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- The lack of energy security is because the Red/Greens convinced everywhere except France (go Framatome!) to give up nuclear. I wonder why resource rich Russia would push such an outcome...
- Europe needs to spend its savings to get nuclear going again, with a massive construction program for nuclear, solar, hydro, batteries. It also needs battery tech re-capitalisation to keep its car industry viable.
- Leaving won't make it better, it is the same or worse in most places you could go.
Anyway, nuclear just wasn't driving big energy percentages at low prices so getting rid of it had minimal impact.
The big impact was Russian gas being severed.
Unfortunate that she didn't realize that Germany does have less devastating earthquakes and tsunamis than Japan has. Less as in effectively zero.
I have heard so many stories from outside and people workin in it. Things like considering refabricating the same lightbulb from some now non existant company from the 80's because that one got listed and is certified and the process to go trough to allow a new one is too cumbersome and the light went out in the toilets of some irrelevant sidebuilding. So you get a lightbulb that costs an insane amount.
Or here in belgium the greens pushed some new tests to detect microfisures deep in a ridiculously thick vat that isn't security critical that would have been there since fabrication and which nobody else in the world checks for and they shut down the place for it when found. Anything to validate their own theory that nuclear is too expensive whilst planning for new gas plants.
Meanwhile the plant in france that was shut down is because they didn't want to have an ecological impact on a nearby nature reserve. Something that indeed wasn't accounted for decades ago. At the same time one manages to have such plants running in Saudi Arabia?
Additionally Germany has spend untold amounts more on it's renewables. It still hasn't linked it's own damn grids, put strain on infrastructure and prices abroad... and those same investments won't go for nearly as long. A good part of that green wave investment already needs replacing. All whilst necessitating fossil fuel production because that capacity figure that people hold up means jack shit when it's not what they actually produce in summer and those panels in berlin produce not even a fraction of that capacity in winter.
A striking example is the German state having to pay for storing the nuclear waste (temporary and final, see https://www.bafa.de/DE/Wirtschaft/Handwerk_Industrie/Rueckba..., though Germany has no final storage). Also when tearing down the old plants it can happen that the state is paying for that, as in https://www.handelsblatt.com/politik/deutschland/atomkraft-n.... Those costs were not part of the calculated energy costs, and in the past there were further subventions for the companies that lowered the price. Those are also listed at my first link.
You think that isn't happening even more now?
And yes it was a lot cheaper than it is now. One reason being that a lot more were built around that time in europe and our reactors actually went up in about 5 years.
The problem is nobody wants nuclear waste near their front door, even limited politicians were quick to realize that.
And yes, Germany's energy mix is a shame.
> other EU country's have been net neutral for CO2 emissions for a while now.
No EU country has achieved that, to my knowledge. It would be very surprising giving the EU energy mix and the petrol based traffic sector. Sources please.
> Coal and Gas account for 40% of Germany's energy production
Which means 60% is renewable, and that part is actually growing.
Not nearly even in the same ballpark as setting fossil fuels on fire, or do you have any sources that show otherwise?
But it's the wrong comparison. Nuclear energy is not to be replaced with fossil energy, but with renewables. So that "advantage" is completely irrelevant.
This is exactly what Germany did tho.
The EU court agrees with me. I trust it to have more knowledge than either of us. Nuclear is low-carbon. End of story. You can deal with toxic waste easily. [1]
> adiating the humans of the future.
Gas and coal produce more radiation than nuclear energy.
> CO2 emissions are also still caused by it, and would grow when mining for nuclear material got harder by continued usage.
But they would not grow comparable to burning actual stuff. Not even close. You are being disingenious.
> No EU country has achieved that, to my knowledge. It would be very surprising giving the EU energy mix and the petrol based traffic sector. Sources please.
Sorry, mistake on my part, I meant low carbon electricity (so not burning literal poison, like Germany). Let's take France, the very country you critiqued [2]. Or Norway. Or Switzerland [3]. Now, compare it with Germany [4]. Note that every country that achieves a high score can either rely on geothermal energy or hydro, neither of which is reliably useable in Germany. So for anyone who can't make use of these technologies, nuclear is the only option.
