Over the past few months, I worked as a freelance job coach funded through Germany's so-called AVGS—the "Activation and Placement Voucher." The terminology alone is insulting: it implies that unemployed individuals need to be "activated" by the state—a bureaucratic euphemism built on the assumption that people are inherently lazy.
This mirrors rhetoric from politicians like SPD leader Lars Klingbeil, who claimed his party makes "policy for the hardworking who get up early." The subtext is toxic: society is divided into compliant, valuable assets and lazy draft-dodgers. The AVGS voucher is simply the bureaucratic framing of that contempt.
