- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
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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”
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Pensions, retirement benefits, and long-term care add up to roughly 40% of the German social budget, while 23% goes toward healthcare. That’s already 63%.
Approximately 10% is spent on supporting children and young people (with problems), and about 5% on child benefits and the like.
AND ABOUT 4% IS SPENT ON CITIZENS’ WELFARE, AND THAT’S ALL WE’RE DISCUSSING?
When Merz calls for the welfare state to finally be modernized, he only wants one thing: redistribution.
From the bottom up. Merz and his co. have just significantly increased pensions and retirement benefits with a lawn sprinkler, while tax increases for the rich are ruled out! And no one seriously believes that inheritance tax will ever become a real tax that also affects billionaires.
Budget figures here:
More Facts:
48 billion euros still flow into fossil fuel subsidies every year.
The absurd company car privilege (Dienstwagenprivileg) costs 13 billion.
100 billion is lost to the state because tax loopholes for corporations and the wealthy aren’t closed.
I’m sure he will have entirely considered the cost of not doing so, right?
- 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.
Merz can’t no longer be financed - the German welfare state.
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.
Keep foreigners out? Sounds reminiscent of USA MAGA racism. Please elaborate
The German economy will be short of 7 million workers in 10 years. That will severely affect the economic output and the general welfare. An obvious solution would be to attract people from other countries to come work in Germany. Incidentally, there have been many asylum seekers in the past 10 years. However, due to public sentiment fueled by right wing propaganda, ruling parties have worked to increase obstacles to move to Germany. Recent examples would be the closing of borders to EU neighbours or cutting welfare checks for Ukrainian refugees (and services that help them finding work, which is more relevant than the financial cuts). The far right AfD party is and has been on the rise and they were able to dictate policy related to foreigners as the other parties try to regain lost votes, mostly unsuccessfully so far. In general, this creates a hostile atmosphere for people from abroad, making Germany less attractive as a place to work or new home. This of course directly contradicts the requirement of additional people in the work force, that’s what I meant when saying that this is a self-made problem by the government.
This is of course very brief and simplified but I hope it gives you an impression. Yes, MAGAesque politics are on the rise in other parts of the world as well.
In general, this creates a hostile atmosphere for people from abroad, making Germany less attractive as a place to work or new home.
Absolutely. I’m from another part of the world and I’ve warned family to completely disregard Germany (and Europe in general) as a location for economic immigration. This is not a hypothetical.
Germany I understand. What about Denmark, the Netherlands or the Nordics in general?
Also where else would you go?
North America: maybe Canada. South America: not really a a target for economic migration. Africa: the same. Asia: also racist
Nice little world we have here I guess.
That said, I hate that the fact that the EU is somehow the least worst option, it holds back actual progress.
Don’t take my answer too literal. I was just arguing the same way the poster before you did, applying the same logic.
In fact I (as a German) could imagine working in all these places. But it’s not like they are without issues. And I think Europe has some countries that are very attractive to foreigners, just that Germany isn’t on the list.
From what I’ve heard the far-right is on the rise in all of these. They’re good targets in the short term to make a few bucks, but when you consider the long term situation it’s really not worth it building a life in a place that will be Sieg Heiling by 2040.
To be honest, unrest in the US and Russia are generating a lot of this far-right bullshit. I hope as both of them collapse back on themselves a little, I mean the US is already destroying its tentacles around the world while Russia is drowning in its war economy, these fuckheads will get deplatformed a tiny bit.
But I’m open to suggestions, where do you go to escape fascism and imperialism to build a family? I need a place with working healthcare and education so that I can have kids.
But I’m open to suggestions, where do you go to escape fascism and imperialism to build a family? I need a place with working healthcare and education so that I can have kids.
In terms of quality of life the regions with good candidates are Eastern Europe (particularly Ukraine should be starving for foreign labor by now), Southeast Asia and Latin America (China too if you’re fine with the authoritarianism aspect), but I can’t actually tell you how many of those will take in economic immigrants. . Generally though it’s not a good time for economic migration (or “I’m fleeing impending but not current disaster” migration) these days. We can only hope this decade gives us better candidates.
The German economy will be short of 7 million workers in 10 years.
Which is only bad for capitalists. The shortage will increase wages for workers.
There are many issues like the downtrodden infrastructure, shortages in the medical sector or in the public administration. Already today some things take ages. There are many everyday tasks that become more difficult, especially for workers that cannot freely distribute their time to get that doctors appointment or daycare for their children. Also, there is risk of inflation eating up the higher wages. That depends on how much productivity can be raised but a loss of almost 15 percent in output will be hard to offset.
I have difficulty seeing this situation as a win for anybody.
Edit: for some individuals that will obviously be a win but for the society as a whole it will not.
Capitalist do not pay taxes and therefore pay for infrastructure, the medical sector or public administration. Workers do. So higher wages, are going to improve that.
