The Price of Dignity: Why No One Resigns Anymore – When Million-Dollar Salaries Make Dishonor Affordable

Rule of the Mediocre: How Our System Systematically Rewards Clinging to Power

Why no one resigns voluntarily anymore: When million-dollar salaries defeat decency

In the past, voluntary resignation after a serious mistake was considered an act of honor, integrity, and social responsibility. Those who failed faced the consequences—often without external pressure. Today, however, the principle of "waiting it out" prevails: Whether a national coach stubbornly clings to his post after historic defeats, a minister denies all responsibility after disastrous decisions costing billions, or a top manager insists on his golden parachute despite catastrophic financial results—they cling to their positions until the severance package is right. But this striking decline in the culture of resignation in society, politics, and business is not merely a character or moral problem of individual actors. It is the logical result of fatal systemic perverse incentives.

When public offices are endowed with salaries in the millions, far exceeding the actual market value of their holders, the classical ethic of responsibility gives way to pure economics. A political mandate or a board position becomes the only viable means of survival. The following analysis illuminates the historical paradigm shift from the ancient culture of shame to the modern culture of self-presentation. It uses concrete examples to demonstrate why personal consequences are structurally penalized in our current system and why it is high time to create systems in which genuine responsibility is once again rewarded.

An analysis of the decline of the resignation culture in society, politics and business: From a culture of guilt to a culture of self-presentation

Few things illustrate the shift in values ​​in modern societies as precisely as the question of who resigns—and who doesn't. In certain cultures of earlier eras, there was an almost self-evident consequence: those who failed, those who were guilty of a mistake, those who forfeited the trust of the people, resigned. Voluntarily, without delay, sometimes even without external pressure. This norm was not empty formalism. It was rooted in a profound understanding of honor, responsibility, and the idea that public office represents a moral obligation greater than personal interest in power and income. Today, we observe the exact opposite: obvious failings are glossed over, downplayed, or simply ignored. Scandals are ignored. Those in positions of responsibility remain in office as long as they possibly can. What has happened?

The answer is multifaceted, leading through the history of the concept of honor, the economics of incentives, the psychology of opportunism, and a sobering sociological analysis of the individuals who currently hold public office. This text attempts to bring these threads together—without false nostalgia, but also without shying away from uncomfortable conclusions.

The foundation of antiquity: Shame as a social regulatory force

To understand what has been lost, one must understand what once was. Long before the modern state, before parliamentary checks and balances and legal sanctioning mechanisms, another, more effective form of social control existed: shame. In ancient Greece, the category of aishyne—disgrace—was considered one of the most powerful forces in social life. Those who failed, who violated the community's code, who abused trust, lost not only an office. They lost their social identity.

In her mid-20th-century studies, cultural anthropologist Ruth Benedict coined the term "shame culture," which she originally developed for Japan, but which, in modified form, also applies to many pre-modern European societies. In a shame culture, external perception regulates behavior: what the community sees, what it judges, what it considers dishonorable—this determines how the individual acts. The inner conscience is not the primary deciding factor, but rather the gaze of others. In this sense, resignation was not voluntary in the modern sense; it was socially enforced because social survival depended on it.

Feudal Japan radicalized this idea to its most extreme conclusion. The ritual of seppuku, the ritual dismemberment of the abdomen, was the last and most honorable way for a samurai to take responsibility for a defeat or failure. It was considered an expression of complete integrity, proof that one's honor was higher than mere survival. The willingness to self-annihilate was proof that one placed no office, no privilege, no advantage above one's own dignity. Of course, this was a feudal and extremely brutal system—but in its extreme form, it illustrates the importance of accepting consequences in a culture of honor.

In the European context, this practice was less dramatic, but related in substance. Roman consuls who were responsible for a defeat withdrew. Medieval lords who disappointed their followers lost legitimacy. The pattern repeats itself throughout history: those who bear responsibility also bear the consequences.

From a culture of guilt to a culture of self-presentation: The historical break

Alongside its culture of shame, Christian-influenced Western civilization developed a culture of guilt that placed individual conscience at its center. Not the gaze of others, but inner conviction was meant to guide behavior. This model has its strengths – it allows for conscientious decisions against the will of the societal majority. But it also has a weakness: those who make inner conscience the sole judge can also manipulate, distort, and silence it.