> Which means 60% is renewable, and that part is actually growing.
There is a hard limit here for Germany. We are not a prime candidate for neither wind nor thermal energy, so our renewable mix actually decreased this year, back to 55%. [5] We need a flexible backup option for situations like this. The only option is either continuing to burn dirty fuel, go back to nuclear energy or to make ourselves eternally dependent to buy electricity from other EU states (which is the current plan).
[1]: https://apnews.com/article/europe-nuclear-energy-natural-gas...
[2]: https://lowcarbonpower.org/region/France
[3]: https://lowcarbonpower.org/region/Switzerland
[4]: https://lowcarbonpower.org/region/Germany
[5]: https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat...
Nuclear energy is decidedly not a flexible backup option for anything. Those plants are slow to regulate, have never been and will never be a backup. The solution is energy storage and producing so much more at the peak that at the low end is enough. Also, there is no problem importing from countries that do have more geothermal or hydro energy.
> But they would not grow comparable to burning actual stuff. Not even close. You are being disingenious
The comparison is invalid in the first place. It's not about nuclear vs fossil, I never did argue for fossil energy. So the comparison you opened up is bs anyway. It's a propaganda talk point of nuclear proponents that tries to mislead from the actual comparison to make, which is renewables vs the other options.
The decision of the EU court was unfortunate, stupid, and that appeal to authority does not function.
This is, factually speaking, not what attempts have shown. cf. France, cf. Canada.
> The comparison is invalid in the first place. It's not about nuclear vs fossil
This topic of discussion started with someone explicitly making the comparison about exactly that.
This is completely untrue. The Atomaustieg happened under Merkel (CDU) and was catalyzed by Fukushima. That's democracy, for you, btw.
The current energy "crisis" was due to idiotic trust (CDU/SPD) in Russia's goodwill and consequently opting for huge structural natural gas dependency. Foreign energy dependency wouldn't change with with nuclear power, since uranium isn't mined in Germany. Russia actually is a major uranium exporter (btw still supplying the US). Uranium mines are a horrible dirty shit show, western nations tend to outsource...
Another grave mistake was discontinuing the funding/support of renewable energy industry and research, where Germany was leading once. Now, China rules in solar manufacturing. Germany still got game for wind energy, tho.
Germany does not have a need for "base load" nuclear power plants, we need a substitute for gas power plants, which can be easily turned on/off as needed. Factually, no one in the energy industry in Germany wants to go nuclear, again. It's just not economical, sensible (as for time scales) or overall competitive with renewables (unless less regulated/dangerous, enormously substituted).
Overall, we got mostly off Russian gas dependency exceptionally well and quick, all things considered, because of pragmatic green politics at the time (Habeck's image suffered because of deliberate smear campaigns, not because of severe factual failings). Lights stayed on, things kept moving, under downright hostile conditions. Renewable energy is booming. You see solar everywhere, no matter the political alignment.
Considering the real threat of war with Russia, distributed renewables are an invaluable asset. Try bombing wind power or solar... gonna get expensive. Many houses here are becoming quasi autarkic for heating, electricity and mobility, due to household solar panels, heat pumps, energy storage in electric cars and dedicated batteries. A central multi-GW nuclear power plant is a huge liability for national security, especially, since Germany is existentially dependent on the French and UK strategic nuclear deterrent. (US not reliable/trustworthy anymore.)
The only sensible reason to build reactors in Germany would be breading/enriching weapons-grade fission material, for self-sufficient nuclear defense... Which I don't see happening really.
So, when the government does something populistic (with majority support) that is bad for the country, it's a democracy.
But when the government refuses to do something populistic (with majority support) that is good for the country, that's also democracy.
Looks like our democracy #unsereDemokratie it is not possible to do good, only harmful dealings are allowed :)
If you have questions about how to respond, this is a good starting point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_alphabet
60% of the voting block is above 55. Of course they would.
That's incredibly high - where do you live if you don't mind saying?
https://www.expat.hsbc.com/expat-explorer/expat-guides/germa...
