The stark difference between official truths and experienced ones

According to official Christmas as New Year's Eve statements by German Chancellor Angela Mekel, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and EU-Commission President Ursula von der Leyen who was previously Germany's defense minister, everything is fine. 2019 was a successful year and the outlook to 2020 may contain "challenges", but is overall promising.

Granted, they have to say that, at least to a certain extend. Pessimism by the leaders of a country respectively nation block must be seen as bad omen. Overall though, the words by Germany's and Europe's political leadership is seen by many as a slap in the face.

In France, the yellow-vest protests are still ongoing, the UK made just recently made its final decision to leave the EU, unemployment in Southern Europe is rampant as ever. Add to that structural problems like the demografic contraction, the politically induced energy shortage because of the new CO2-policies, the ongoing migrant crisis, the problems stemming from the Euro currency and the erosion of privacy and attempts to stiffle free speech online and you may get a glimpse of what people in Germany really are worried about.

It is not just bad news that are ignored or even fostered by the political and media establishment, that are concerning, but also the open ignorance towards them. For example, since a few years, estimates about the illegal drug trade are being added to the official GDP numbers. This means that if you sell or buy for instance cocaine, this transaction will at least implicitly contribute to the official GDP number. There are numoerous other examples for the kind of statistical whitewashing and they range from income to crime and poverty.

The result of this is a growing divergence between what decision-makers see in their reports and what consumers of mainstream media products are presented with and what people actually see on the streets. Resentment and a splitting of the public opinion follows between those who believe the numbers and those who "feel" them when adding their personal experience to the presented official analysis. But if you pay attention and look at the details, you can combine "truth" and "alternative truth", although of course, you won't find any confirmation as the result of this is beyond the Overton window just as the subjective impression of a country and society in sharp decline.

Staggering numbers for unemployment, poverty and homelessness

Most official numbers are curated carefully, but in the case for numbers or indicators for poverty there still is some resistence even within the mainstream, given the strong left-wing tendency within the mainstream media. Although the presented poverty indicators are strongly compartmentalized, it still is possible to get a reliable picture of how things look like for the bottom third of society. Three numbers seem most relevant for an estimation of how many poor people there are in Germany with poverty not measured in a relative sense to the median as it is usually done, but in the classic sense that someone can't pay his bills for basic goods and services necessary for an autonomous life.

The first number is the most obvious one. It is the number for homeless people in Germany. Estimations are that soon "1.2 million Germans could be homeless," as mainstream outlet Die Zeit states. This is most probably exaggerated. A better estimation gives MMNews stating in summer 2019 that "according to estimations, 650,000 people in Germany do not have a permanent roof over their head. Most of them live in emergency accomodations with 48,000 living permanently on the streets". Among them are 375,000 aslyum seekers, most of whom arrived in Germany since 2015 when Angela Merkel opened the borders indefinitely. Subtracting them from the total number leaves 275,000 homeless Germans.

The second relevant number is the one regarding households who couldn't pay their electricity bill and thereore got their access shut down by electricity suppliers. According to Der Spiegel, in 2016 330.000 German households were affected from that. With an average household size in Germany of two people this results in 660.000 people who can't afford electricity, hence who can be considered poor. Although this number may be three years old, electricity prices grew by 7% since then, which means the problem didn't fade away, but most likely got worse.

The third number regarding poverty in Germany is the official number of long-term unemployed people who receive social welfare payments dubbed "Hartz 4". The criteria to receice these payments is either at least one year of unemployment or having never paid into the government unemployment insurance, which pays out 80% of the last income for 12 months. By 2019, the Hartz4 system paid out welfare money to just over 3.9 Million individuals, not counting permanently disabled people or children of the recipients. If you add them, the number of recipients grows to around 5.5 Million. The full picture of unemployed Germany emerges when adding all short-term unemployed Germans. The result is 6.73 Million people for 2019 who lived off social welfare programs or even fell entirely through the net.

Almost one in 10 German is poor with growing tendency

Since the three groups of people affected by homelessnes, unemployment and electricity cut-offs are not or only to a small degree overlapping, it is possible to add the numbers and get a rough estimation about the true extend of poverty in Germany. In total the three groups consist of 7.66 Million people and this in a country of around 83 Million people (9%). If you add the migrants among the homeless population, Germany's povery rate is almost 10%.

One groups which is not included are poor pensioners, who only receive a pension on or even below the poverty line. Many of them have to additionally apply for social welfare, go to soup kitchens or fish in trash-cans for refundable bottles (25 cents per bottle). With Germany being an ageing society and the baby boomer generation being on its way into retirement, the number of poor elderly can be expected to grow significantly in the upcoming years.

The outlook is not different with other groups. The borders are still open with all pull-factors - the promise of social welfare by the German state for everyone - still in place. The same goes for the electricity prices, which can be expected to grow further, hence increasing the problem of families not being able to pay their bills. In case the global economy should slow down as many fear, all mentioned problems and groups affected by them might grow even more with more segments of society being affected.

Rampant poverty in Germany with 10% of the population poor or very poor