Max Weber captured this tension in his 1919 lecture "Politics as a Vocation." He distinguished between the ethics of conviction, which acts according to pure motive and leaves the consequences to fate, and the ethics of responsibility, which holds the actor accountable for the foreseeable consequences of their actions. Weber saw the ethics of responsibility as the necessary principle for political action. According to Weber, the politician who says he intended to do the right thing and can do nothing for the catastrophic consequences acts according to an ethics of conviction—that is, in a way that is unsuitable for political office. The truly responsible political figure, on the other hand, knows no excuses. He stands by what his actions have caused, not just what he intended.

This Weberian ideal has virtually disappeared today. What has taken its place can be described as a culture of self-presentation: Public figures are not primarily judged by their achievements, but by how they present themselves. Media competence, resilience to criticism, and the ability to smile through negativity are considered virtues. Whoever doesn't crumble under public pressure, whoever sounds convincing on talk shows, whoever successfully navigates scandals – they've won, regardless of the criticism's validity. Sitting it out as a political cultural technique has long since become socially acceptable.

Deutschlandfunk radio precisely described this mechanism in an analysis of political error culture: Instead of admitting mistakes, political figures tend to deny them, downplay them, or, through a piecemeal approach, only admit to what can already be proven. The reversal of perpetrator and victim roles is another tried and tested tactic: Those who are criticized portray themselves as the target of a campaign, not as individuals who have made mistakes.

Football as a seismograph: What national coach salaries reveal about society

No area illustrates the shift from honor to economic calculation as vividly as professional football, and in particular the institution of the national team coach. The salary development of this position is an almost textbook example of the structural changes that make failure a different process today than it was in the past.

Helmut Schön, who coached the German national team for 14 years, winning the European Championship in 1972 and the World Cup in 1974, earned around 6,000 DM gross per month at his peak – at a time when a Bundesliga coach in the top league was already earning 9,000 DM. His successor, Jupp Derwall, who led Germany to the European Championship in 1980 and the World Cup runner-up position in 1982, had an estimated annual salary of around 100,000 euros (still significantly lower than today's figures, even adjusted for inflation). Franz Beckenbauer, as team manager who led Germany to the World Cup title in 1990, was estimated to have earned 200,000 euros per year.

Then came the turning point. Jürgen Klinsmann, national coach from 2004, already received €2.5 million annually, including advertising revenue. Joachim Löw earned between €3 and €3.5 million per year during his long tenure. Hansi Flick, finally, is said to have earned €6.5 million annually as national coach – an amount that made him the highest-paid national coach in the world, more than double that of his predecessor and World Cup-winning coach Löw. His successor, Julian Nagelsmann, is estimated to earn around €4.8 million.

The comparison with the compensation available for failure is soberingly illuminating. Helmut Schön, who resigned in 1978 after a solid but no longer convincing World Cup tournament, forwent a salary that, in today's purchasing power, might be equivalent to that of a well-paid middle manager. Jupp Derwall stepped down after Germany's elimination in the group stage of the 1984 European Championship – not without considerable pressure from the tabloid press, but he did. Resigning cost him relatively little in a material sense at the time. The symbolic dimension, the loss of the position, nevertheless carried weight, because the office itself was not burdened by multi-million-dollar salaries.

Hansi Flick, however, insisted after a 1-4 defeat against Japan – incidentally, the worst result in 38 years – that he was the right coach and saw no reason to resign. Only when the DFB (German Football Association) pulled the plug and dismissed him did he leave the post – becoming the first national coach in the DFB's 123-year history to be dismissed rather than resign. The obvious question is not whether Flick was a bad person. The question is: What incentive would he have had to voluntarily forgo an annual salary of 6.5 million euros? Even if he had only held the position for another six months, that would have been a financial return he could never have achieved as a football coach or club manager on the open market – at least not with that level of certainty.

Philipp Lahm, the former captain of the national team and later head of the organizing committee for Euro 2024, also points to this structural aspect: He publicly criticized the fact that a national coach's salary of 4.8 or 6.5 million euros is simply too high and creates perverse incentives. The demand to introduce a cap of two million euros sounds sentimental at first glance, but it hits a nerve in economic terms: If the salary is so far above anything the individual could earn without the position, then simply holding the position itself becomes the primary objective.

