German welfare state 'can no longer be financed' — Merz
German welfare state 'can no longer be financed' — Merz
www.dw.com
German welfare state 'can no longer be financed' — Merz – DW – 08/23/2025
73 comments
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Pensions, retirement benefits, and long-term care add up to roughly 40% of the German social budget, while 23% goes toward healthcare. That's already 63%.
Approximately 10% is spent on supporting children and young people (with problems), and about 5% on child benefits and the like.
AND ABOUT 4% IS SPENT ON CITIZENS' WELFARE, AND THAT'S ALL WE'RE DISCUSSING?
When Merz calls for the welfare state to finally be modernized, he only wants one thing: redistribution.
From the bottom up. Merz and his co. have just significantly increased pensions and retirement benefits with a lawn sprinkler, while tax increases for the rich are ruled out! And no one seriously believes that inheritance tax will ever become a real tax that also affects billionaires.
Budget figures here:
More Facts:
48 billion euros still flow into fossil fuel subsidies every year.
The absurd company car privilege (Dienstwagenprivileg) costs 13 billion.
100 billion is lost to the state because tax loopholes for corporations and the wealthy aren't closed.
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- Three separate health insurance systems that could be unified
- Still no reinstatement of wealth taxes
- Underfunded prosecution of tax evasion, which could collect millions and billions
- Ease entry and participation of immigrants in the job market (instead of preventing them from working for months and years)
It's so simple. But of course, Merz is doing politics for the very rich. No surprise there. Talking bullshit.
/edit: Adding a fourth simple action.
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I’m sure he will have entirely considered the cost of not doing so, right?
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Merz can't no longer be financed - the German welfare state.
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Note that Germany hasn't reinstated the wealth taxation since more than 30 years and the inheritance tax is designed in a way to protect rich inheritors, so people who inherit hundreds of millions or billions usually pay no or a rather small percentage of inheritance tax, while people who inherit a few millions pay upwards of 30% on it.
Because of the lacking wealth taxation, there is no proper knowledge of how rich the rich in Germany actually are. The 1970s marked the end of the "Wirtschaftswunder" the time of rapid economic growth. Nonetheless since 1980 the real economic output has increased by 230%.
It isn't a matter of affordability for now that the social security is being attacked. It is a matter of political prioritization to enrich the rich and fight the middle and lower income people. In the longer run we will also see a huge demographic issue as there simply won't be enough people to keep working in the industries, but more importantly for social security in the healthcare and eldercare.
All of this was and is predictable. It has been matter of "discussion" since more than 30 years. Every government since then chose to remain inactive or work to make things worse. Doesn't matter if led by the CDU/CSU or SPD and doesn't matter if the coalition partners were Green or FDP (ultra-neoliberals). They all worked together to bring us here and now they get to reap the reward of neoliberalism in the form of rising fascism.
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Vote for us, only we can fix the issues we caused!
Note to international readers: from 1982 onwards, the currently ruling party suggesting this has been in power over 32 years combined. Now, if you didn't fail elementary math, you might come to a damning conclusion
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Lower taxes, keep potential workers from foreign countries out, complain about demographic change and fiscal limitations. CDU creates the problem and then complains about it. Next wave of privatization incoming I guess.
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And yet, voters will sadly continue falling for it. Why are voters so damn stupid.
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I think many people actually believe that if you take money away from "other" people, like refugees or people on welfare, that money will be funneled to them. It's a zero sum game, sure, but the flow of money is always upwards. Recent evidence would be tax cuts for companies (which of course only affect companies making profits and not the many struggling companies in the industry sector and much less so any actual working people).
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Just look at how stupid people with an IQ of 100 are and then realise that half of the population is more stupid.
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Keep foreigners out? Sounds reminiscent of USA MAGA racism. Please elaborate
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The German economy will be short of 7 million workers in 10 years. That will severely affect the economic output and the general welfare. An obvious solution would be to attract people from other countries to come work in Germany. Incidentally, there have been many asylum seekers in the past 10 years. However, due to public sentiment fueled by right wing propaganda, ruling parties have worked to increase obstacles to move to Germany. Recent examples would be the closing of borders to EU neighbours or cutting welfare checks for Ukrainian refugees (and services that help them finding work, which is more relevant than the financial cuts). The far right AfD party is and has been on the rise and they were able to dictate policy related to foreigners as the other parties try to regain lost votes, mostly unsuccessfully so far. In general, this creates a hostile atmosphere for people from abroad, making Germany less attractive as a place to work or new home. This of course directly contradicts the requirement of additional people in the work force, that's what I meant when saying that this is a self-made problem by the government.
