What’s next, the pension system won’t work like this for much longer?
Well, guess that means we have to significantly cut the salaries of politicians and introduce a major wealth tax, until it can.
“…That’s why we need to tax young people much more”
We could tax the rich. You know Fritze?
Friedrich Merz can no longer be financed.
Hey, maybe approve another 64 mld packet to finance tax-cuts for corporations I’m sure that will fix the issue 🙂
Well have you tried taxing young people more, increasing regulations and giving more money to pensioners?
And did anyone expect a conservative neo-liberal to do anything else but play a role in dismantling the welfare state?
So less welfare with increased taxes?
Hold on. Let him cook
While clearly an extremely real and serious issue, it is only going to invigorate the AfD anti-establishment vote.
Oh yeah, burn the young and deny them a proper future.
As long as the old people have a happy life, all is good and well lmao
I still don’t get how young people vote for this party.
Start taxing the rich more instead of taking from the poor. I hate Merz with his opposite Robin Hood mentality
3rd largest economy
2 CDU/CSU accountable for several billion euros in damages in the last 5 years
Now the welfare state has to suffer.
Great guy
[removed]
Black Rock Lobbyist: “we can’t afford to pay those in need”
Stfu Fritz! Your plane alone would pay for dozens of people
Maybe get rid of your party intern corrupt dimwits like Spahn and Scheuer then?!
lmao
Can Spahn be financed, though? Merz says yes
This is such disingenuous nonsense. The scandis have much more expensive welfare states with much higher tax burdens.
What we can’t do more of is Mütterente and subsidies for large industry.
What we will do is tax the young and poor. And sell out our values and road safety to protect the car industry.
The German welfare state he’s referring to (Bürgergeld) is like 1,4% of GDP.
2-4% of Germanys GDP are estimated to be wasted through bureaucratic inefficiencies. Another 2% of GDP is lost in unpaid and evaded taxes.
I’ve done well for myself so I don’t care either way, I just find it so fucking dishonest of these politicians to always punch down, scapegoating the poor. No buddy, you’re not deflecting anyone from the real problem that you and your friends are unwilling to fix.
Which means let’s cut all the needed support for people and families, raise taxes for the poor, fuck the pension system, and more, but god forbid we tax the rich, stop funding wars, and sending billions abroad!
The revival of the debt brake has reignited the political and economic debate in Germany, and abroad, on the usefulness of fiscal rules. While some conservative political leaders in Germany have now openly expressed support for an intelligent reform of the constitutional debt brake, majority opinion in Germany still continues to consider any such reform politically taboo. The result is a paradox: precisely at the moment when more public funding is needed for strategically addressing pressing collective challenges (including adapting to the consequences of global warming, catching up with the global digital economy, and solving a public housing crisis), Germany’s policy-makers are swept up in a renewed frenzy for belt-tightening austerity.
Unfortunately, the key message of the austerity myth—that what is economically rational for an individual household will also be rational for an entire country and for its government—is plain wrong, macroeconomically and also for the climate, as the United Nations economic analysis repeatedly suggested. As argued by Peter Böfinger (2023), the only effective remedy against Germany’s economic disease is that “public debt [is] deployed as an engine of growth—not by reducing taxes and accompanying transfers but by increasing public investment to stimulate domestic demand and the emergence and deployment of new technologies.” To make this possible, the Germans have to get rid of their debt brake fetish.
…
Many mainstream economists agreed. Buiter, Corsetti, Roubini, Repullo, and Frankel (1993), for instance, concluded that “the fiscal convergence criteria designed to eliminate or prevent ‘excessive deficits’ are badly motivated, poorly designed and apt to lead to unnecessary hardship if pursued mechanically. The debt criterion especially would cause avoidable pain. There is no case for restricting the debt-GDP ratio to lie below any specific numerical value; and à fortiori no case for an identical limit for [many] heterogeneous countries” (Buiter et al. 1993, p. 87). The economic price of fiscal deflation and permanently reduced fiscal flexibility, which are part and parcel of the SGP and are paid for by EU member states, may well be unbearable—which was also the argument of Joseph Stiglitz (2016).