The Economics of Staying: Why High Incomes Structure Perverse Incentives

Behavioral economics precisely describes this phenomenon: the greater the discrepancy between income within a position and what could be earned outside of it, the stronger the incentive to hold the position at all costs. This applies to football coaches just as much as to politicians, managers, and all other holders of highly paid public or semi-public offices.

In economic research, this relationship is described by principal-agent theory. From this perspective, the officeholder is the agent, acting on behalf of a principal—be it the public, shareholders, or an association. The problem arises when the agent's interests diverge from those of the principal, and the principal cannot fully monitor the agent's actions. Then the agent begins to act in their own self-interest. The most obvious self-interest is retaining the office—especially if that office comes with exceptional compensation.

In the case of the political system, this analysis takes on a significant additional dimension. A member of the Bundestag currently earns around €12,000 gross per month – and from July 1, 2026, even slightly more, following an increase of €497, representing a rise of 4.2 percent, while public sector employees receive only 2.8 percent more. The average gross salary of a full-time employee in Germany is approximately €4,208 per month – meaning a member of parliament earns in four to five months what an average earner makes in an entire year. Furthermore, there are generous pension arrangements: In 2023, total expenditure on politicians' pensions rose to €221.4 million, an increase of 8.5 percent compared to four years prior.

For many politicians with limited alternative qualifications, this means that their mandate is not just a job, but a way of life. Those who have worked as professional politicians for 15 or 20 years have hardly developed any market skills that would yield the same returns outside the political system. Resignation would therefore not only be a symbolic act of accepting responsibility, but also an economic fall into a significantly lower income bracket.

The problem of mediocrity: Who fills public offices?

Here, the analysis touches upon a particularly uncomfortable point. In a functioning market, positions are ideally filled by the most competent individuals, because competition and transparency enforce quality. In the political system, but also in certain areas of management within state-owned enterprises and semi-private organizations, these mechanisms function only to a limited extent.

Economists refer to this phenomenon as adverse selection: If the conditions of a job—security, status, above-average pay without clear performance measurement—are particularly attractive to applicants who could not obtain comparable conditions in open competition, then these positions will tend to be filled by precisely these applicants. High extrinsic incentives without clear performance measurement attract people who desperately need these extrinsic incentives—not necessarily those who would deliver the best performance.

An IZA study on politicians' salaries in Germany found that members of parliament can earn up to 40 percent more than executives in the private sector with comparable responsibilities when secondary income is taken into account. The difference is even more pronounced when compared to the average income. The resulting picture is ambivalent: On the one hand, above-average compensation is intended to attract capable individuals from the private sector into politics. On the other hand, it also secures a comfortable existence for those who are not these capable individuals – and who would not achieve a comparable position in a free market.

This observation is not meant maliciously; it is a sober economic analysis. Those who can and have proven their abilities in the open market, who have prevailed in genuine competition, find it easier to relinquish public office. For them, the office is one option among many, a contribution to society, but not the sole foundation of their economic existence. Conversely, those who know they would fade into insignificance outside of this office, who suspect they would have to fight hard in the free market and even then would not achieve a comparable result – they cling to it. They talk. They downplay the situation. They see themselves as the victim of a smear campaign.

The political class of many Western democracies today is to a considerable extent socialized through professional politics. Many members of parliament have hardly any professional experience outside of politics. They enter the Bundestag via party youth organizations and constituency work and remain there as long as the system allows. Their knowledge is political knowledge – that is, knowledge of political mechanisms, coalition maneuvers, and media representation. What they know about businesses, production processes, technical relationships, or economic realities is often specialized, acquired knowledge, not fundamental, experience-based knowledge.

The economy as a mirror: Million-dollar severance packages as institutionalized irresponsibility

What holds true for politics finds its direct counterpart in business – sometimes even in an even more drastic form. The salary development of top managers in Germany and worldwide is a phenomenon whose absurdity is hard to surpass.

A 2025 study by Oxfam calculated that the salaries of CEOs at Germany's 56 highest-revenue companies had increased by 21 percent in real terms over the previous five years – while the average real wage of all employees in Germany rose by only 0.7 percent during the same period. The figures are even more drastic in international comparison: CEO salaries rose by 50 percent between 2019 and 2025, reaching an average of US$4.3 million. CEOs of DAX-listed companies received an average of €6.9 million in 2025 – seven of the top managers were paid more than €10 million.