This is of course very brief and simplified but I hope it gives you an impression. Yes, MAGAesque politics are on the rise in other parts of the world as well.
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Imagine you are from an non EU country, have ten years of working experience in a relevant field, speak German at B2/C1 level. You apply for a residency permit with work permission. Sounds reasonable?
Wrong! Your school education, higher education and trade certification aren't recognised. You can apply for a trade certification course and residency permit, but only when you can proof to have about 10,000€ in the bank account for each year of the course. You are not allowed to engage in any form of employment on the side except for 10hours a week and <450€/month.
After you get your arbitrary certification you have to rush to find any job that is within the scope of your certificate. You will need to beg companies that they will sign the contract and risk waiting three months or more until your residency permit is approved. If it works out now for the first two years you are beholden to that company as your permit is tied to that job. If you want to change jobs you need to have a new company ligned up and initiate for a change approval, with the new company again willing to wait multiple months for the procedure.
If you don't abide by that process, get laid off, etc. your residency is invalid and you could be deported easily.
These were the experiences people close to me made under the supposed progressive government before the current one. German administration absolutely hates foreigners and the processes are made to make them sufder as much as possible and keep showing them that they should feel like servants kissing the boots of their masters.
It does not make sense economically, socially or in any other capacity. It is pure systematic racism, using the illogical and cold blood bureaucracy as a front.
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CxU can no longer be financed.
Edit: I know this is a stupid retort but they are so obviously and actively working against us people living in Germany it's agonizing to watch how thoroughly they pave the way to a coalition with AfD. I hate Merz, the asshole rapist apologist so much..
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Hey look, you're on the Anglo-Fasc path of reducing humanity to the people while removing the ability of the voters to have input on what and how government should run. Good luck! Hope voting still works for you and things can be turned around.
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We have a bit of money left. We can finance the car industry that failed to shift to the modern world... Or the social system everyone benefits from.
Merz chooses cars.
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Whenever someone suggests to raise taxes for the super rich billionaires, the conservative answer is:
he stressed there would "not be any increase in income tax on medium-sized companies in Germany with this federal government under my leadership,"
which is super effective in a country where everybody thinks they are "middle class".
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The problem right now is that the baby boomers are retiring, but are still to young to die. In Germany the baby boom was between 1955-69. So with the current retirement age of 67, that means that they started retiring in 2022 and it will end in 2036. With a life expectancy of about 80 in Germany, 2035 is also, when they really start to die. Retirement is really the big cost factor of the welfare state, so this is an actual problem.
However many will choose to retire a bit earlier using savings or some laws, which allow one to retire four years earlier, for lower pensions, if one for fills certain criteria.
This obviously increases costs and hurts the economy as fewer people are working. However the ration will start to improve in a decade or so and there are other reasons for the economy doing poorly, such as the transition to EVs.
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Anything we can do, we can afford.
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will not*
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putting him on course for a possible clash with the SPD.
I am sure there is a party willing to help if the SPD objects. Of course the CxU would never cooperate with them, because the SPD will not object.
73 comments
People keep pointing out the amount of pension subsidies in the federal budget but that is not who Merz is talking about. Pensioners are his core voting demographic.
No, Merz means social security recipient. People who are unemployed or who don't earn enough despite working.
He and his party have been waging a constant, baseless culture war against these Bürgergeld recipients since before he took office.
They keep claiming that these people are lazy and refuse to work or that social security fraud is rampant. When pressed for concrete numbers they could not name any. Economists have already crunched the numbers and even if you take the Union at their word, the potential savings in the area of social security is minuscule.
This has nothing to do with finances or good governance. It's a culture war and a deflection from growing demands to re-introduce the wealth tax and to close loopholes in inheritance tax.
Makes sense
Baseless bullshit as counterargument to force people to be "neutral" and discuss nonexistent problems instead of just discussing how much more rich people should pay. Not "if" and not "what about the poor"