The idea that the relative size of public debt is somehow related to economic growth has long been discredited (see the useful meta-analysis based on 47 primary studies by Philip Heimberger 2022). It is clear that this point is well understood even by Germany’s macroeconomic policymakers who, after all, have been caught red-handed, attempting to fuel Germany’s growth and (climate and energy supply) resilience through public investment, financed by shadowy off-budget financing vehicles. Of course, the more indebted EU member states find themselves in a similar predicament and feel the same need to step up public spending in areas that are critical to the future development, competitiveness, and resilience of their economies.
Austerity and stiff fiscal rules unnecessarily restrict the fiscal room for maneuver, which the state could use to help the economy respond to the demands of the coming digital and zero-carbon age. It is a public secret that (unwarranted) austerity crippled the Eurozone economy—especially hurting the countries of Southern Europe—as is shown by recent papers published on the INET website: Storm (2019) on Italy; Stirati (2020) on Italy and elsewhere; Girardi, Paternesi Meloni and Stirati (2017); Toporowski (2023) on Poland; and Roncaglia (2023). Crucially, austerity has also crippled the countries in the pro-austerity camp, as has been argued by Storm (2023) for the Netherlands; and by Bofinger (2023) who uncovers Germany’s true economic disease.
And rich people wonder why nobody wants to have kids anymore.
Hmmm. What if we taxed really rich people instead of workers just scraping by paycheck to paycheck who can’t even afford a house, cut aid to foreign countries, and stopped welfare payments to folks who stay here illegally or refuse to work? Maybe then we’d have more money to help the people *in this country* who actually deserve social security and are in need.
But yeah, that’s probably a pretty crazy and even extremist idea. So, we better do nothing and keep spending the tax money to “save the world” until it all runs out.
There’s always enough money to finance a pension increase though, never forget!
27 comments
That came as a surprise… not.
What’s next, the pension system won’t work like this for much longer?
Well, guess that means we have to significantly cut the salaries of politicians and introduce a major wealth tax, until it can.
“…That’s why we need to tax young people much more”
We could tax the rich. You know Fritze?
Friedrich Merz can no longer be financed.
Hey, maybe approve another 64 mld packet to finance tax-cuts for corporations I’m sure that will fix the issue 🙂
Well have you tried taxing young people more, increasing regulations and giving more money to pensioners?
And did anyone expect a conservative neo-liberal to do anything else but play a role in dismantling the welfare state?
So less welfare with increased taxes?
Hold on. Let him cook
While clearly an extremely real and serious issue, it is only going to invigorate the AfD anti-establishment vote.
Oh yeah, burn the young and deny them a proper future.
As long as the old people have a happy life, all is good and well lmao
I still don’t get how young people vote for this party.
Start taxing the rich more instead of taking from the poor. I hate Merz with his opposite Robin Hood mentality
3rd largest economy
2 CDU/CSU accountable for several billion euros in damages in the last 5 years
Now the welfare state has to suffer.
Great guy
[removed]
Black Rock Lobbyist: “we can’t afford to pay those in need”
Stfu Fritz! Your plane alone would pay for dozens of people
Maybe get rid of your party intern corrupt dimwits like Spahn and Scheuer then?!
lmao
Can Spahn be financed, though? Merz says yes
This is such disingenuous nonsense. The scandis have much more expensive welfare states with much higher tax burdens.
What we can’t do more of is Mütterente and subsidies for large industry.
What we will do is tax the young and poor. And sell out our values and road safety to protect the car industry.
The German welfare state he’s referring to (Bürgergeld) is like 1,4% of GDP.
2-4% of Germanys GDP are estimated to be wasted through bureaucratic inefficiencies. Another 2% of GDP is lost in unpaid and evaded taxes.
I’ve done well for myself so I don’t care either way, I just find it so fucking dishonest of these politicians to always punch down, scapegoating the poor. No buddy, you’re not deflecting anyone from the real problem that you and your friends are unwilling to fix.