This development has a direct impact on how people behave when they fail. CEOs who fail often do so with a golden parachute. Peter Löscher, for example, pocketed more than €17 million upon his premature departure from Siemens. Klaus Rauscher, the former head of the energy company Vattenfall Europe, lost his position due to a series of malfunctions at nuclear power plants and received €5.5 million as a severance package. Axel Heitmann was initially offered a severance package of €9.2 million despite having private security systems installed at company expense – a payment he ultimately had to forfeit when the matter became public. Most recently, Vonovia CEO Rolf Buch made headlines when provisions of €7.3 million were set aside for his early departure.

The system of severance packages has created a perverse incentive structure: those who fail face no material consequences as long as they are on the right side of the system. The personal risk of failure has been reduced to almost zero – at least in financial terms. The moral dimension, the awareness of having failed, and the consequence thereof – voluntary resignation – are structurally discouraged by this system. Why leave voluntarily when staying establishes further income entitlements and, in the worst-case scenario, being fired is cushioned with millions?

In the American context, this trend is even more pronounced. Between 1978 and 2022, CEO salaries in the US rose by 1,209 percent, while the wages of typical employees increased by only 15.3 percent during the same period. In 2022, CEOs earned on average 344 times the salary of a typical employee; in 1965, it was 21 times. While Germany has not become Americanized to this extent, the trend is the same, as critics rightly point out.

The erosion of shame: mediatization, social disinhibition, and the end of silence

Besides economic incentives, there is another, less discussed factor: the transformation of the public sphere itself. In a society where shame regulation functioned through direct community—through neighborhood, village, guild, or social class—social control was immediately palpable. The individual looked into the eyes of those before whom they felt shame. The community was real and present.

Modern mass media and social networks have transformed this direct contact into something else. Public outrage today is massive, fast, and loud—but it is also anonymous, fleeting, and abstract. It doesn't affect the person as a member of the community who feels the gaze of their fellow human beings, but as a media figure who experiences outrage as something external. The natural reaction to this form of shaming is not resignation, but defiance and a bunker mentality. The phenomenon of perpetrator-victim reversal, so frequently observed in political scandals, follows precisely this logic.

At the same time, mediatization has fostered a kind of professional cynicism. Political consultants, communications strategists, and PR agencies have developed specific techniques for surviving scandals: salami tactics, selective memory lapses, and strategic apologies without substantive admissions. This professionalization of shame avoidance has further delegitimized voluntary resignation. Resigning signifies giving in, showing weakness—in the system's internal logic, this is seen as a strategic defeat, not a display of moral strength.

Added to this is a profound societal shift in the way authority and status are viewed. Earlier decades saw stronger hierarchies where loss of status meant social uprooting. Today, resigning from public office is often accompanied by immediate compensation: book publications, keynote speeches, supervisory board positions, consulting work. The former chancellor moves into the private sector. The failed minister gives lectures at conferences. The dismissed national coach becomes a brand ambassador or expert. Shame is mitigated through recycling – and with it, the incentive for a dignified withdrawal.

The principle of consistency: What distinguished previous officeholders

It would be wrong to romanticize the past. Earlier eras also knew lust for power, cronyism, and nepotism. Resignations were not always motivated by noble motives, but often occurred under external pressure or because the costs of continuing became too high. Nevertheless, there was a structural difference that can be illustrated by concrete examples.

Sepp Herberger, the 1954 World Cup-winning coach, retired in 1964 – at an age when, by today's standards, he could have earned years more as national coach. Helmut Schön, 1974 World Cup winner and 1972 European Champion, ended his tenure with quiet dignity after the 1978 World Cup. Jupp Derwall, 1980 European Champion, resigned after Germany's early exit from the 1984 European Championship, although considerable external pressure played a role. What these men had in common was that they left because, in their opinion, the position demanded someone who could do it better. The position was bigger than they were.

This awareness – that the office is bigger than I am – is, at least structurally speaking, hardly present today. Instead, the opposite dominates: I am irreplaceable, I am the only one capable of filling this office. This narcissistic attitude is not a random characteristic of certain individuals; it is an almost inevitable consequence of the incentive structure described. Anyone who receives several million euros a year for an office, who has built their entire life around this office, who knows that without this office they would sink into economic and social insignificance – will reflexively exaggerate their own importance and their necessity.

