Since randform is an english language blog there are actually not too many german randform readers. That is, according to our blog statistics, alone the readers from Ukraine and Russia usually exceed on average our german readership (I don’t know though how much of that should be attributed to bots). So I would like to ask the typical randform reader to excuse this blog post here which is completely about some special kind of clinch with german social politics.
\nAfter the klick a short english intro about what the post is about and then a rather long text in german, which – as I was notified by german officials – is too hard to understand for unbiased third parties.<\/p>\n
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As indicated previously I am trying to do some projects e.g. in sustainable design. In this context and in general I was trying to find out how to get a normal income as a freelancer (see e.g. here at Inhabitat**<\/a> and here at HTW<\/a>). A big problem is currently health insurance. <\/p>\n I am currently not allowed to earn more money than 375 Euro per month if I don’t want to have a big jump in my health insurance costs. That is if it should turn out that I had earned 1 Euro more than the average 375 Euro per month in the course of a year, then I would need to suddenly repay 331.71*12= 3980.52 Euro <\/strong> in health insurance cost for that year. Sounds strange?<\/p>\n The strangeness is due to the fact that german social assurance tarifs are usually calculated in (big) steps. In a recent proposal a somewhat similar step tarif was proposed for the case of a mandatory pension insurance for freelancers by minister Ursula von der Leyen<\/a>. I am not against mandatory social insurances per se, but I have quite a big problem with step tarifs, so I filed an alternative petition which adresses step tarifs in social assurances (I haven’t yet found the time and energy to dig into german tax laws…).<\/p>\n About the mandatory character of an insurance: I do think that a -at least partial- mandatory social insurance, which is adequate to real earnings, may make the social problems of freelancing more visible. Morever as a matter of fact it is a good thing that everybody contributes his\/her own share to the sick, old etc. – a mandatory insurance may allow for this. It is another question though wether one can’t regulate this with taxes. <\/p>\n Moreover it is an interesting question how mandatory insurances could be resolved in an international context. In particular in my case I had to waive my rights to receive US pension money (although, as I understood I had to pay in pension money) after working in the US and I have no clue what the pension settlements in my Japanese contract were (I am not sure but I think there were no settlements). (See also below annotation about Inhabitat**).<\/p>\n So in short with my petition I do not want to exclude mandatory insurances per se, but more or less leave that question out and concentrate on the step tarifs.<\/p>\n
\nAs a consequence of this pension proposal a petition against these proposed pension tarifs and against a mandatory pension insurance for freelancers (petition ID 23835) <\/a> was initiated, which was signed by more that 80000 people.<\/p>\n