(Work and family; 01-02; p.2)

Assuming that there is more to it than just election-foreplay, politicians are about to decide on two fundamental areas of society: firstly on the question whether profits should also be transferred to people not participating in making them, secondly on how parents should be compensated for raising their children.
These areas are fundamental from a sociological-functional point of view as well as from a juridical. Applying the categories of the sociologist T. Parsons, one finds that the political sub-system decides on goals of political action concerning the economical and integrative sub-systems. Solicitors and barristers do know the formulas of the German basic law - equivalent to a constitution - stating in article 6 that the family is distinctively protected by the state's institutions and stating in article 20 that Germany is a social federal state.
From a political scientist's point of view, the interesting question occurs which goals of political action are discussed by which actors within what a framework.

Topic "unemployment"

The situation around the topic of unemployment may be characterised by the following:
• since the 1980s the federal unemployment rates are floating between five and ten percent while there is a growing shortage of some specific professionals;
• within the same time-span productivity is rising steadily, i.e. products and services are made and offered with a respective smaller amount of work while growth, i.e. the value of additionally produced wares and offered services compared to former periods is relatively small;
• within the same time-span quotas of real wages, i.e. the percentage of pay and salaries in regard to the value of products and services in real prices are stagnating while profits are developing unevenly.
(read on here)