Max Weber's distinction between ethics of conviction and ethics of responsibility comes into play here. The modern public official who remains in office despite obvious failure operates with a perverted ethics of conviction: he wanted to do the right thing, he intended good, and—according to his logic—no real responsibility can be attributed to him for the negative consequences. Ethics of responsibility, on the other hand, would say: You have produced consequences for which you must answer. And admitting responsibility means, in the most extreme case: resignation.

The systemic dimension: When structures replace morality

It would be too simplistic and ultimately unfair to treat the question of resignation solely as an individual character flaw. The failure is not personal; it is systemic. The structures that exist today reliably produce the described behavior—regardless of who occupies the respective positions.

In political science, this is evidenced by research on resignations from political office. An analysis published in a collection of essays on resignations from political office shows that in Germany, resignations are more often motivated by political reasons—that is, strategic considerations regarding the balance of power—than by a personal acceptance of responsibility. Politicians who would actually be ready to resign usually remain in office as long as a resignation would jeopardize the balance within the coalition. The system thus protects itself—the acceptance of responsibility is structurally hindered if it destabilizes the power structures.

The situation is similar in the business world. The supervisory boards of large companies, which are supposed to function as a control mechanism, are often closely intertwined with management. While regulatory reforms have reduced this mutual overlap among supervisory boards in German corporations, the principle of mutual protection remains structurally embedded. They know each other. They sit on the same boards. They invite each other to the same conferences. Within this network of mutual favoritism, any demand for consequences is perceived as a breach of loyalty.

Furthermore, a consistent culture of measurement is lacking for assessing failure. The question of how to measure the success and failure of a political decision or a management strategy is rarely clearly formulated and even more rarely consistently monitored. Without clear metrics, failure can always be explained away: it was external circumstances, structural problems, predecessors, the markets, the EU, the opposition. This lack of measurability is an inherent systemic protection for those who fail, allowing them to face no consequences.

The economic value of resignation: What organizations lose by staying

This entire finding has an economic downside that is often overlooked. Holding onto incompetent or failed officials is costly – in every sector. In business, a weak CEO clinging to power means delayed course corrections, missed strategic opportunities, declining employee motivation, and, in the worst-case scenario, existential damage to the company. The costs of holding onto an incompetent CEO are structurally more difficult to measure than the costs of a severance package – but they are real and often considerably higher.

In politics, the damage is even harder to quantify, but structurally it's the same. A minister who is clearly overwhelmed and whose policies have demonstrably failed, but remains in office because the political cost of resignation seems too high, continues to produce bad policies. The citizens bear the consequences, while the official collects the salary. The toll debacle of Federal Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer, which ultimately led to claims for damages of around half a billion euros, is a vivid example: Scheuer remained in office, insisted he had done nothing wrong, and to this day refuses to acknowledge any responsibility.

The economist would say: The system creates perverse incentives, and perverse incentives produce suboptimal results. The solution doesn't lie in appealing to the character of those involved—appeals to character alone don't change anything structurally. The solution lies in a different incentive architecture. This includes clearer performance measurements, more risk-based compensation structures, shorter and more consistently sanctioned terms of office, and—perhaps most importantly—a societal re-evaluation of voluntary resignation. Those who resign voluntarily today are often perceived as someone who found the heat too much. In a healthier political and economic culture, voluntary resignation would be seen as an expression of strength and integrity.

Honor as an economic factor: The underestimated capital

Finally, it is worthwhile to consider the concept of honor from a different perspective – not romantic, but economic. Honor, understood as social capital and institutional reliability, has a measurable economic value. Systems in which public officials stand by their actions, in which failure has consequences, and in which accountability is institutionally guaranteed, function better than those in which this is not the case. They attract more qualified people to public office. They generate more trust. And trust is the most important currency of any social organization.

The erosion of the culture of resignation is therefore not just a moral problem. It is an economic problem. It signals that the system has severed the link between responsibility and consequences. And a system that separates consequences from responsibility is not stable in the long run. It accumulates errors, it devalues ​​the competence of those who behave correctly, and it rewards an attitude that the older generation would have simply and soberly described as shamelessness.

Whether shamelessness is better described today as opportunism, moral hazard, or systemic market failure—the substance remains the same. The result is identical: people in positions of highest responsibility who refuse to take responsibility for their failures because the cost of admitting it is too high and the cost of persisting is too low. The question is not whether we want or should return to the notions of honor of past centuries. The question is how we build systems in which consistency is once again rewarded—and irresponsibility once again comes at a price.