Also fewer people means less demand for housing and basically the same supply. So prices will fall. That means people will be able to move to the places with the best infrastructure.
Oh and daycare for children is something, which is a fix for this. A kindergarten can take care of say 10children per employee, which allows basically ten parents to work in the meantime. That is a massive leverage.
The wages of the workers will adjust because they are what the Capitalists need. The workers cannot distribute time because they are not valued enough. With more workers the situation will get worse, not better.
Wages will certainly not go up enough to combat everything else going to shit.
Who cares about a higher salary when you cannot get any healthcare? What’s the use of more money when the infrastructure is turning to dust?
Higher wages pay for that health care. When wages increase spending moves from business owners who buy yachts to workers who can buy healthcare. So less people build boats and more people treat patients.
No, not only bad for capitalists. There already is a shortage in healthcare workers (not just nurses but also doctors, technicians, emergency personnel etc), teachers, social workers etc. That is bad for all of us as healthcare and education are essential to all of us and the weakest in our society are hit hard by there being too few social workers. Unfortunately, that is the part capitalists don’t care about.
Isn’t that because the public sector refuses to compete with the private in wages? If social workers would be better paid than factory workers, then it would be a shortage of factory workers, not social ones, right?
Pressing all wages down does not feel like the right solution to the problem of public servants not being paid enough for someone to take the job.
Refuses, or is forced?
A thing we see over here in America sometimes is the same group, or even the same man, having control over both public and private options of a given service. The public option is stripped of funding and only operates at minimum wage, while the private option has 5x the funding and hires industry experts. This then easily paves the way for “the public option is trash and doesn’t work, we need to privatize this entire industry”. Suddenly your post office is owned by an individual and you’re paying a weekly post subscription.
Be very, very cautious and suspicious of private options attempting to supplant public ones. It’s a key tactic that our homegrown American fascists like to use and it’s upsettingly effective on the general public.
Yes and no. For some jobs in the public sector, that might be true. But teachers, healthcare workers and social workers usually have a more philanthropic motivation. Some jobs can even be quite well paid, like teacher and doctor. However, most people leaving those fields don’t do it due to the money but because other working conditions. Shift times, workload in relation to personnel numbers, that kind of stuff. Not that money was no factor, a huge point often is unpaid overtime, but not necessarily the most important and far from the only reason.
And even if wages were the only or the major reason: that wasn’t my point. The point is that a significant labour shortage does not only mean that companies have to offer benefits and more money, it also means that people don’t get services that are sometimes necessary. Or there might be product shortages in critical fields. Stuff like that. And that might drive up prices.
Or that the workers left are even more exploited and get heavier workloads.Shift times, workload in relation to personnel numbers, that kind of stuff.
That’s still a funding issue, still a money issue. If teachers were better paid, there would be many more teachers, reducing staffing strain.
The point is that a significant labour shortage does not only mean that companies have to offer benefits and more money, it also means that people don’t get services that are sometimes necessary.
There are a ton of bullshit jobs going around the economy. Maybe a small company of five people doesn’t need a secretary for the boss.
Or there might be product shortages in critical fields. Stuff like that. And that might drive up prices.
Prices are always set at what the market will bear, it’s behaving in a quasi-monopolistic way and that has been quite obvious for the past few years. In Croatia, a consumer strike took prices back to levels seen a year before in multiple supermarkets, yet the supermarkets didn’t go into the red because of it.
And that does not take into account the fact that housing is the biggest inflationary pressure in Europe right now, and it is completely decoupled from immigration, or at the very least, it’s inversely attached, more immigration drives up housing prices.
Look, I get it that in an idealistic way, more business would be great if a rising tide lifts all boats, but since more people won’t mean more competition on the supply side, it won’t keep prices low, only depress wages. I mean do you honestly think immigrants are going to found a business competing with the 2-3 car conglomerates that own everything? Same with tech, same with everything really.
What if the Capitalists care about it and wanted it to be like this? The healthcare system will be privatized and workers will be dependend on their employer like in the USA.
But that is a whole other discussion and has nothing to do with labour shortage.
With labour shortage wages should increase which can pay for bigger homes and bigger cars which allows families to have more children which ends the shortage.
If the health of workers and their family depend on the employer, wages can be kept low.
Nah, the capitalists will continue to outsource what labour they can to cheaper countries. It’s just the jobs that have to be done here that will be understaffed and overworked. Things like maintenance of infrastructure, public services, medical care… You know, stuff the capitalists don’t actually depend on, because the things they need will take priority. Your internet may get worse and more expensive, but expensive isn’t an issue for them and they’ll just pay extra for premium treatment. Public healthcare might die, private healthcare might suffer too, but they’ll just invent premium healthcare for themselves.
