German welfare state ‘can no longer be financed’ — Merz

14 comments

1. It was a matter of time. The inverted demographic pyramid, the anemic economic growth over the past several years and the fact that the US can no longer be counted as a security guarantor made the current model unsustainable.

   EDIT: I expect the AFD to have a field day with this. They will blame the issue on immigrants and promise that once the “brownies” are kicked out, the German Welfare State will be “great again”.

   EDIT 2: The primary issue here is really demographic. Old people retire, require extensive medical care, etc… This is really expensive and consumes lots of capital without generating new capital. That is fine when young people greatly outnumbers old people, but once that reality is reversed, the wheels fall off.

   Capitalist, socialism, tribal economies with only communal properties would all struggle when the old, retired and sick outnumbers the young and healthy.

   Non-market economies like Cuba and North Korea are facing the exact same crisis right now.

   [Cuba to Women: Please Have More Babies](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/cuba-women-please-have-more-babies-n236406)

   [Video Shows Kim Jong Un Crying Over North Korea’s Lack of Babies](https://www.newsweek.com/north-korea-kim-jong-un-cries-while-urging-mothers-have-more-children-1849871)

   Most people, governments and institutions are fine with the notion of a gradual and controlled population decline. What is alarming people is the pace of the decline we are witnessing and its impact of the composition of the demographic pyramid. When birthrates fall off a cliff, as we are seeing now, we end up with a massively large old population that needs to be supported by an ever declining young population. We don’t know how to run a society with more retirees than working people, or with more sickly people than healthy ones. In the entire history of humanity, this scenario has never happened.

   This is a very complex problem and we haven’t figure out a solution for it yet. But be weary of anyone proposing simple root causes like the “immigrants”, “abandonment of traditional family values and gender roles”, “wokeness”, “the rich”, “capitalism” or anything similar. It is never that simple and easy.

2. Someone needs to tell the good people of Australia about this. We’re living through anti-business, pro-welfare and on a trajectory of impending doom. Propping up our GDP by bringing in 1,500 migrants a day. We have uncontrolled cost escalation and dwindling birth rates. Those joining the workforce face insurmountable challenges, not faced by previous generations. When will we learn.

3. It’s so wild to think that when I was 20 I was sure the world was headed in the right direction. I knew things weren’t perfect, but I was sure that the human race was going to continue to get better, that the world would continue to improve, and that life would only be better in the future.

   I realize now I was wrong.

   Everything will continue to get worse for the rest of my life. Fascism has won, we are just waiting for it to consume the Earth. There will be no bright shining future do the human race. We will never reach the stars. The 2000s will be seen as the peak of the human race and we will likely be extinct in a couple of generations.

   It’s wild.

4. >”The welfare state that we have today can no longer be financed with what we produce in the economy

   There is money only for companies, and the rich, the rest can suck a thumb cuz they are not important. They are helping alt right wingers to grow even more, but they sure are fast to blame everyone else other than them.

5. He of course doesn’t mean pensions, the touching of which has become instant political suicide in Western Europe in general and Germany -where the median age is inching close to 50- in particular. The albatross around Europe’s neck that can be impotently named all you want because young people have become completely politically irrelevant and can do nothing about it either way.

6. What would Jesus do?

   A: Kept funding money for genocide

   B: no longer fund welfare

   Christian Democratic Union (CDU)

   That’s a trick question,… B final answer.

7. It’s crazy how mass deportations are a panacea that alleviate every problem but you aren’t allowed to do it because it’s mean by people who worship green GDP arrow going up.

8. All across Europe welfare states will be dismantled to pay for the West’s increased militarism in their apocalyptic war against China and the rest of the global south. The elites can not handle having lost their status as the dominant global hegemon and this is the only roll of the dice they can do (having completely and totally lost the other ones)

9. We would rather the world burn. Children to starve, Institutions to topple like dominos than even do a minimal wealth tax. The rich in their stupidity do not want to realise that they need society. They already won it all but they need us to believe in the nations they are actively draining of wealth for if there are no shackles to bind the poor then nothing stops them to going back to the times where every few years they went out to torching the manor house and hanging the landlord. 

   If they just kept the status quo  from 10-+5 years ago they could be living in absolute luxury and unfathomable wealth but no they need everything 

10. This isn’t a surprise. Current and future demographics make welfare states impossible. When you have more and more old people who are unable to work and can’t contribute and when you have a working age population that’s in decline, it’s not good for welfare.

11. Yes, it can.

    Germany is the third largest economy in the world.
    We have enough productivity to take care of all our needs and to “finance” the “welfare state”.

    But it would mean that those who keep the lion’s share of all that wealth would have slightly less and *that* is what Merz and his ilk cannot have.

12. Merz is such a despicable human being. Just deal properly with tax evasion, unreported employment and levy the friggin wealth tax again! But no, in the CDU are so many who would be hit by this…

    He should just be sincere and tell us “It cant be financed, because of decades of blatant corruption of CDU.”

13. On one side I sympathize since it’s a process of erosion that in my country started years ago, on the other I don’t becouse on of the main reasons why welfare in southern countries was devastated was austerity of which the German public was a huge supporter.

    Did you guys really think that you would not end up on the chopping block someday? That that boomerang would not hit you right in the head?

    Unpopular moves always get tested on the periphery, but sooner or later reach the centre.

14. The Left is losing because it cannot compete against fiat money systems.

    This is the truth. Since 1971 the world lost the plot to greed, printing new money out of thin air to refinance more and more debt.

    The left ideas are about redistribution of wealth. But it cannot function if there isn’t any to begin with.

    There is no alternative to printing even more money to finance the state. No matter your ideas, morals and politics.

    This is why neo liberalism and fascism is winning. The system is rigged and flawed and is absolutely going to blow up.

    We need to fix the money.

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