The highest band of income tax in Germany is 45% and obviously that's only on any amount over the threshold - so even if you make that much money your effective tax rate will be closer to 30% than 50%.
So unless I'm missing something - I don't see how Germans could be paying 50% tax on their earnings?
I will, because you are! Unfortunately, it's really easy because the German government applies a simple slight of hand. They call it a "gross employer contribution", which increases this band of income tax beyond the 45% you pay after the GEC. [1]
It works like this: As your employer is paying your wage, amount X, they pay half of your contribution to social insurance companies. This so called "employer contribution" is subtracted before you are paid out your gross wage, amount Y, which you see on your pay slip. Now, on amount Y, you pay the other half of social insurance fees and taxes. Then you get your net, amount Z. Most sources you will find online will only talk about Y and what is subtracted to get to Z. But your employer pays your full wage for what your work is worth, and they of course are not as nice to gift your one half of social insurance payments to you.
[1]: https://publikationen.bundesbank.de/publikationen-de/bericht...
And can I comment on the fact that Germany seems to be incredibly generous with their bands - the 45% band only kicks in at 280k euro, so like maybe 0.00001% of all workers are in that band? Here in the UK you start paying 45% from £125k and up.
Anyway - the reason why I'm asking is because UK taxes and social obligations seem to be crazy high as it is, but even they won't get you to 50% total, not unless you literally make millions in income per year.
In the end 140k that employer pays result in less than 64k take-home salary. The real tax rate is around 54%. So, I can't verify what OP says about Germany but I can easily believe it.
You can see chatgpt calculations here (and they do match my experience): https://chatgpt.com/share/68e64456-020c-800b-8443-1a2726e9a3...
Is not your salary. This is what the employer has to pay to keep you. So even in your example your tax on your earnings is around 35%. The fact that the employer has to pay another 40k to keep you employed is......well, shocking, but I wouldn't say that's a tax rate on your earnings - for the simple reason that if the government reduced the employer contribution to zero it wouldn't change anything about your take home salary(unless your employer decided to be generous and give you a raise).
I don't know, maybe you should speak more to people about this. Literally everyone who I discussed it with (like dozens of people) see it in the same way:
* There's the money your employer spends to pay your salary
* There's the money you take home
* Everything in between is the government tax. There's absolutely no difference between "employer social contributions" and "employee social contributions" except in the name
Well now I kind of know one person who sees it differently, but this PoV still doesn't make sense to me.
> for the simple reason that if the government reduced the employer contribution to zero it wouldn't change anything about your take home salary(unless your employer decided to be generous and give you a raise).
Believe it or not, but for multi-national companies job offers in France are smaller for this very reason: you have a fixed budget to hire an employee, you subtract the "employers contributions" and calculate the gross salary you can offer in various countries where you have legal entities. There's also the "adjust to local market part", it's not a single-factor formula of course, but "contributions" play a huge role in it. After all budget is budget, you can go lower if you like but you can't go higher.
This! It's hard for me how some people can't see this.
1) like I asked you in another comment - if that contribution was removed, I'm sure you wouldn't feel like you got a paycut.
2) if that did happen, your employer wouldn't magically decide to give that money to you instead, right? It is not and never was your income.
Edit:
I just want to add one more thing - this entire comment chain started by OP saying, and I quote "I have over 50% of my income taken from me into a collapsing welfare state/pension system".
The money that the employer pays to have you employed isn't your income, so adding it to your total earnings and saying "well I'm paying 50% of my income to the state" is just not correct. The employer probably pays money for the office and a desk for you to sit at, but it's not your income - it's part of their cost to keep you employed. I will say it again - if those costs dropped down to zero, you wouldn't say your income is now smaller, would you?
What matters in real life is the size of the cut the government gets from the employee-employer transaction. That cut definitely includes all the "employer contributions". The bigger it is, the less the employee gets.
And no, it's not the same as the cost of buying the desk. If would be the same if the state prohibited remote work making a desk a necessity and then forced everyone to buy desks from state-owned providers at the price set by the state. In this case -- yes, absolutely, this becomes a "desk tax" which is eating into your income.