Hence all the talk of raising the working hours per week, raising the pension age, cutting unemployment benefits to force people to accept work even at worse conditions… At some point, even the pay can’t save you from burnout, and ultimately you need the job just as much, so your leverage won’t nearly be as strong. Hell, who knows, maybe Strike Busting will become a whole service industry of desperate suckers.
It might reach a point of collapse, who knows. Maybe they’ll see it coming and make concessions to avoid it, but they’ll be the bare minimum.
Maybe they won’t, and will simply be the last to suffer, but that’s hardly any consolation for the rest of us.
Or maybe they’re already planning for how to take advantage of the chaos and undo a few centuries of civil progress to force us all back into serfdom.Capped rent is serfdom. We cannot move anymore without increasing rent.
All your points, that’s capitalist fearmongering to flood the market with workers.
The way to increase wages is to limit available workers. That’s how markets work.
The capitalists need the workers so the value of work will rise to cover all expenses. Society will not collapse or smaller countries would have collapsed by now.
Capped rent is serfdom. We cannot move anymore without increasing rent.
Rent to private landlords is exploitation anyways. Anything beyond necessities (utilities, maintenance budget etc.) is just someone else getting rich off of your labour.
Capped rent trapping you in a specific place is just the cherry on top. But I agree with you: Rent caps aren’t the solution to that problem.
All your points, that’s capitalist fearmongering to flood the market with workers.
No, they’re an attempt to point out the actual problem, namely: the capitalists and their greed.
If more workers in wealthier countries was good for the capitalists, they wouldn’t be throwing their support behind conservative, xenophobic candidates so enthusiastically.
On the contrary: They want those workers to remain in cheaper countries, because they can pay them less there.
Drawing a line between us and the other workers won’t tackle that issue. The “fuck you, I got mine” mentality is the reason we’re in this shit. Solidarity and the will to systematic change is the way out.
The way to increase wages is to limit available workers. That’s how markets work.
The workers are available anyways. They’re just available elsewhere.
Besides, the supply-demand dynamic doesn’t hold in shortages of critical goods, for example a shortage of doctors and nurses. At some point, no amount of payment is going to get you treatment if there aren’t enough people to treat you.
We already see the public healthcare system struggling in Germany: Between a shortage of doctors and rising costs of running their office, more and more doctors only accept privately insured patients. If all the ones on mandatory insurance get paid more, the prices for private insurance will just rise as well.
At some point, limiting workers won’t limit the work that needs doing, it will just increase the amount each worker does, until they have nothing more to give.
The capitalists need the workers so the value of work will rise to cover all expenses.
The workers also need the other workers, and they need them more than they need the capitalists. If there’s someone to cut out of the system, it’s the vampires.
Capitalists need Conservatives to prevent Socialists from integrating immigrants into society to prevent solidarity and socialism. Otherwise they wouldn’t mind all workers to move.
Workers being available elsewhere doesn’t help Capitalists because the higher ups are not there. Moving entire industries risks another China where the elite of the other country takes over.
The Capitalists will keep critical technology within the first world to push prices down with trade imbalances.
This creates the opportunity for workers to increase wages and to use that income to make a better world.
But of course, it will be used for entertainment and consumption.
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Unfortunately yes. The workers have to make sure that wealth is spread globally and that immigrants are treated equally and are fully integrated into their social structures. Otherwise they are split and played out against each other.
Imagine you are from an non EU country, have ten years of working experience in a relevant field, speak German at B2/C1 level. You apply for a residency permit with work permission. Sounds reasonable?
Wrong! Your school education, higher education and trade certification aren’t recognised. You can apply for a trade certification course and residency permit, but only when you can proof to have about 10,000€ in the bank account for each year of the course. You are not allowed to engage in any form of employment on the side except for 10hours a week and <450€/month.
After you get your arbitrary certification you have to rush to find any job that is within the scope of your certificate. You will need to beg companies that they will sign the contract and risk waiting three months or more until your residency permit is approved. If it works out now for the first two years you are beholden to that company as your permit is tied to that job. If you want to change jobs you need to have a new company ligned up and initiate for a change approval, with the new company again willing to wait multiple months for the procedure.
If you don’t abide by that process, get laid off, etc. your residency is invalid and you could be deported easily.
These were the experiences people close to me made under the supposed progressive government before the current one. German administration absolutely hates foreigners and the processes are made to make them sufder as much as possible and keep showing them that they should feel like servants kissing the boots of their masters.
It does not make sense economically, socially or in any other capacity. It is pure systematic racism, using the illogical and cold blood bureaucracy as a front.
Just reading this as a German is like “this is how I imagine it”. Not as envision. Just how some CDU-led ministry designed it
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.
Whenever someone suggests to raise taxes for the super rich billionaires, the conservative answer is:
he stressed there would “not be any increase in income tax on medium-sized companies in Germany with this federal government under my leadership,”
which is super effective in a country where everybody thinks they are “middle class”.
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.
Anything we can do, we can afford.
will not*
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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.
