Defensive offer, or have house prices become so expensive?

If a majority wants something like that, nothing stands in the way of it in a democracy. Completely gut feeling and without effort from my brain, I would be against it - of course without good rational arguments.

Anyone who has worked with - let's call them "difficult" - families even once is almost immediately in favor of more child benefits

There is some truth to that. Possibly then invest directly in child support. One educator per 3 children in school, then one per 5 children in addition to the teaching staff.
Pay educators (much) better (or exempt from taxes?), but tighten training and selection procedures.

The problem is that this form of "family support" ties up a lot of money that ultimately is missing in the support of real families. By that I don't only mean same-sex marriage but the splitting for childless couples in general.

Briefly in advance, we do not benefit from income splitting since we earn almost the same. However, I think that income splitting, even for unmarried couples, has a certain justification, since you are considered a community of need and thus, in case of need, you would also have to support your spouse financially.

I do not want to claim that income splitting is the best measure for this, but I find it fair that with the increased (financial) obligations you take on, rights also come with them. (Accordingly, this could of course now be extended to all communities of need)

I merely pointed out that the real estate bubble leads to us being unable to pay the expected inheritance taxes without selling or mortgaging the house, since the exemptions have not increased accordingly. That was a purely factual statement.

Sorry, this brings me to tears. If you have to sell the house, then you get a princely consolation prize! If you are so attached to the house, then you just have to move in. If you don’t move in, then it’s like any other asset and you have to pay taxes on it beyond certain limits. If you take a closer look at society, you will see in what a privileged position you are.

Anyway - how did we actually ... end up at Wessi-shaming?

We got there via Ossi-shaming from ;)

Apart from the fact that the Ossi-Wessi thing could also be dropped 33 years after reunification, it doesn’t fit here anyway. The West was (among other things) rebuilt through the Marshall Plan, the East (among other things) through the solidarity tax – which everyone paid (including the Ossis). And the fact that much in the East was only rebuilt with a delay after reunification was due to history/system reasons, not a failure of "the Ossis" – after all, they did not have much say until 1989. This whole debate here has nothing to do with it anyway, because real estate prices have soared everywhere in recent years, East and West alike. Partly beyond the exemptions for inheritance tax, however one feels about that.

And since we're already off-off-topic:

Yes, the treatment of unmarried couples is pretty unfair. In fact, the concept basically does not exist; the life partner is treated just like any random stranger. I already mentioned this 15 pages ago and it’s not only about inheritances.

The discussion about unmarried vs. married couples revolved around inheritance tax. Marriage itself is okay – at least I can decide that myself. By now even in all varieties. What I personally have problems with are the many legal regulations derived from descent, "blood" relationship, etc. I can't help it, but I always immediately think of the darker times of our history. Why are there compulsory shares in inheritances whose complexity is no less than an Aryan certificate? Why are exemptions dependent on these lines of descent? Why can’t a testator freely decide to whom he leaves his inheritance? Maybe even with a personal exemption related to the testator that he can distribute among his heirs? We have already had examples regarding family law. And citizenship also depends on blood, for example with Volga Germans... a Turkish family may have lived here for three generations and still has to struggle.

We arrived here because of the Ossi-shaming by @pagoni2020

Ok, regarding the comments from and now also , I might have expressed myself somewhat incorrectly or at least unclearly about the topic "Ossi-Wessi" further above. If I have offended anyone with this, I hereby expressly apologize, especially since exactly the opposite of what was understood is my way of thinking and living.

Those who know me personally or read my stuff here more often know that I have often been strongly bothered here in the forum by xenophobic or generalized judgments against groups of people.
I voluntarily live with my Saxon wife near Dresden (formerly Baden-Württemberg), as does my son, and another will soon follow.
So either I am masochistic or one can assume that, starting from myself, I have exactly zero to do with the topic "Ossi-Wessi" and related discrimination stuff. In our family, there is a Syrian refugee as well as a young Latvian man, who both feel like family members; we ourselves and my children have lived in various countries around the world. Our diverse experiences tell us clearly that it is NEVER a question of origin nor of social hierarchy.
As my former boss once wisely said: "If someone is a jerk, they're a jerk no matter where they come from!" Exactly that is my opinion and perception, no matter where I have been.

My parents raised me modern and open-minded for that time; we have always had all kinds of guest workers living with us since the 1960s. Shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall, two refugee couples from the "East" lived one after another and free of charge in my apartment while I stayed elsewhere during that time. I am by no means a hero but I am a humanitarian with an absolutely social orientation, and I insist on that!

In the "West," I have repeatedly heard malice against "Ossis," from the "terrible solidarity tax" to the dialect or alleged lack of performance—often from people whose West German dialect sounded so dull that the Saxon dialect almost sounded like a sonata in comparison. Yes, that unfortunately existed and still exists.

Here in the "East," I have been experiencing for several years now that xenophobia has almost become common language or is long since socially acceptable. This never applies to everyone but it is noticeable and widespread. It is not even only about the "foreigner," it is equally directed against the "Wessi" in general, so much so that even our Latvian and Syrian friends have said that people treat me as a "Wessi" just as strangely as they are treated as a "typical" foreigner.
It also happens that one sometimes has to point out even in private or in one’s own house that this was exactly a stupid and discriminatory statement against me as a so-called "Wessi." My wife is extremely bothered by this because she knows both "sides." This makes people uncomfortable because it happens unconsciously, but it is no less unpleasant for the person affected. It is often used as thoughtlessly as misogynistic or homophobic remarks still are, and people do not understand that they could hurt someone or that it is simply indecent.

As I am known to like writing longer posts, I also enjoy having more profound conversations with people here in Saxony, and therefore I know that often a nostalgic and false image of the "West" still lingers in many minds, which leads to noticeable rejection. Nowhere else in the world have I felt unwelcome; here in Saxony, however, I have felt that more than once—so practically in my own country, in my own "home";).
Recently, a very nice craftsman told me that people on the other side of the Elbe are just completely different, after all, they have a different culture there... only 300 meters across the Elbe, this is how it is perceived by a person who is by no means malicious.

In this respect, I had mentioned that perhaps this feeling of being shortchanged, disadvantaged, or betrayed can ALSO be an East-West issue here, as it is so omnipresent in the "East" and often (not always) understandably so. I still consider talking about this just as necessary today as I did back then!