Germany's autobahn bridges falling apart
dw.com
dw.com
[1]https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/75248/umfrage...
They neglect infrastructure to focus on social security.
If they wanted to find the money, they trivially could.
And again, German debt levels are way lower than any other G7 country's. So there is no excuse.
Indeed. I think you figured out the issue. Politicians aren't elected to fix infrastructure, but to distribute taxes through the social security system.
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury."
-Elmer T. Peterson misquoting Alexander Tytler.
The reason the government can't go below the Existenzminimum is that this would be a violation of the constitution's guarantee of human dignity according to the federal constitutional court of Germany, not because it would annoy the poors.
Also there is documented corruption in almost all political parties in federal politics. Most of that corruption is legal though but the beneficiaries are decidedly not the recipients of the "social security system" but rather of public-private partnerships and subsidies.
If you think the poor are leeching off society then the same goes for the fossil fuel industry, the agricultural industry, car manufacturing and other industries that are heavily subsidised and benefiting for extremely specific tax exemptions and funding programmes. One of the biggest beneficiaries of the COVID relief programs in Germany unlike the US was not ordinary taxpayers but airlines and large manufacturing companies.
Any evidence that BMW, Mercedes and VW aren't massive net tax payers?
I had this conversation before, where someone claimed that e.g. the automotive industry was heavily subsidized. But when I looked into it I found absolutely no evidence.
The German government is directly supported by the massively successful German industry. It is the sole reason Germany can even afford it's welfare state. On it's face it is absurd to claim that that industry is tax payer supported, completely ridiculous.
>If you think the poor are leeching off society then the same goes for the fossil fuel industry, the agricultural industry, car manufacturing and other industries
Social security is the top expenditure point in the budget.
It would indeed be trivial to "find the money" but the neo-liberal FDP is acting as an internal opposition demanding both strict adherence to the self-imposed debt brake (which was put in place to allow for investment during economic downturns by avoiding unnecessary debt when things are going well -- except everyone promptly forgot about that justification) as well as neither enacting new taxes (e.g. additional tax brackets), raising existing taxes nor resuming the very moderate wealth tax we suspended (not abolished!) years ago for no good reason.
No? Even on the budget they are distinct items.
>And Germany still has an appalling amount of childhood poverty nevertheless.
Don't forget the homelessness, which is far worse than in the US. Not only is the social security expensive, it also quite ineffective.
>It would indeed be trivial to "find the money" but the neo-liberal FDP is acting as an internal opposition
Exactly. Even they are refusing to cut social spending.
> No? Even on the budget they are distinct items.
That's not a refutation, that's a technicality.
What is the function of social security? What would happen without it?
To reduce social conflict by subsiding people who, for one reason or another, are unwilling or unable to successfully participate in the labor market.
>What would happen without it?
I don't want to speculate, but at some point we are going to find out.
So they basically just couldn’t come up with a solution when trying to balance the budget. Definition of death by committee, which is a representation of the will of the people.
How can we do this better? This feels so important, yet it feels impossible if this is the outcome of telling our politicians they need to respect a budget.
Coalition politics only works if the members recognise the need for compromise and are competent enough to achieve it. I'd honestly expected German politicians to be better at this tbh.
Our finance minister and our chancellor just don’t want it.
The government can just direct government-owned corporations (e.g. Deutsche Bahn) to make new shares and purchase them with fresh money, thus giving the corporation a free cash infusion. Financial transactions are also not covered by the debt brake.
It is also worth pointing out that the debt break means the government is incentivised to increase taxes as funding for their expenses.
As of now about 25% of the federal budget go towards retired people [1] (in addition to all mandatory "taxes" paid by working people).
The vast majority of the money is not spent on charity but is part of the societal deal that younger people support the elders. So the payments retirees get are the result of them paying into the system for 30 - 40 years.
The shrinking numbers of younger working people and the beginning retirement of baby boomers make this system unsustainable and politically very hard to change.
Something will give sooner or later but god knows what that will be.
[1] https://www.bundeshaushalt.de/DE/Bundeshaushalt-digital/bund...
On a societal level, it is more accurate to frame this as “the purchasing power the retirees get are the result of the dynamics of political power in the society”.
