Oh, dear Lars Klingbeil, I admit it: I pay the top tax rate. But I also say: You won’t get a cent more – otherwise I’ll emigrate; to Italy for example.

With the solidarity surcharge, church tax and all the other friendly tokens for the state, half of it is already gone. My tax advisor tells me this every time in that compassionate voice that you usually only use when someone dies. It feels like he’s telling me: You actually inherited a huge fortune – but unfortunately the money is gone before you could even touch it.

SPD plans: Even the most patient taxpayer becomes nervous

I’ve gotten used to it. People get used to everything. But now you want to join the SPD increase my tax rate further. And I have the feeling that it won’t just be half gone. And that’s where, forgive me, even the most patient taxpayer gets nervous.

I don’t want to interfere with your arithmetic skills at all. As is well known, political mathematics is its own discipline: two plus two equals three, four or one special fund, depending on the coalition.

Why do you actually need my money?

But what no one explains to me: What do you actually need my money for? I live in Düsseldorf. There are several drug hotspots within a one and a half kilometer radius.

• Will they disappear if I pay more taxes?
• The train runs more punctually?
• Will an airport be finished before my grandchildren retire, which means they won’t be able to live on it?
• Or would you perhaps waive taxes for young self-employed people and entrepreneurs who build something with responsibility for others if I pay more?
• Would you finance student loans and master’s exams in addition to the fourth integration course?

I don’t believe in it. I have the impression that the state is a bottomless pit into which we pour money like water into the Rhine: it flows on and gets distributed somewhere in the ocean.

Prosperity is a yeast dough, not a cake: an appeal to Lars Klingbeil

You say it’s about justice. The rich should pay more so that the poor get something.

That sounds noble, like a fairy tale from the Brothers Grimm. But your image of prosperity is wrong. You think in terms of pies: If one person eats more, there is less left for the others. In reality, wealth is a yeast dough. It grows if you let it. And as he grows, everyone gets more. Wherever wealth arises, poverty disappears. Conversely, no one has ever been taxed out of poverty.

Don’t you understand that? Sure, that doesn’t fit into the picture either. Instead, you take more and more yeast out of the dough and then you’re surprised that it doesn’t rise. At some point all that’s left is a flat, dry flatbread – regulated by the state, distributed fairly and equally bland for everyone.

Maybe you should think less about how to distribute the cake and more about how to bake it in the first place. Otherwise we’ll all soon be sitting at the table with empty plates. That would be fair for everyone, but everyone would have to starve.