Elderly Germans forced to keep working by meagre state pension

27 comments

1. ***The Telegraph reports:***

   When Otto von Bismarck created the world’s first state pension in the 1880s, he only expected it to serve elderly Germans for a handful of their twilight years.

   But more than a century later, German pensions are under immense strain, as more than a million feel forced to keep working because the payouts are too meagre.

   Newly released statistics have shown that the number of Germans [working beyond the standard retirement age](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/retirement/) of 67 has risen from 660,000 to 1.05 million over the past decade.

   The disclosure has outraged the head of a new left-wing populist party, Sahra Wagenknecht, who called on Germany to adopt the more generous pension scheme of neighbouring Austria.

   “The statutory pension hardly provides enough for a living in old age, and forces more and more pensioners to work until the end of their lives,” Ms Wagenknecht, the leader of the BSW party, warned this week.

   “The fact that the numbers are continually rising shows that more and more pensioners and, in some cases, the very elderly, are simply forced to top up their meagre pensions,” she added.

   **Read more:** [**https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/07/28/german-pensions-too-low-forced-work-copy-austrian-model/**](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/07/28/german-pensions-too-low-forced-work-copy-austrian-model/)

2. This is bad for the economy because it means that young adults will struggle to find a job.

   If 1 million old people are still working, it means that they are stealing 1 millions jobs. This is happening in Italy as well, but in that case there’s a second reason: companies don’t want to spend money to train new young workers.

3. A Ponzi scheme must eventually have a loser. The old generation should be happy that it wasn’t them.

4. This is just the beginning, and politicians responsible for it are long dead or out of the political scene. Those who are responsible for resolving this issue now – are doing something completely opposite. They spray fire with gasoline.

5. >one in five pensioners receiving less than 1,200 euros (£1,000) a month

   Just to put that into perspective, the state expects students to live comfortably with more than 200 euros less.

   I seriously don’t understand how people expect to get the same pension level from the past at the same age of entering it with longer and longer life expectancies.

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7. Those stats are a joke.

   Its always just about the pension received by state, not actual income or wealth. In reality old people are the age group suffering the least from poverty.

   Many tiny pensions exist because you only have to pay in for 5 years to qualify to receive a pension, so a lot of people who are selfemployed or became entrepreneurs started their career employed somewhere and even when they clearly arent suffering from poverty they receive a tiny pension and drag down the average.

8. 10 million immigrants in 10 years and politics failed in every aspect.

9. Funnily enough, these pensions are on paper the reason Germany can’t have “nice things”. It takes so much of the state budget that there is basically no room for wealth increase in other areas of the country. And the pensioners still are on the brink of poverty. Shit’s fucked and Germany has been broke for over a decade now and is only polishing their budget to hide that fact.

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11. Oh look, it’s my future! Except I don’t live in Germany so I’ll be even worse off probably. 

12. Probably important to note that about 30% of the total nationwide pension budget is already cross-funded. That means that 100 billion euros are being spent every year to keep the pension system alive. The entire federal budget in 2024 is 476 billion.

    I’m not saying old people should live in poverty, but when a country that is notoriously behind in investments in critical infrastructure is spending more than 1/5th of its total budget on a pension system that was designed to carry its own weight there is something seriously wrong.

13. The real issue here wich no one ever discussed is this is absolutely not a failure by the German government.

    When state pensions were introduced the average life expectancy was within 2-3 years of retirement. Now the average age of death is closer to 15 years after retirement.

    This shortage was inevitable and will only get worse

14. Wait so brining in millions of refugees didn’t actually prop up pensions like they claimed ??? 😯😯😯

15. That’s what you get by being a naughty boomer having NOTHING saved for pension.

16. And where do they imagine the money should come from?

    The already overworked younger generations who support multiple other people with their taxes instead of having it invested in their future?

17. I find it hard to come to terms with that some youth are allowed to go to university to study something that is totally useful to society like art pay absolutely no contribution in to the funds that are supposedly going to support them claim that they should lead a work life balance and I have been working my bollocks of for the last 45 years paying all my dues since I was 15 with no end to my retirement in sight. What a bunch of lazy useless c…ts the younger generation has become

18. >The monthly cost of living in Germany varies between states, but it can be up to 3,000 euros, according to Welcome Hub Germany, a relocation website.

    But surely that includes the cost of raising kids, not an issue for this demographic.

19. This just reads to me as elderly Germans failed to plan for retirement. I expect nothing from my government as they are useless so I’m trying my hardest to save for retirement.

20. I thought the primary reason for having ~14 million foreigners in Germany was to prop up the pension system. Hasn’t it worked? 

21. The sympathy of the following generations is likely to be limited.

22. Get used to it. The German economy will not be able to afford their social services as the population enters mass retirement. Cuts, higher taxes, and a delay of benefits will be needed. You will see this across most of the west.

23. priorities. countries always should have much more investments in the young that are the future. 

24. I always pretend I will get zero from governments so I save and invest as much as I possibly can.

25. Since there seems to be a lot of young people frustration here I’ll give the direct example of my father who worked for 47 years and received 1137€

    His rent + utilities was ~1350€

    He died with 250€ in his savings account and no possessions to his name.

    Germans in his generation were not taught to “put aside money” or “invest”.

    Investing is something rich men in suits do in Hollywood movies to most people over here.

    They were promised they would be cared for if they worked long enough, and they were lied to. The reactions in here make me very sad.

    Because of how the system works, those that earn a lot of money will get a high pension. So the people that are able to put aside money, end up receiving the most anyways. Those that just barely got by will continue to live on the edge.

26. My question is: why do German elders receive payments instead of sending that money to Ukraine?

27. No Retirement Savings Plans, an aging population, a developed economy and low birth rates. It’s realistically the only way this was ever gonna go. Immigration is the only thing that’s keeping this ship afloat.