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Comment by constantcrying | Hacker News Reader

>Germany shifted to a system that is as close to a basic income as you can currently imagine.

It is free money for everyone. Everyone obviously excluding the people who work full-time and who are paying taxes so that "everyone" can live of Bürgergeld.

>but especially for those relying on government money...

Yes, those are the real victims here. Who else could be victimized by working full time, so that other people don't have to work?

Maybe the real victims are the people who have to work full time and are suffering from the increased cost of living?

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> It is free money for everyone. Everyone obviously excluding the people who work full-time and who are paying taxes so that "everyone" can live of Bürgergeld.

Oh wow, the exact thing people have been saying would happen has happened. Turn's out Quasi-UBI is a drain on tax paying citizens after all. Amazing.

German here, our country is broken beyond recognition due to 40 years of terrible political decisions independent of party or political side.

I cannot even name one thing that is not broken beyond belief. The conservative government has added the debt ceiling to our Constitution requiring a 2/3 vote to change it, thereby making investments like the Inflation Reduction Act in the US utterly impossible. However, they are needed for dozens of reasons, not just the collapsing infrastructure which will directly impact our economy.

Conservatives, Greens, Liberals and Social Democrats have all completely failed at running this country for 40+ years. Russian-supported fascists AfD are obviously not an alternative.

We are coasting on the gains, relationships and industries established before 1990. This is where our standing and wealth comes from and we are simply riding on that high until it pops.

I can go deeply into all of the troubles but Ill keep it simple: the state of the military is entirely representative of the state of ALL other sectors. That should be relatable to non-Germans. I am not exaggerating for karma, my deepest worry is the condition of the real estate / housing market. This is material for a complete shit show, it honestly scares me.

>We are coasting on the gains, relationships and industries established before 1990. This is where our standing and wealth comes from and we are simply riding on that high until it pops.

And more and more of that is either going bankrupt or is being outsourced to China. Whole sectors are step by step becoming non-competitive. Manufacturing, which has been the most important wealth generator for the lower middle class, is going away. Engineering is only relevant if you can innovate, which for many, many reason doesn't really happen. In Germany a very experienced Software developer makes a pittance compared to what you can in the US with much less experience, even before taxes.

Of course it doesn't really help that much of the population is not particularly inclined to do anything engineering/scientific/manufacturing related and actively looks down on that.

>my deepest worry is the condition of the real estate / housing market

Honestly, I am "optimistic" that multiple big manufacturers will fail before that, together with their suppliers.

Also German.

> I cannot even name one thing that is not broken beyond belief. The conservative government has added the debt ceiling to our Constitution requiring a 2/3 vote to change it

Good. You'd see a government without this restriction spend more money on pension benefits faster than you'd think possible.

> thereby making investments like the Inflation Reduction Act in the US utterly impossible

This is not true. Germany has a spending problem, not a tax income problem. Never before have we had as much taxes in the Governments pockets as we do now.

This.

> Maybe the real victims are the people who have to work full time and are suffering from the increased cost of living?

If this was a genuine concern there wouldn't be so many people skimming off the top of every nation on the planet. We're surrounded by parasites and you're picking on people running calorie deficits for some reason.

>If this was a genuine concern there wouldn't be so many people skimming off the top of every nation on the planet. We're surrounded by parasites and you're picking on people running calorie deficits for some reason.

Wrong. The only way to go hungry here in Germany is by choice.

The people "skimming off the top" are not the ones paying millions upon millions in taxes. It is those who are to lazy to work, because they and their family get enough Bürgergeld, that actually working would lower their income. If you are able, but not working in some capacity, you are the leech and millionaires are paying for your leeching.

>get enough Bürgergeld, that actually working would lower their income.

This very rarely ever happens by accident. It's a useful policy hack for people "who pay millions in taxes" because it disincentivizes their workers from pushing for a pay raise.

This way they can leech more of the surplus value of their labor.

This is genuinely insane. No, millionaires want people to work, because more people working depresses wages and more people working allows growing the economy.

If people don't want to work, they have to pay the leeches and they have to pay more to get people willing to work. Your economics are insane.

>It's a useful policy hack for people "who pay millions in taxes" because it disincentivizes their workers from pushing for a pay raise.

No, it incentivizes them, because there are fewer people working, meaning the supply of labor goes down. At a constant demand that means the price for labor goes up. Literally economics 101.

>This is genuinely insane. No, millionaires want people to work

These people do work - generally unofficial odd jobs under the table for shitty wages.

Have you never met any of these "leeches" taking benefits?

I meet them every day of my life.

>These people do work - generally unofficial odd jobs under the table for shitty wages.

Usually dealing drugs.

Evidently not.

I've read plenty about how every working family struggling on benefits is a crack dealer too, written in media that is exclusively owned by the economic leeches who contribute little to no economic value but "who pay millions in taxes" on their unearned income:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2260633/Drug-dealer...

The propaganda that underpins your belief system was designed to foster exactly your kind of resentment against the underclass.

This is a conspiracy theory. There is a labor shortage already, so the people “who pay millions in taxes” would be able to earn much more money if they could find more motivated workers.

> because they and their family get enough Bürgergeld, that actually working would lower their income

This means it’s not UBI, and that’s kind of the whole point here. With UBI this welfare cliff wouldn’t exist; if you work, you still raise your income. That means, unlike the current German system, UBI still incentivises people to work to increase their income/wealth.

Of course actively disincentivising people to work will cause them to not work. That’s just rational behaviour, you cannot blame anyone for that.

>> Who else could be victimized by working full time, so that other people don't have to work?

As when employees work full time so that shareholders can be given dividends? Part of me would rather a cut of wages go to support thousands of people on welfare who "don't have to work" rather than that cut go to a handful of billionaires who also "don't have to work". Our economy already supports an array of non-working people (retirees, disabled people, passive shareholders). So I'm not going to get hung up on the principal. We broke that glass long ago.

Your sarcasm is out of place. I criticise the scheme because it’s not sustainable, not even for those that get the handouts. It’s not even solving the supposed problem. This is important with regard to the posted article, because that effect cannot be observed on small scale experiments that do not restrict labor supply on a societal scale.

That is the problem with these programs. You will never get full buy in from the population unless EVERYONE benefits from it. Just look at social security and Medicare if you go to cut that it is political suicide.

There is no system where everyone benefits from redistribution.

It is literally impossible to imagine a system where everyone benefits, unless you have a free energy machine of course.

Society and economies aren’t zero-sum games. It usually costs less to prevent someone from robbing you by giving them some welfare money - boom, value created out of nothing and everyone is better off ;-)

Forced large scale redistribution is just theft, honestly. The value proposition of heavy taxing is no longer met, people here (in Germany) no longer receive fair benefits for their taxes. Infrastructure is failing.

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