UPD Since you insist, I'll address this part too:
> I will say it again - if those costs dropped down to zero, you wouldn't say your income is now smaller, would you?
I'll go to my boss directly and say that "my income is now smaller than it should be" and ask for increase in gross. If this doesn't work out, I'll go and get an offer elsewhere. Knowing how hiring and budgeting works, this is the only sane course of action. Companies suddenly find them with money they've already budgeted but aren't spending, expect the arms race for professions with high demand.
In parallel to that I'll make sure to distribute raises to key members of my team anticipating them doing the same. I'll lose a few less valuable members of the team in the process because they'll receive offers that I won't be willing to counter.
In general, I pay more attention to what people do, not what they say. This is why I didn't reply to the question "you wouldn't say your income is now smaller, would you?" the first time -- it's inconsequential, but we can consider it if you like.
Except it isn't, because you keep doing this to pretend like you're paying 50% of your salary in taxes which just isn't true. No one advertises a job as "pays €60k a year" and then you find out it includes the employer contribution too so actually your salary is more like €40k. If anyone did that you'd call it fraudulent.
>>I'll go to my boss directly and say that "my income is now smaller than it should be" and ask for increase in gross
......why? You are paid exactly what you agreed to be paid. If your employer negotiated cheaper electricity deal for the office would you go and ask for a raise too?
>>The bigger it is, the less the employee gets
Again, why? The company would just pocket the money and not pay you more. I honestly don't see why they would.
>>In general, I pay more attention to what people do, not what they say
But this is a comments section on hacker news - discussion is the entire point.
But look, we just aren't going to agree on this. I just never met anyone in my life who would consider their employer's legal obligations paid directly to the state as part of their salary - if you do that's cool, I have no interest in making you change that view, we're two random strangers on the internet.
You consider the world as static picture where a salary is what your contract says it is. It doesn't have to be like this. Your salary is what you contract says, but you have a certain power over what it says. Contract by itself is a derivative of the economic situation, not the source of truth.
In the end your salary is what you can negotiate and in this view you salary is heavily affected by employer contributions because it affects the negotiations. If your negotiation power increases, your salary can increase. If it drops, the company will pay you 3 months of wage, fire you and hire someone cheaper.
> ......why? You are paid exactly what you agreed to be paid.
Because I'm getting the maximum of what I can negotiate with the company. If they suddenly have more money in the people budget, I can obviously negotiate more. And if not, I'm getting a better offer elsewhere because the job market is very different now.
> If your employer negotiated cheaper electricity deal for the office would you go and ask for a raise too?
It depends, in a realistic scenario: no, because electricity is not a part of the people's budget, impact on the company profitability will be near zero and in the end this doesn't change the job market much, only affects my company locally. So counteroffer technique won't work either.
However in an imaginary case of electricity prices crashing all across the country overnight making businesses more profitable: yes, I think I'll try to negotiate a raise.
> Again, why? The company would just pocket the money and not pay you more. I honestly don't see why they would.
It depends on how hard it is to replace you. Effectively there's new money on the table and you'll split that money with your employer. If you're hard to replace, you'll take the bigger cut or even all of it. If you're easy to replace, you get zero or else they'll get someone else who agrees to get zero.
> But look, we just aren't going to agree on this. I just never met anyone in my life who would consider their employer's legal obligations paid directly to the state as part of their salary - if you do that's cool, I have no interest in making you change that view, we're two random strangers on the internet.
Of course, we argue for the pleasure of it but I think our intentions are different. I don't have a goal of changing your definition of words -- you can keep the ones you like. However I think it's worth trying to change your world view. My suggestion: try thinking of your salary (if you're a hired worker) as something you can negotiate not something set in stone (you can call it $alary if you like). Twice in my career I approached my employer with an external offer and twice I got a 2x counter-offer. They didn't say "You are paid exactly what you agreed to be paid", it's not how it works.
You need to play it well but it's an extremely strong negotiation technique. There are others but they're more complicated to execute so I suggest to start with this one.
