People keep pointing out the amount of pension subsidies in the federal budget but that is not who Merz is talking about. Pensioners are his core voting demographic.
No, Merz means social security recipient. People who are unemployed or who don’t earn enough despite working.
He and his party have been waging a constant, baseless culture war against these Bürgergeld recipients since before he took office.
They keep claiming that these people are lazy and refuse to work or that social security fraud is rampant. When pressed for concrete numbers they could not name any. Economists have already crunched the numbers and even if you take the Union at their word, the potential savings in the area of social security is minuscule.This has nothing to do with finances or good governance. It’s a culture war and a deflection from growing demands to re-introduce the wealth tax and to close loopholes in inheritance tax.
Makes sense
Baseless bullshit as counterargument to force people to be “neutral” and discuss nonexistent problems instead of just discussing how much more rich people should pay. Not “if” and not “what about the poor”
- Three separate health insurance systems that could be unified
- Still no reinstatement of wealth taxes
- Underfunded prosecution of tax evasion, which could collect millions and billions
- Ease entry and participation of immigrants in the job market (instead of preventing them from working for months and years)
It’s so simple. But of course, Merz is doing politics for the very rich. No surprise there. Talking bullshit.
/edit: Adding a fourth simple action.
Note that Germany hasn’t reinstated the wealth taxation since more than 30 years and the inheritance tax is designed in a way to protect rich inheritors, so people who inherit hundreds of millions or billions usually pay no or a rather small percentage of inheritance tax, while people who inherit a few millions pay upwards of 30% on it.
Because of the lacking wealth taxation, there is no proper knowledge of how rich the rich in Germany actually are. The 1970s marked the end of the “Wirtschaftswunder” the time of rapid economic growth. Nonetheless since 1980 the real economic output has increased by 230%.
It isn’t a matter of affordability for now that the social security is being attacked. It is a matter of political prioritization to enrich the rich and fight the middle and lower income people. In the longer run we will also see a huge demographic issue as there simply won’t be enough people to keep working in the industries, but more importantly for social security in the healthcare and eldercare.
All of this was and is predictable. It has been matter of “discussion” since more than 30 years. Every government since then chose to remain inactive or work to make things worse. Doesn’t matter if led by the CDU/CSU or SPD and doesn’t matter if the coalition partners were Green or FDP (ultra-neoliberals). They all worked together to bring us here and now they get to reap the reward of neoliberalism in the form of rising fascism.
Vote for us, only we can fix the issues we caused!
Note to international readers: from 1982 onwards, the currently ruling party suggesting this has been in power over 32 years combined. Now, if you didn’t fail elementary math, you might come to a damning conclusion
Lower taxes, keep potential workers from foreign countries out, complain about demographic change and fiscal limitations. CDU creates the problem and then complains about it. Next wave of privatization incoming I guess.
And yet, voters will sadly continue falling for it. Why are voters so damn stupid.
I think many people actually believe that if you take money away from “other” people, like refugees or people on welfare, that money will be funneled to them. It’s a zero sum game, sure, but the flow of money is always upwards. Recent evidence would be tax cuts for companies (which of course only affect companies making profits and not the many struggling companies in the industry sector and much less so any actual working people).
Just look at how stupid people with an IQ of 100 are and then realise that half of the population is more stupid.
Merz can’t no longer be financed - the German welfare state.
CxU can no longer be financed.
Edit: I know this is a stupid retort but they are so obviously and actively working against us people living in Germany it’s agonizing to watch how thoroughly they pave the way to a coalition with AfD. I hate Merz, the asshole rapist apologist so much…
Sadly the CxU has always been a bunch of rich assholes that only care about rich people getting more money.
And if that means fascism, that’s even better for them.
Fascism brings all the Dobrindts and Maaßens to the yard
Hey look, you’re on the Anglo-Fasc path of reducing humanity to the people while removing the ability of the voters to have input on what and how government should run. Good luck! Hope voting still works for you and things can be turned around.
We have a bit of money left. We can finance the car industry that failed to shift to the modern world… Or the social system everyone benefits from.
Merz chooses cars.
The problem right now is that the baby boomers are retiring, but are still to young to die. In Germany the baby boom was between 1955-69. So with the current retirement age of 67, that means that they started retiring in 2022 and it will end in 2036. With a life expectancy of about 80 in Germany, 2035 is also, when they really start to die. Retirement is really the big cost factor of the welfare state, so this is an actual problem.
However many will choose to retire a bit earlier using savings or some laws, which allow one to retire four years earlier, for lower pensions, if one for fills certain criteria.
This obviously increases costs and hurts the economy as fewer people are working. However the ration will start to improve in a decade or so and there are other reasons for the economy doing poorly, such as the transition to EVs.
However the ration will start to improve in a decade or so
I don’t think that’s true. Each generation after the boomers has been smaller by about the same factor meaning the ratio between working age and non-working age will stay mostly the same
Nope.
Hm. That doesn’t seem to match this graphic. I heard that on the last “Lage der Nation” Podcast they did. I’ll see if I can find the source the references there
Edit: found a german source here: https://www.bpb.de/themen/soziale-lage/demografischer-wandel/196643/auswirkungen-des-demografischen-wandels-auf-die-sozialsysteme/
Weil die Geburtenquote hierzulande aber gut vier Jahrzehnte bei rund 1,4 Geburten pro Frau stagnierte, ist inzwischen jede Generation ein Drittel kleiner als noch ihre Elterngeneration.
This says every generation is about 33% smaller than the one before it, which would make the ratio stay pretty unbalanced
Migration. The 20-30 age group is the most likely to move and a bit older is also the normal age to have children. So basically people move to Germany have children and stay. This makes the entire pyramid somewhat stable. Obviously this requires Germany remaining intressting as a migrat destination.
Wouldn’t this be reflected in the pyramid I posted above?
Afaict migration helps to stabilize the ratio, but is seemingly not enough improve it. To do that we would need to have more migration than we currently do.
It is and it does. In the 1970s there were about 800k births per year, but the pyramid you posted shows significantly more then 800k population for the 45-55 age group in Germany. The population of Germany is still growing and pretty much every forecast has been predicting a decline for a long time.
Anything we can do, we can afford.
putting him on course for a possible clash with the SPD.
I am sure there is a party willing to help if the SPD objects. Of course the CxU would never cooperate with them, because the SPD will not object.
