Yes, you would think that... but apparently they didn't.
I mean, personally I am all for a strong social security system, strong unions etc. I really want that, I couldn't live in a country like the USA. But these people, they just want the state to do EVERYTHING for them. We made € 1 trillion of new debt to spend over there + a lot of tax-money they got.
Now we cut the unemployment benefits and made the unemployed prove they search for a job, simply because we ran out of money, and instead of searching for a job or stating something on their own, they demonstrate against it.
Given our economical situation even the unions have been fairly reasonable in the last years, but a lot of people in the east haven't.
Then, add to that that its now practically impossible to govern this country. We have 16 states now, the elections are purely at random and every one of them could change the majorities in our 'Senate'. That means that there is an election somewhere every few month, because of that the federal government doesn't want to hurt anyone. Ofc it's not like the federal government could actually decide anything on its own, our 'Senate' has some form of veto-power over almost everything. Sure, Schröder could keep us out of the Iraq war but foreign affairs is almost the only thing he can decide on his own. If you now think the states do a lot of things on their own, you are wrong. Except for the education-system (
which sucks) they also have no real power. its all one big mix-up between federalism and centralism. it more or less worked with fewer states, but now things became impossible.
let me give you one word of advice: if you have a federalism that actually works KEEP IT, do not, under any circumstances, let the federal government take any more power than absolutely necessary. Either that or completly switch to centralism. For here i don't care which way as long as we get a working government.
but other than that, life's great :)