[authentic]

this headline should read: fringe group of 44 wealthy germans demand higher taxes, strangely making the news.

the rest of the country opted to kick out the socialists from government in recent national elections, replacing them with a libertarian party running on a tax cut platform.

[sbt]

I'm not from Germany, but the CDU is decidedly not a libertarian party. It's conservative center-right. You don't really have an equivalent of this in the US.

[danielh]

I think he referred to FDP, which replaced the SPD.

Currently, Germany has a coalition of CDU + SPD which will become a coalition of CDU + FDP.

[eru]

And the FDP is not really libertarian. We should call them liberal, but in the old, European sense of the word --- not in the American sense, where it just means socialist.

(Anyway, every party in Germany is a socialdemocratic party in some sense.)

The FDP (free democratic party) had its best showing at a federal election ever, with around 15% of the vote. (So did the socialist party with around 12% or so.)

[wheels]

Actually libertarian is pretty close to the right translation for the FDP since the word liberal has been redefined in English to mean the political left (though not socialist, which in the US has also been redefined to Marxist-Leninist). Libertarianism, in American English, is closer to a classical laissez faire liberalism which the FDP proclaims.

(Note: I'm an American that's been living in Germany for the last 7.5 years.)

[eru]

OK. I thought libertarian meant more or less Anarcho-Capitalist, which the FDP aren't. I guess the FDP is pretty close to the Economist on most issues.

[wheels]

That may be somewhat confused by the fact that a lot of internet libertarians do tend towards anarcho-capitalism, but the Libertarian Party in the US is pretty close to the FDP.

[lucifer]

That's right. In US we have establishment-Red and establishment-Blue: a 1 bit political space.

[eru]

If you had a proportional voting system, you'd probably get more parties. (Parties with a chance to get someone elected.)

I don't know if that's good or not. Germany uses a strange in-between system, and it also has a threshold, i.e. you need 5% of the votes (or alternatively win three districts) to get into parliament.

[lucifer]

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/hrm/browse_110.html

If you review that list, you'll note that where the rubber meets the ground (rules of operations) there is a huge body of governing rules that are extra-constitutional and developed over the course of the past couple of hundred years by the two establishment parties.

As an analogy, consider supplying independently developed applications for a platform with a proprietary OS where the OS vendor has a vested interest in keeping independents out (or ineffective).

And even before reaching the forum, the non establishment entities must dance to the tune orchestrated by (you guessed it) the establishment:

http://www.fec.gov/members/members.shtml

Its a chicken and egg problem. We need a Supreme Court that can review and strike down faulty laws enacted by the entrenched interests to revise the system. But to get to the Supreme Court, the candidate needs to be nominated by the establishment President and approved by the establishment Congress.

[bpyne]

To be accurate, your summation should read: "this headline should read: fringe group of 44 wealthy Germans demand higher taxes on German people deemed wealthy for a period of 2 years, strangely making the news."

"the rest of the country opted to kick out the socialists from government in recent national elections, replacing them with a libertarian party running on a tax cut platform"

The rest of the country was not a target of their demand. In fact, it was the rest of the country they want to help with their own money.

[fnid]

Those 44 people could own 50% of Germany. In America, the fringe group that is the top 1% owns 90% of the wealth, gets lots of subsidies from our Government and still pays less tax as a percentage than the other 99% of poorer Americans.