits are handsome enough to make the German way of death fairly lavish.

Price supports prop up the farmer and tax write-offs cushion the new businessman. Property owners are reimbursed for wartime losses sustained at the hands of either the Nazis or the Allies, and there are special payments for war widows as well as to refugees from East Germany. "If you were a nursing mother who had fled from the East, lost your fortune and your husband in the war, and had broken your leg," says one government official, "why, you'd be a millionaire."

Germany's welfare program was launched by Bismarck, who wanted to undercut the Socialists; it was continued by Hitler. Old legislation usually stayed on the books while new measures were piled on. Konrad Adenauer continued to build the welfare state, often adding benefits at election time. Since 1950, the cost of the social program has quadrupled to 12.5 billion dollars, creating what looms as the biggest headache in Erhard's administration.

Nearly half of government revenues --and of each German's taxes--goes to pay for the welfare program. "Something just has to give," says a Finance Ministry official. "If we continue at this rate, we are going to wind up taking more away from individuals than we are giving back to them in the way of public services."

Pained Status Seekers. Faced with the growing costs of defense and domestic development, Chancellor Erhard would like to overhaul the entire program with a new Sozialpaket (social package). With more than 800,000 jobs going begging, unemployment insurance is largely an anachronism; last year, employers were actually exempted from their mandatory contributions. In 1961, six weeks a year of sick leave at full pay became compulsory, and since then industrial absenteeism has skyrocketed; the healthiest workers are apt to claim their six weeks as a sort of extra vacation.

At the same time, prosperity has made the national health insurance unpopular; status seekers are pained that the plan provides only ward hospitalization, restricts choice of doctors, and discourages prescribing such relatively nonessential medical delights as tranquilizers, of which Germans have become increasingly fond. "Why should I sit around all day in the waiting room of a second-rate doctor with all those grubby mineworkers or street cleaners or whatever they are?" says a pretty Bonn secretary. "I can afford better."

But any attempt to take anything out of the social package is met with violent attacks from both left and right. Example: last week when Erhard attempted to spread out an additional $300 million for war victims over two years, instead of paying it all at once, his own party bitterly attacked him in Parliament. The Socialists and the trade unions fear that any reform will mean less overall income for employees. Businessmen, on the other hand, are convinced that if the government reduces its welfare expenditures, they will have to make up the difference out of their own pockets. Though both sides agree that reform is needed to avoid deficit spending and inflation, the government has found that it is far easier to give than to take away from people what they already have.

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