It IS your salary. If the employer didn't pay it, YOU would have to pay it anyway. If you are a freelancer, you will have to pay that employers share anyway.
It's the cost of social security systems, and someone has to pay it: You. With your work hours and salary.
So if the government reduced the share that the employers pay down to zero tomorrow, would you then go to your partner/family/friends and say "hey, I just got a paycut at work" ?
It doesn't matter how you decide to slice it - "this share you pay, this share I pay" at the end of the day it will be seen through the lens of Total Cost of Ownership.
>>you care only what the end cost is to you.
Yes, so I care what my salary is. What the employer has to legally pay to employ me is literally irrelevant other than academically. It's not my salary, the same how their cost of maintaining an office or providing me with equipment to do my job isn't my salary.
You forget that the 42% band kicks in at 68000 (up until 280k) not 10k from the median wage. You pay this with 1.2% of the median wage, when in the distant past (around 1960) you had 42% at 15 times the median wage. They never changed these bands to adjust for inflation.
Yes, obviously - it works the same way here. You just said that "anywhere in Germany" you will pay 50% of your income in taxes, so I'm asking if your average worker actually pays that, or even a high earning IT worker/lawyer/doctor, or just somone who takes home millions in pay(not capital gains) so that the averages catch up.
>>You forget that the 42% band kicks in at 68000 (up until 280k) not 10k from the median wage.
I didn't forget, but like I said 3 comments earlier - your average will work out closer to 30% not 50%(I'd guess) because you only pay it on anything above the threshold, not on your entire income. Again, Germany seems very generous here - in the UK you start paying 40% once you cross £50k/pa.
I earn about 60k (the government pays me, so you can look this up) and that is my effective rate of tax.
It feels disingenuous to me to see "someone else pays tax, so that counts as a tax on me" leveled as a serious argument.
Maybe it's just my cold pragmatism speaking, but if your employer suddenly didn't have to pay that tax, I don't think they would bump your salary up.
Americans make this same argument (they call it "trickle down economics"). So far, it doesn't seem to have worked out for them.
They don't pay tax. They pay half of the social insurance fee for their employer. Of course that half is part of the wage you're being paid.
> Maybe it's just my cold pragmatism speaking, but if your employer suddenly didn't have to pay that tax, I don't think they would bump your salary up.
I could certainly use that range to negotiate my salary.
> Americans make this same argument (they call it "trickle down economics"). So far, it doesn't seem to have worked out for them.
None of this has anything to do with trickle down economics. The trick is that if social insurance payments go up, which they do a lot, my employer is charged automatically and I no longer have that room for negotiating a raise.
What? No. I'm an employer in Germany and I can tell you that's wrong.
[1]: https://www.steuertipps.de/service/rechner/brutto-netto-geha...
> It's a regulated market economic model
So is the USA.
Our model came first, then came the name. I explained it's origins thoroughly, it is rooted in economic theory and it is what is really happening in Germany. It's codified in Articles 20 and 14 of our constitution. Social welfare is among the best in the world and covers a lot, but taxes are high. This would never happen in any free market economic models. I recommend you read up on it a bit before making snarky comments on the internet.
Are those numbers indicative of socialism or capitalism?
> I recommend you read up on it a bit before making snarky comments on the internet.
It's not a snarky comment. Regulation and welfare are requirements even in a capitalist economy, otherwise you have people dying on the streets en masse and companies dumping toxic waste next to the fields where you grow food. You're essentially arguing that real capitalism hasn't been attempted yet - that more "freedom" (from regulation), more inequality will somehow fix things.
The US has more "freedom" in this sense than Germany - is the average person doing better over there? I don't think so, I certainly don't know any "average worker" currently living anywhere in the EU who would want to swap places.
Germany is a capitalist country with strong social welfare. If you think social welfare is a problem, feel free to argue that, but one thing that's not up for serious discussion is its economic model.
This sentence does not apply because "social market economy" does not imply that companies should be owned by their workes.
> What percentage are owned by capitalists, generating private profits?
This sentence does not apply because a "social market economy" does not forbid the generation of profits. Profits are to be shared with the populace to pay for social policies, which is happening.
