Der deutsche Wohlfahrtsstaat „kann nicht mehr finanziert werden“ – Merz
https://www.dw.com/en/german-welfare-state-can-no-longer-be-financed-merz/a-73742270
Von rezwenn
Der deutsche Wohlfahrtsstaat „kann nicht mehr finanziert werden“ – Merz
https://www.dw.com/en/german-welfare-state-can-no-longer-be-financed-merz/a-73742270
Von rezwenn
37 Kommentare
Ohhh wow ! Who could have imagined that a model that was built on economical and demographic growth collapses when the growth in these two areas collapses as well.
if somebody could ever think about anything other than taxes to sustain the system… Anyways. We just need to pay attention to the far left. If we tax the rich and their villas then we will unlock infinite money to fund everything.
It can no longer be financed because the CDU does not want to reform pensions and continues to rely on a system introduced by Bismarck, which is now quite outdated *
Yeah but you can increase pay for fat cats at the top of the government!
The Brits have been singing this tune for years, „no magic money tree“, pumps politician wages and expenses, cuts police and care staff wages.
Politicians want you to be greatful for your pittance while making themselves richer and further ‚othering ‚ societies problems. Tale as old as time.
To prove his point they will increase the pensions at the same time they decline any salary increase in the public sector
I can think of a bunch of other things to cut, but they always immediately go for poor people – to drive down wages and force people into low paying jobs.
It can be financed and he knows it. He just doesn’t want to touch the money of his rich friends
Giving themselves 600€ more salary on the other hand is totally fine in these hard times
Welfare state should only be for citizens and those non-citizens(work visas etc) who have been paying taxes for 5+ years
Ooooh, how I wish Schauble was still alive to tell them to increase the pension age to 120 years for a pension of 200 Euros per month. It worked for Greece!
Greedy workers. It’s not the greed of the companies, nope.
so 2029 it’ll be cdu/afd, I hope climate takes us down before that shitshow.
I mean we could tax the Rich more.
Of course.
If you raise pensions (because pensioners are your party’s core clientele), refuse any sort of wealth tax or tax raises on the super wealthy (not the *€70,000 a year income* wealthy that the CDU and SPD are constantly targeting), throw hundreds of billions at the military and neglect infrastructure, education, energy and healthcare for decades so the whole economy is hampered by a failing system, then sure, you won’t have the money to pay for welfare.
As always the CDU does absolutely nothing to try and solve the country’s structural issues and just agitates against foreigners and the poor.
*’We can’t fund your welfare’* Merz declares as he readies tax breaks for the rich and corporations, and *reduces* investigations into tax fraud.
But for tax cuts for the rich and big companies can apparently be financed? This man went into politics to be a lobbyist and he has never stopped and he has in intense disdain for working class people.
will we get taxed less, then? or does this mean they will have to tax us more to cover the difference? lol
Tax the old and the rich.
Everything else is a lie. It CAN be financed if we had a way to prevent the rich ppl from hiding their money and if we harmonized the tax system worldwide (or at least Europe-wide including the non-EU countries).
No it’s not impossible, the politicians and the media (both controlled by the rich) would like us to believe that to make us accept the fact that we will be the ones financing that with sweat and tears and not the ones who actually have the money.
And by „welfare“ he surely means the enormous pension subsidies financed by tax payers, _right_?
Spoiler alert:
Jobcenters spent €10.7 billion on Bürgergeld in 2024.
Of that, about €6.5 billion went to administration costs (staff, bureaucracy, processing, compliance).
That means roughly 60% of the budget went to running the system, not to the people it’s supposed to support.
In some Jobcenters, up to 70% of the money is eaten up by bureaucracy before a cent reaches beneficiaries
No shit Sherlock. Had to be reformed 10 years ago.
They could finance it longer if they cut welfare to asylum seekers and illegals
*not if we want to keep rich people rich
Yeah because the rich keep getting richer and the rest doesnt 🙃people always vote against their own interests
damn, its time to privatise everything left and create tax breaks for the wealthy as it will obviously trickle down
Surely they find a way to finance it by taxing income more so incentives for the working class get eliminated and people who stay at home have almost the same amount of money in their pockets as people who waste their lives away for 40+ hours a week
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Enjoy your plummeting approval ratings and disastrous next election, Merz.
They told us 10 years ago they had to take millions of foreign engineers and doctors so their taxes could finance welfare state. What went wrong?
[And here he is calling for the EU to suspend the global minimum tax rate after the U.S. left.](https://www.yahoo.com/news/merz-calls-eu-suspend-global-153235660.html)
Tax Companies? No! Let’s take from those already at the bottom.
From comments I see that whole Europe does almost the same thing. Decreasing welfare support and increasing politician salaries and pensions. Literally same in Slovakia. However here they also increase taxes.
He’ll intentionally sabotage it to make people like the tax payer funded services less
Then close tax loopholes and properly tax the rich.
Of course it can’t but hey, there’s still some money we can use to send to Ukraine or buy some weapons.
When I went to school 40 years ago we learned about the population pyramid in Germany, how it was bell shaped and how it is not possible to keep up the current pension system with that. Since then nothing has been done about it as each government needs the votes of the pensioners. Now almost half of the German welfare spending is spent on pensions while the cut costs at schools and cultural institutions, which is half a peanut compared to pensions. It’s ridiculous.
Funny how the super rich are never asked to contribute more even though 70% of the millionaires in Germany are not self made but just from old money
Europe has seen decades of efficiency and GDP improvements since our welfare states were founded. This is a distribution problem. Yes, there are more elderly, but we are also a hell of a lot richer.
The number of billionaires in Germany jumped from 132 to 171 from 2024 to 2025 – in ONE YEAR, the number of billionaires went up by 30%.
Conservative says what now?
To provide a bit more insight into the German welfare state:
Germany spends 40% of all expenditures on social benefits. That may sound like a lot, but 70% of that goes to pension subsidies. It’s not the poor or refugees draining social spending, but pensions and a broken retirement system.