Why more Germans can’t afford life on their wages
Why more Germans can’t afford life on their wages
German politicians are fond of saying, "Work must be worth it." But ever more full-time workers need state benefits, and the new minimum wage hike is seen as disappointing.
German politicians are fond of saying, "Work must be worth it." But ever more people who work full-time need state benefits. And the new minimum wage hike is seen as disappointing.
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It's just sad that every politician from the GroKo is so fixated on lifting the minimum wage, which wouldn't bring much at all in the big picture, instead of reducing the enormous amount of various taxes that has to be paid from everybody's salary, which is currently around 40%. SPD even plans to increase the amount of taxes that the middle-class, everyone with an annual salary between 66k and 100k will have to pay. And the politicians sell this as "taxing the rich".
Hahahahaha! The core middle-class consists of people earning between about 1.850 EUR and 3.470 EUR for a single person.
Come one, is it you, Fritze Merz?
While that is, indeed, the core middle class, I don't think it's productive to act as if people earning more than the core (so exactly the 66k to 100k yearly) were somehow the bourgeouis that needed everything taken from them and taxed even harder. Especially considering that the capital tax in Germany is notoriously low. Not to mention the fact that everyone who earns >70k yearly will switch to private health insurance instead of the government health insurance, thus ultimately resulting in the state having even less money.
lifting the minimum wage, which wouldn’t bring much at all in the big picture, instead of reducing the enormous amount of various taxes that has to be paid from everybody’s salary
Lifting the minimum wage directly impacts the available income of the lowest income classes, who in turn spend most of their income on consumption, increasing domestic demand and thus also helping the economy.
Also, higher minimum wage gives unions a better position to argue for higher wages for their members. That in turn can put pressure on the general non-unionized wage level through competition for qualified labor, which we are told is in such short supply ("Fachkräftemangel").Reducing income tax on the other hand primarily benefits those who pay the highest income taxes, i.e. those with high income.
Those people can afford not to spend their entire income but will instead put some if not most of these gains into personal savings, which effectively removes the money from economic circulation and does not help the economy.
Also extremely low incomes do not even pay income tax and thus would not benefit at all.tl,dr Higher mix wage is good for everyone (at least everyone who lives off labor) and primarily helps the poor, lower income tax is only good for some and primarily benefits those with high income.
None of the really "tax the rich".
Although I would argue that a higher general wage level can help redistribute wealth from the rich to the working class.Lifting the minimum wage directly impacts the available income of the lowest income classes, who in turn spend most of their income on consumption, increasing domestic demand and thus also helping the economy.
...except when it doesn't, because the ever-increasing contributions to the Rentenversicherung and Krankenversicherung just eat up all of the brutto increases, leaving people with effectively the same netto. Same applies for every wage increase for every other income class.
Your points are valid, however please note I never advocated for just reducing the income tax alone, but rather the Abgabenlast that all workers have to carry. Primarily health insurance and pension insurance. These systems have become unsustainable (though I would argue they never really were, the issues were masked by a different age pyramid back in the day) and will have to be completely overhauled, the question is: will someone take the plunge and do this before everything collapses?
because the ever-increasing contributions to the Rentenversicherung and Krankenversicherung just eat up all of the brutto increases, leaving people with effectively the same netto.
I'm sorry, you might not mean that literally but too many people perpetuate the myth the taxes and or social security contributions eat up all wage increases or that people get even less due to higher taxes.
That is complete nonsense. The total tax and social security contribution would have to be at 100% for that to be true.If you want people to be able to afford more with their money, then I'd advocate for lower VAT and/or dropping the VAT for basic foods and products to 0%. That wold also help the poor more, serve as a better social redistribution measure and could contribute to more domestic demand.
If we are not talking about taxes but social security then I agree that there need to be significant reforms.
Think about the economy without money. There is a fixed amount of things that can be done with the available resources. That doesn't change, no matter how wages or taxes are allocated. If taxes would decrease, inflation would compensate that.
If we want more, we need more. Cheaper resources or more profits from our products.
This is definitely a point, but Germany's problem with the inefficient retirement and government healthcare systems (96 government providers? WHY?!) is a snowball that's been accelerating downhill for a long time and that needs to be addressed ASAP. The systems need to be reformed, otherwise we're looking at exponentially rising costs for both of those systems that will have to be paid by the average citizen. The health insurance providers are running on fumes money-wise and have already had to increase the contribution factor significantly, and this is just the beginning. It's ironic how SPD says "Wir dürfen uns keine Denkverbote auferlegen" (roughly meaning "We shouldn't be closed to any new thoughts") while suggesting to raise the health insurance assessment threshold from ~5500EUR/mo to ~8000EUR/mo, thus hitting middle-class even harder than it already is, without changing anything about the system itself. This is pretty much the "We've been doing this for a long time already, why change anything?" mentality that hit Germans very hard when they had cheap gas cut off after having relied on it for several decades.
Unpopular opinion, but I actually like the competitive landscape in public health care in Germany. IMHO this is the best example for capitalism: you define exactly what each company has to deliver, and they can compete on:
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pricing
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service
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additional benefits
The nature of the strong regulation here makes them compete on actual relevant things, and they can’t externalize the costs (mostly).
I actually believe having just one public health care company would result in a worse service.
I would rather focus on the ridiculous increase in wealth inequality, in Germany, and around the globe. That’s the root of all evil.
Competiton is always good for the consumer, sure, but too much of it is wasted money. It should be maybe 5-6 Krankenkassen, maybe bump that to 8-9, but this should be in no case a double-digit number. This is in my eyes the sweet spot for both preventing the formation of a cartell and simultaneously offering a wide range of services.
Just think about it, the current 96 companies all have to have their own C-suite, most likely several hundreds of employees - for what? This is a huge waste.
About 95% of the money spent by the public health insurance company is „Leistungsausgaben“, I.e., paying out people for health related costs.
You can’t optimize that away, even when combining the companies. The remaining 5% is overhead. Having worked in a big company, I can tell you that big companies are not that much more efficient than small companies. In fact, the overhead is often even larger since there is lots more cross-communication involved between departments. In the end, everyone that is now a CEO would be an SVP instead, and barely anything would change.
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On the foundation of what @HaiZhung said, the insurance companies are not the problem and also not the wages of the staff. There either needs to be better competition on the cost of treatment, think epipen costs in the US, or an organization outside of competition at all. Latter would be difficult with medical companies that are also the source of global income for the country.