> Are those numbers indicative of socialism or capitalism?
You should really - really - read up on "Soziale Marktwirtschaft" and ordoliberalism before you make a point. If you don't know how they are defined and what they mean, you cannot make a coherent argument.
> You're essentially arguing that real capitalism hasn't been attempted yet - that more "freedom" (from regulation), more inequality will somehow fix things.
I have not and you are free to cite where I did.
> Germany is a capitalist country with strong social welfare.
Congratulations, you combine this with "Regulation" and a state mandated "Economic Conscience", you have finally found out what "social market economy" means. It's not "capitalism with X". It's so far removed from the idea of capitalism that we use another term entirely.
> but one thing that's not up for serious discussion is its economic model.
I encourage you to look up the terms. Again.
>> You're essentially arguing that real capitalism hasn't been attempted yet
> I have not and you are free to cite where I did.
It's a straightforward logical inference. Your definition of capitalism excludes every capitalist economy that has ever existed.
Those are not my definitions.
> It's a straightforward logical inference. Your definition of capitalism excludes every capitalist economy that has ever existed
No. A social market economy is capitalism with rules and safety nets, like strong labor protections, healthcare, and pensions, to make sure people are protected from big hardships. The U.S. mostly has free-market capitalism, with fewer regulations and weaker social support. So the main difference is that a social market economy tries to control capitalism to protect people, while the U.S. mostly lets the market run on its own.
so it is not socialism, the whole point of this discussion.
Germany's market is an example of welfare capitalism, which is a type of capitalism.
What you're writing reminds me very much of "the USA isn't a democracy, it's a republic!" (as if a republic isn't a type of democracy called "representative democracy")
Good thing I haven't argued that at all. I was arguing that Germany, which calls its economic system "Social Economics" in fact employs this very economic strategy, which is defined as not being straight forward capitalist but as a mixture of capitalism and socialism.
> Germany's market is an example of welfare capitalism, which is a type of capitalism.
Germany's market is per definition not welfare capitalism, but "social economics". This term exists, it is well defined, you can look it up.
No, the whole point of this discussion is that someone claimed Germany was capitalist. Which it isn't. It's in between systems.
Sure. But that is as socialist as it was the National Socialist German Workers Party.
What you, mfru and dns_snek did here is not respectful, open-minded discourse and I'm amazed that selfmodruntime put up with it that long.
> What you, mfru and dns_snek did here is not respectful, open-minded discourse
Give me a break, the original complaint, the one you linked but apparently didn't read, went even further, likening the European economy to communism:
> The USSR was supposed to be a cautionary tale. Not a guidebook!
The goal of social market economy is to 'correct undesirable effects' of free markets. Depending on your perspective, you categorize it as capitalist, socialist or in-between system.
Because the reality of this is unpopular for critics of capitalism. Most people rarely have an idea how far removed from laissez faire capitalism European countries are. This doesn't stop critics from ironically mentioning that free markets altogether don't work for example in our renter's market (which is the most restricted market we have). The ill-effects we are now feeling are from strangulating regulation, bad policy and European countries with large welfare states like France or Germany having little moveable capital to invest into infrastructure, because most of it is forever bound to welfare. Note that I'm not critical of welfare, but we have lost the plot that money needs to be earned before it can be redistributed.
> Social market economy is the self-description in Germany, it's what you learn in school and how German politicians name the system.
All this and also scholars attributing this very real system to be effectively what we have in Germany is not enough for some.
The means of production are in the hand of capital. Profit is the driving factor of companies. "Number go up" is still the default goal.
If I ask the average person on the street if they think the moon phases have impacts on their life, chances are a good portion will agree. Majority opinion does not make for facts.
No, it's because you keep strawmanning like this for rhetorical effect. Laissez faire capitalism isn't the only form of capitalism that exists and nobody has claimed it to be the form of capitalism that applies to Germany.
Because they aren't public. They are provided by a company.