This is clearer because regardless of what any entity pays into whatever, a change in political power in the future can always change “the deal”.
Also, there are a few ways for deals to change. One is that payments promised in the future can nominally satisfy the original deal, but the purchasing power of those payments (which is really what people want) can be eroded, namely by government policy. So you can pay into the system all you want, but you might not be able to but what you expected you were going to be able to buy.
Another way is that if you are promised benefits, such as healthcare, then the quantity/quality of healthcare can be reduced. Longer wait times, less qualified personnel, less quality control in medicines coming from factories that are not being inspected as often, etc.
In addition the individual worker has been promised "you pay now and get security later" which makes it very hard to argue against. Your stereotypical grandma isn't suited to be framed as a "drain on society" and she isn't typically getting rich of it. It's the sheer amount of grandmas that is bringing the system to it's knees.
Much lying happened back in the day when it became apparent that birth rates would result in a lower standard of living for old people who worked all of their adult live.
Rather than let the system fail gradually or seek to reform it in general, politicians took the easy way out and started supplemanting it from the general budget and have been ever since.
I don’t blame the politicians, as it is impossible to get elected on a platform of reducing the biggest voting bloc’s (perceived) quality of life.
It’s just a structural weakness in democracy due to the way humans are, papered over by growth due to high fertility rates in previous generations and the resulting momentum that I think started petering out somewhere in the 1990s.
I was under the impression that most western countries are facing issues like this
It is not a country which has particularly much to offer if you are making decent money.
I'm personally leaving next year. But there are many other reasons.
Anyone earning more than that actually starts to earn less, as the benefits immediately go away (e.g. rent support) and leaving you with less money on the table.
A family of 4 (2 unemployed adults and 2 kids) qualify for 2k to 3k Eur (net) benefits per month, meanwhile any “working” adult get slapped with 51% effective tax rate without any benefits at all. Basically you share your income with another family just because they do not feel like working.
This number is demonstrably false. I just checked my payslip from last month. Gross salary is around 7000 euros, and net salary is around 4300 euros, giving an effective tax rate of 39%. And that's only if you consider health insurance, care insurance, unemployment insurance, and the statutory pension plan "taxes". I don't mean to enter into a debate into what constitutes a tax, but in many other countries, these types of insurances are handled privately, so the tax rate will "look different" without meaningfully describing the difference in actual expendable income. Effective tax rate on my payslip just for taxes that are called "tax" is around 20%.
If you are counting statutory insurances into your understanding of tax rate, then the part of "without any benefits at all" is just ludicrous hyperbole, or we have a very different understanding of the word "benefit".
- They issue bonds to be sold to financiers at banks like JPMC, RBC, etc.
- They get their debt serviced by financiers at banks like JPMC, RBC, etc
https://www.der-postillon.com/2014/11/lander-ersetzen-marode...
Source?
Not sure if that's a good or a bad thing, i imagine if you do not work, you can spend more time with the kids.
Kids famously come with costs attached as well.
So, let the bridges fall apart!
(The above does not mean that I am in favor of the aggressor. As far as I'm concerned, the aggressor can get the hell out of the occupied territories. At some point though one needs to consider whether it is possible to make progress militarily.)
Maintaining that is it's single biggest focus.
Are you saying the government should drastically raise the minimum wage in order to cut back on social security expenses?
What? That totally isn't true. Minimum wage is high enough already. It absolutely is a "living wage".
>Are you saying the government should drastically raise the minimum wage in order to cut back on social security expenses?
No, they should drastically cut back on taxes and social spending.
That's literally true. There's even a word for it: Aufstocken.
Are you saying Bürgergeld is too high? That the standard of a living wage should be lower than Bürgergeld currently is? How do you define a "living wage" then?
You say minimum wage is (too?) high, taxes are "drastically" too high and social spending is "drastically" too high. What does that mean? What tax rates per bracket would you find acceptable? How much lower should Bürgeld be or which group of current recipients should be excluded from it? Or what other social welfare programmes are you thinking of that should be cut?
It's easy to say that "social spending" is too high if you look at a context-free aggregate value. But what do you actually envision when you say that you think it should be "drastically" cut?