Average German experience

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u/Lebensfreud May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26

I mean, it's a voting block problem. Most people want pensions when they are older and who can blame them, who doesn't want to be secure when they are old.

The government coalition would become unpopular really quickly and I bet the AFD has the " we actually love pentions" locked and loaded of Merz tries to decrease it.

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u/Illesbogar Magyarország‏‏‎ ‎ May 05 '26

I feel like trying to pit working people against retired people is the same kind of tactic as trying to pit people against each other on ethnic/religious/other lines. All it does is take the blame away from those responsible.

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u/rlyjustanyname Yuropean‏‏‎ ‎ May 05 '26

The current level of pensions actually can't be sustained with our demographics though. Pensions can't keep growing faster than inflation in a no growth enviornment with a shrinking population and growing pensioners pool. Something has to give.

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u/Lem_Tuoni Yuropean‏‏‎ ‎ May 05 '26

That is a childish belief. No, "taxing the rich" doesn't generate nearly enough revenue to fund pensions. In Germany, pensions are over 11% of GDP, and around third of the total government spending. More than the whole income + capital gains tax in total, for everyone.

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u/Lebensfreud May 05 '26

Yes but it would start addressing the problem.

There is a bunch of untaxed money sitting around that could help social programms.

Yes its not a magical "fix everything" button but that doesn't mean we shouldn't use it. Rich people should be taxed.

By this logic most form of taxation shouldn't exist because 'it wouldn't be enough money to fix issue x anyway'.

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u/AccomplishedSock7578 May 05 '26

Money doesnt just ”sit around”. If you tax it to fund social programs there is less money to go around in the economy. The only unused money is the change in your pocket.

You guys need to stop thinking about money in these situations. Money is just a medium of exchange. Pensions are a question of allocation of societal resources.

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u/rlyjustanyname Yuropean‏‏‎ ‎ May 05 '26

Ehhh we should tax the rich not to fund pensions but to remove their wealth. It's distorting the real economy when too few people own too much money and start consolidatimg and enshitifying every aspect of the economy.

But you are right pensioners need to be adressed with solutions that go beyond moving money around. If we fail to fund pensions, we will effectively be taxing their children.

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u/AccomplishedSock7578 May 05 '26

How do you propose to remove their wealth? Tax on their assets so much they are forced to sell? Who are they gonna be selling their assets to to cover their tax bill? Rich foreigners?

Must be fun when everything is owned by some cayman registered subsidiary of Blackrock.

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u/rlyjustanyname Yuropean‏‏‎ ‎ May 05 '26

Everything is already owned by caymen registered subsidiaries and Blackrock.

I don't know how to tax people who have done nothing but dodge taxes all their life. But we are moving to a society where innovation doesn't pay nearly as much as financial schemes to corner a market and then enshitify, if we can't solve this we are fucked.

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u/Illesbogar Magyarország‏‏‎ ‎ May 05 '26

Money literally sits at rich people. It doesn't do anything just accumulates.

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u/AccomplishedSock7578 May 05 '26

How do you think money generates more money?

Simplest way is to give your money to someone else and charge an interest. That money is then spent by the guy borrowing it. It doesnt sit anywhere. The ”money” you have in your bank account is lent to someone else by the bank as well. Your balance just shows what the bank owes you. The money is in use even if you just sit on your ass.

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u/dragon_irl Deutschland‎‎‏‏‎ ‎ May 05 '26

I mean the rich is literally pensioners, they're by far the wealthiest demographic in Germany mostly due to housing ownership.

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u/VladimirBarakriss Neoworlder cuck 🇺🇾 May 06 '26

The problem is that pension systems will collapse soon, atp it's not even a question in many places, as they exist now they're unsustainable, but noone wants to change how they work, just how much regular tax money they get pumped into them, pension reform shouldn't mean retiring at X age or giving retirees X amount

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u/FZ_Milkshake May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26

Not just that, it is also an attitude problem. We could afford to take on huge amounts of additional debt for very low interest, invest it into our infrastructure, economy and future proof the whole country and spend less on the interest than it will cost us to not makes those investments. That however is a very unpopular opinion amongst a large amount of voters.

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u/Sky-is-here Andalucía‏‏‎ ‎ May 05 '26

People are honestly very illiterate about macroeconomy and debt, a problem that is honestly hard to solve.

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u/DaniilSan Україна May 05 '26

Yeah, unfortunately elderly people who receive pension are a very big voting group who also have little other interests. I honestly believe that there should be some kind of upper age limit for voting as there is a lower one, because the future has to be decided by people who actually still have one and not those who are at the end of their lives, but I doubt that any country will ever do this. At very least there should be an upper limit to age of people in high power.

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u/Mr-Doubtful May 05 '26

Important distinction: Most people want their current pensions to be raised or not touched. The ones who aren't receiving them yet are voting towards controlling that spending no? Or who else is voting for austerity?

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u/schnitzel-kuh Nordrhein-Westfalen‏‏‎‏‏‎ ‎ May 05 '26

They basically took many of the things like infrastructure spending that were previously in the normal budget, and moved them into this new 600 billion extra budget, so that they can keep paying pension and even increase them by almost 5 percent this year alone. This way they can kick the can down the road a few more years so the old people keep voting for them

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u/impact_ftw Hessen‏‏‎ ‎ May 05 '26

Excuse me, we clearly need to do for the poor and forgotten top 1%. Why do something for the rest of society?

Who would even want a liveable future?

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u/Endast_ May 05 '26

laughs in Italian

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u/-Polarsy- Wien May 05 '26

Coming from the third biggest economy of the world...

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u/[deleted] May 05 '26

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u/-Polarsy- Wien May 05 '26

I mean, it's been like this for almost 100 years

Germany produces more wealth than Japan with 70% of Japan's population...

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u/xKnuTx May 05 '26

In total GDP honestly? who can realistically overtake us maby japan knocks us back to fouth but other than that. by the time lots of developing countries will be there the climat catastrophy will kick in. Maby india for a few years thanks to 20times the population. Arabia will be average again once ghe dmande for oil will slow down. And that's kinda impossible to stop as renewable just got way too efficient.

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u/[deleted] May 06 '26

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u/xKnuTx May 06 '26

Productivity far outpaced demographic changes. we could spend more on pensions quit easily, the question is just who we will pay that bill. Those that always have or those that could pay it.

also funfact we actually used to pay more for pention 20 years ago adjusted for inflation. We will most likely hit an all-time record in the near future though.

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u/Lonely_Ice5974 May 05 '26

Has anyone wondered how they became the biggest one in eu?

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u/BummsiBummsi May 05 '26

No actually not. Its the most diversified economy in the world. Germany has the most educated working population in the world. It has had the biggest export surplus the last 30 years of any country, bigger then China, the US and Japan. I am more wondering how it is struggling at the moment when it historically was always performing so good.

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u/Wremxi May 05 '26

It's easy to explain. The money that was earned flooded into the pockets of rich people, while the local population only saw scraps of it. Now that there are worldwide crisis and the exports are crumbling, the companies can't sustain, because the local market simply can't substitute for it.

Well the bosses and CEO's could now invest now more into Germany to boost it up, but it easier to just to call it a day and buy a nice Jacht.

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u/Gunda-LX May 05 '26

Let’s try it like this “FOR THE KAISERREICH” Maybe this will re-set them to revitalisating the economy

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u/ZZerker May 06 '26

Yeah, because pensions blocking progressive politics due to the population age is soley a German problem.

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u/faze_fazebook May 05 '26

Pensions in Germany are quite low compared to cost of living. In Austria, they are on another level.

All hail our German overlords Average German experience