> And let's not mention the health care system, which literally has two tiers, one for the poor and one for the rich, with of course the poor-tier being barely functional, and still expensive as fuck
This is because of inefficiency, an aging demographic and regulation, not because of capitalism. The "system for the rich" was worse back in the day, and only became "better" for doctors because they adjusted their rates for covered services. In fact, because the "poor tier" insurance companies have not adjusted their rates according to inflation for a long time [1], services are of course getting worse. The average dentist earns 50% of what he earned 1970 adjusted for inflation. [2] This is called the "Punktwert", it hasn't changed since 1980 ([3]) and it is the single most important factor why services are getting worse and worse. No one is getting rich off of GKV members. Not doctors, and certainly not insurance companies.
> "Social market economy" my ass.
Sorry, no. This is the direct outcome of a social market economy, when the economic motor isn't doing so good, you still have to pay for permanent social gifts that were given to the largest voting class (old people). The government mandated insurance companies are close to being bankrupt because of this exact policy. In fact, they would already be bankrupt if we didn't have a social market economy [4], which pays billions of tax dollars to prop them up.
> The only people getting any kind of social benefits are the retired boomers and if you were to do the accounting, even they got massively shafted by the capitalists, because those boomers would be 3x richer if their lifetime savings were properly invested.
Well, boomers, pensioners and those close to retirement make up 60% of the voting base. They got what they voted for, good and bad, a social market economic model that bleeds the workers to pay for pensions. That matches the definition of a large welfare system exactly. They also voted pretty clearly against an investment backed pension scheme and have been voting like this for 4 decades now. As always, economic models have disadvantages, and we are finding out now that models close to socialism stop working when you run out of other people's money.
[1]: https://www.aerzteblatt.de/archiv/amtliche-gebuehrenordnung-...
[2]: https://praxis-analysen.de/das-verfuegbare-zahnarzt-einkomme...
[3]: https://www.aerzteblatt.de/news/mehrere-vertragsarztliche-le...
> Because they aren't public. They are provided by a company.
If you are talking actual libraries here: Hm? Public libraries are provided by the city - all I have ever seen in Germany. They usually cost a member pass, though I have seen completely free ones, but it's either a one-time payment or a yearly recurring fee. Small numbers though, can be as little as 5 Euro.
Public libraries provided by a company are an oxymoron, I doubt that exists in Germany.
Nope, sorry, I made a mistake. I was writing about the public toilets from the sentence before.
The Korean healthcare system has a much worse aging demographic as well tons of regulations, being nothing like e.g. the US.
Yet in terms of "system for the poor" the difference with Germany could hardly be bigger.
To blame it on those is straight up wrong, in that it's an oversimplification of a complex topic to such a degree that it no longer makes sense.
This goes for nearly all of the discussion in this thread, for what it's worth. On these topics sociocultural and historical factors that aren't simply represented by "regulations" or "current tax burden" or "demographics" have an enormous impact.
It's the classic STEM, and especially CS, mistake, so it's no wonder HN is full of it on any governance-related topic. And I say this as a CS guy myself. As a group, we are predisposed to the idea that a set of rules, regulations and statistics leads to a certain set of real-world outcomes. The reality could hardly be less true.
So they buy luxury apartments, outbidding you for construction companies capacity. Or they buy €20M luxury cars from limited 100-item series, outbidding state for engineers that could be designing next generation public transportation.
Public sector has been bled almost to death by regressive taxation, you bear nearly all of the tax burden so that a geezer who lived through nineties free-for-all can cope with his second midlife crisis while you struggle to get even a small apartment with ever-expanding commute times as you are forced outside of the city center.
Just. Tax. The. Rich. Geezer. More.
Seriously. If you've talked to some of them, they are not "titans of the industry", they are mostly greedy, average inteligence people that got lucky. No political nor economical nor cultural awareness. Half of them binge Russia fake news and/or Bloomberg and that's it.
God, some of those sick fucks even refuse to pay alimony despite owning huge companies. They would rather invent crazy schemes to hide their ownership and claim $10,000/y earnings than to take care of their kids. And they pay jackshit in taxes.
Not joking: https://www.seznamzpravy.cz/clanek/domaci-kauzy-beru-20-tisi...