I've just had an interesting discussion with a colleague who reckoned that I should be "pleased" that the FDP were probably coming back into power alongside the CDU, as I'm a freelancer running my own business. And indeed, my initial thoughts were that, at least my tax burden will probably go down again. But the more I look at their policies and think about the situation as a whole, the more worried I get.

Firstly, the FDP are trying to move towards a "flat tax", which is known to benefit the rich more than it does low or average earners. The reality is that you don't start hitting high levels of tax until you reach around €45,000-€50,000, and the FDP is seeking to eliminate the 43%-45% tax imposed from an income of €53,666. If you have a flat tax that roughly maintains the same tax burden on sub-€40,000 earners, it massively reduces the tax revenue from the higher earners, and the loss needs to be made up with drastically reduced public spending. If public spending cannot be cut, the shortfall ends up coming out of the pockets of the middle class. Most freelancers don't earn more than (or much more than) the €45,000 threshold for this to be relevant.

The second is to facilitate the shift between private and statutory health insurers. At the moment most statutory health insurers impose a block on people aged 40 or over from shifting from private to statutory health insurance. This is to stop people from exploiting the cheap "Lockvogel" premiums of the private insurers when they're young and healthy before switching back to the statutory ones when they get old and sick. What the FDP essentially plans to do is eliminate this block, so that the private insurers can have their pick of the young & healthy while the statutory ones are left funding the old & infirm. For those of us who make decent livings but have pre-existing conditions that make private health insurance non-viable (my statutory premiums are crippling, but they're still less than what the private ones quoted me!), this essentially means that we're going to be financing the healthcare of the low-income bracket. I expect that would probably be achieved by lifting the premium limit of around €700 a month.

The only good thing that the FDP has been proposing is the abolition of the solidarity surcharge, but most parties were proposing this anyway (except Die Linke and the Greens).

So, no, the FDP is not a good thing for freelancers. The FDP is only good if you're earning €100,000 or over.

Just ehat the world needed:An extreme right wing party gaining a position of power in Germany.
THat worked out so great the last time it happened......

lol, you do realize that East Germans pay Solidaritätszuschlag as well?
Really pathetic how West Germans (usually West German lefties) whine about East Germany (and Eastern Europe in general).

Like I said back in '91.

-What do you get when two Germanys come together?

-Out of the way.

Yeah, and where do you think the money's going, whether it's paid by a West or East German, you fucking idiot?

They're not gaining "a position of power", they're merely entering parliament.
And none of this would have happened if it hadn't been for Merkel's insane open borders policy since 2015. AfD would have collapsed long ago if it hadn't been for that.
I suggest you Americans take off all Syrian refugees from Germany and resettle them in the US, after all your country's meddling played its role in f***ing up Syria (just as you're helping f**k up Yemen right now).

Germany's Population: 82,7 Mio
Thereof eligible to vote: 61,5 Mio

Actual voter turnout: 75% (~ 46,13 Mio)
Thereof AfD-voters: 12,6% (~ 5,8 Mio)

Converted to Germany as a whole, AfD voters account for ~ 4.8% of the population.

And yes - most of them are as deplorable as the average Trump voter.
Either too dumb, to know they are getting played, or just too full of hate to care.

EDIT:
Oh, and...
Most of the AfD voters are of an age, where they think of videogames as the devil's work - so I don't think, the point, that amuses you so much, has anything to do with this.

Doesn't matter, your West German arrogance is sickening. West Germans got lucky after 1945 and behave as if somehow that was some achievement of their own, instead of being due to the simple fact that the Red Army didn't get any further west. The East payed the price for Nazism and WW2 and suffered 40 years of commie dictatorship. Under those conditions some solidarity with one's fellow countrymen shouldn't be that hard, but guys like you just constantly whine and think they're super-generous when you're just being a despicable, selfish asshole.

If we could somehow convince a Blue to rename this thread "Erections in Germany" it might stop being so hostile in here.

Not really true, AfD was especially strong in the 30-44 (16%) age bracket, which is the age of many here I'd suppose.
(see: https://www.merkur.de/politik/wer-hat-afd-gewaehlt-fast-13-prozent-bei-bundestagswahl-2017-zr-8715057.html ).
By contrast, they only got 10% of those over 60, and only 7% of those over 70.
It's rather the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats who are more and more becoming old people's parties.
And maybe the AfD will eventually produce its own video games, wouldn't surprise me (e.g. "Protecting the border" where you have to fight against illegal immigrants, or a WW2 shooter from the German point of view, with historical commentary by Gauland...).

No causality implied. The correlation alone amuses me. If anything, the lack of causality itself is funny. The ban of swastika in shoot-the-nazi games only feels, as a side-effect, like a protect-the-nazi-feelings decision, but is just part of a general antinazi stance about globally excluding their symbolism in the public place. And, to add another layer to it, it is pointless given the ease of nazi/fascist values rebranding (as illustrated individually by the Golden Dawn kinNgSbraDley here and his white supremacist avatar, and collectively by the relative success of nazism's heirs in today's elections).

It's just layers over layers of absurdities. Better sit back and enjoy.

Merkel is an ugly fat disgusting pig who destroys her country and is strictly anti-German.

come on, now you are just throwing accusations around. anti-democratic ?
I'm not sure that label even fits to the AfD, let alone Die Linke.
I'm not aware of anything in their program that puts the democratic process into question.

exactly
I thought we would have reached a point where we realized that casting stereotypes about a few million people based on the anecdotal evidence from your own experiences is nonsense.
nobody denies that there are problems in the East.
But that attitude of total rejection is just childish. That arrogant Western attitude of constantly frowning down on the East in general only causes more damage.
Somehow the West still seems surprised that the Easterners didn't just flip a switch in '90 and turned into model western citizens and all the problems vanished thanks to the joy of western capitalism. :/

again, what?
where do you see the rule of law in danger ?