Germany’s latest budget plan, under the ever-industrious Herr Klingbeil, puts the nation on a path of eye-watering debt—hundreds of billions, mind you—in the name of defense, infrastructure, and the current darling of the middle classes: climate protection. One is almost touched by the naïve confidence with which politicians accumulate liabilities, dispensing nearly 80 billion euros on military splurges and another 60 billion from climate funds, only to discover a cavernous shortfall of 170 billion euros within a few short years. Predictably, interest payments and “social spending”—a perennial boondoggle—are ballooning out of all control, chiefly as the state lavishes billions on pension largesse and benefit top-ups for the unproductive masses.

What’s especially telling is the Finance Minister's delicately ominous warning: spending cuts, stricter program reviews, and “reforms”—all code for finally admitting that Germany cannot go on living beyond its means simply to prop up entitlements for its most demanding and least productive citizens. The largest slice of the budget, of course, vanishes into the bottomless pit of pension subsidies, as the state bends over backwards to “stabilize” retiree incomes and “expand” mother’s pensions. All this, naturally, while ruling out any mention of higher retirement ages—the only genuinely sensible reform—because heaven forbid Germany’s ageing populace might be gently persuaded to work a few years longer.

But let us address the real issue candidly, as only a member of society’s uppermost echelon can. The vast majority of these expenditures are the direct consequence of a society coddling itself in comfort. Endless benefits, subsidies, and handouts have created a bloated welfare apparatus, sheltering millions from the stimulus of necessity and the ennobling demands of ambition. Pension expansions, housing allowances, invariably increasing unemployment provisions: these are not the marks of a thriving nation, but of an indolent and entitled one, coasting on long-faded glories.

The government’s faint hope, meanwhile, rests on a pitiful one percent economic growth rate and miraculous “stimulus” to save the day, as if German industry—strangled already by overregulation, taxes, and the demands of imbecilic populists—can simply be willed back to life. External risks, from American tariffs to global disruptions, are brushed aside as mere annoyances, rather than existential threats to a sclerotic export machine.

Allow me then, to offer the harsh but necessary truth: until the German government dares to curtail its grossly swollen welfare state, restore the dignity of work, and reject the corrosive cult of fiscal indulgence, no amount of wishful thinking or budgetary tinkering will suffice. Perhaps, when the inevitable crisis arrives and social benefits dry up, the masses will come to appreciate the virtues of prudent stewardship—though regrettably, history suggests such lessons are learned only in adversity. How tiresome it is, truly, to watch a once-great nation mortgage its future simply to avoid discomforting its most insistent dependants. But then, sacrifice was always best left to others.