[1] The left-wing of the CSU argued that the war-damaged had suffered undeserved and unusual treatment that raised their concerns of a higher status than the typical welfare-seeker.
[3] At the same time as arguments for a Lastenausgleich law, the German courts and legislature were highly recalcitrant to implementing a method of restitution for Jews whose property had been seized.
[5][3] The law required all "undamaged" Germans to pay the equivalent of one-half of their property value, as assessed on the day of the 1948 currency reforms, payable in installments, over thirty years.
By the end of 1954, the plan had paid nearly 3 billion Deutsche marks (DM), mostly to new arrivals; one-tenth of the Lastenausgleich payments went to people in the state of Hesse.
[3] However the law also contributed to a great deal of envy and anti-newcomer sentiment, particularly among groups such as the Schutzverband der Westdeutschen (Protection Association of the West Germans).
Tax revenue was utilized from the fund's inception to balance its chronic deficit because of the gradual and increasing undervaluing of property and effects of inflation.