Which means let’s cut all the needed support for people and families, raise taxes for the poor, fuck the pension system, and more, but god forbid we tax the rich, stop funding wars, and sending billions abroad!
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/01/unhappy-new-year-how-austerity-is-making-a-comeback-in-berlin-and-brussels.html
The revival of the debt brake has reignited the political and economic debate in Germany, and abroad, on the usefulness of fiscal rules. While some conservative political leaders in Germany have now openly expressed support for an intelligent reform of the constitutional debt brake, majority opinion in Germany still continues to consider any such reform politically taboo. The result is a paradox: precisely at the moment when more public funding is needed for strategically addressing pressing collective challenges (including adapting to the consequences of global warming, catching up with the global digital economy, and solving a public housing crisis), Germany’s policy-makers are swept up in a renewed frenzy for belt-tightening austerity.
Unfortunately, the key message of the austerity myth—that what is economically rational for an individual household will also be rational for an entire country and for its government—is plain wrong, macroeconomically and also for the climate, as the United Nations economic analysis repeatedly suggested. As argued by Peter Böfinger (2023), the only effective remedy against Germany’s economic disease is that “public debt [is] deployed as an engine of growth—not by reducing taxes and accompanying transfers but by increasing public investment to stimulate domestic demand and the emergence and deployment of new technologies.” To make this possible, the Germans have to get rid of their debt brake fetish.
…
Many mainstream economists agreed. Buiter, Corsetti, Roubini, Repullo, and Frankel (1993), for instance, concluded that “the fiscal convergence criteria designed to eliminate or prevent ‘excessive deficits’ are badly motivated, poorly designed and apt to lead to unnecessary hardship if pursued mechanically. The debt criterion especially would cause avoidable pain. There is no case for restricting the debt-GDP ratio to lie below any specific numerical value; and à fortiori no case for an identical limit for [many] heterogeneous countries” (Buiter et al. 1993, p. 87). The economic price of fiscal deflation and permanently reduced fiscal flexibility, which are part and parcel of the SGP and are paid for by EU member states, may well be unbearable—which was also the argument of Joseph Stiglitz (2016).
The idea that the relative size of public debt is somehow related to economic growth has long been discredited (see the useful meta-analysis based on 47 primary studies by Philip Heimberger 2022). It is clear that this point is well understood even by Germany’s macroeconomic policymakers who, after all, have been caught red-handed, attempting to fuel Germany’s growth and (climate and energy supply) resilience through public investment, financed by shadowy off-budget financing vehicles. Of course, the more indebted EU member states find themselves in a similar predicament and feel the same need to step up public spending in areas that are critical to the future development, competitiveness, and resilience of their economies.
Austerity and stiff fiscal rules unnecessarily restrict the fiscal room for maneuver, which the state could use to help the economy respond to the demands of the coming digital and zero-carbon age. It is a public secret that (unwarranted) austerity crippled the Eurozone economy—especially hurting the countries of Southern Europe—as is shown by recent papers published on the INET website: Storm (2019) on Italy; Stirati (2020) on Italy and elsewhere; Girardi, Paternesi Meloni and Stirati (2017); Toporowski (2023) on Poland; and Roncaglia (2023). Crucially, austerity has also crippled the countries in the pro-austerity camp, as has been argued by Storm (2023) for the Netherlands; and by Bofinger (2023) who uncovers Germany’s true economic disease.
And rich people wonder why nobody wants to have kids anymore.
Hmmm. What if we taxed really rich people instead of workers just scraping by paycheck to paycheck who can’t even afford a house, cut aid to foreign countries, and stopped welfare payments to folks who stay here illegally or refuse to work? Maybe then we’d have more money to help the people *in this country* who actually deserve social security and are in need.
But yeah, that’s probably a pretty crazy and even extremist idea. So, we better do nothing and keep spending the tax money to “save the world” until it all runs out.
There’s always enough money to finance a pension increase though, never forget!
Comments are closed.