German welfare state 'can no longer be financed' — Merz
German welfare state 'can no longer be financed' — Merz – DW – 08/23/2025
The German chancellor has called for a welfare reform, putting him on course for a possible clash with the SPD.
Merz can no longer be financed
The passive voice in that statement is doing a LOT of heavy lifting there, Friedrich.
Sure it can.
Just raise taxes on the wealthy.
It's like telling people that jump from diet fad to diet fad all they need to do is count calories.
We all know the solution, none of these countries are doing it
Merz is a conservative. They're all like that.
He's not "conservative", he isn't conserving anything. He isn't conserving the living standard of the people. He's just a dumbass posing as a conservative, while actually wreaking havoc on our collective future.
Its crazy to me that the only left leaning party in Germany was split by internal divisions between neoliberalism and progressive politics. How was that even possible when more than half of Germany's voters are left leaning?
Are you referring to SPD? They haven't bothered with actual left-leaning politics for a while. Die Linke is our party on the left, and they are experiencing a renaissance right, but unfortunately not nearly as much as the far right.
To answer your question: Most German voters are centrists with a mix of vaguely conservative and social democratic views. And they've been exposed to economic anxiety narratives and xenophobic fear-mongering for the past two decades, while lacking the political education to smell the populist bullshit for what it is in a social media environment defined by anti-intellectualism and fake news.
Then how about stopping welfare for millionaires?
Or stop subsiding e.g. plane fuel. Better for the environment anyway.
... without the rich paying their share.
All this while systematically crippling our tax investigation departments.
If I ever meet Merz or someone like him, I will have choice words to say.
Words alone have never stopped fascists.
there you go, they finally said it out loud. austerity it is.
Merz is predictable and a traitor to the German people. He will usher in the fascist power grab through conservative policies - the AFD will grow in popularity as conservatives protect the 1%.
Die Linke's tax plan would have paid for the yearly debt of the government and then some; their secret - tax the wealthy.
We can afford all of our costs, we can improve society, we can provide a thriving economy for all Germans if we simply tax the ultra wealthy out of existence. No one should have a billion euro net worth, nor 100 million nor 50 million. No one need own 3 houses while others go without even a flat.
We have enough wealth in this country, it's just in the hands of the hoarders. Don't look towards conservatives or the right for change, look towards those that address the root problem!
IMO the borders need to be closed first before taxing the rich works well enough. Allow me to explain:
If you tax the rich today, they drop the german citizenship and become carribean citizens tomorrow, and then you can't tax them anymore. All the while they hold on to their companies in germany.
Instead, it has to be illegal to invest inside germany (above a certain threshold amount) if you don't have german citizenship. This way, the rich can't flee. They have to keep german citizenship to hold on to their companies, and then they can be taxed.
Although I appreciate the thought here, and I think the investment idea may even be good regardless of what I'm about to say, that's not exactly how this works. If you tax the assets the rich own, where they own them, it doesn't matter where they go. And they can't live in Germany and not get taxed, so they can change citizenship all they want if they live here they will get taxed here. And based off of the most recent studies/reports I've seen (but not read) rich don't actually move when taxes go up - which makes sense. People have lives, family, friends, favorite restaurants and hobby spaces.
The rich will try to dodge the taxes, they may even succeed but we don't have to legistate a bullet proof solution we just have to agree:
But yes, I'm a big fan of no outside investment. I'm also a fan of government investment requiring ownership purchases. I'm also a fan of requiring companies to be partially or totally owned by their workers. And I don't think anyone should have a net worth over let's say 50 million.
It can. Tax the billionaires.
Here's the list.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Germans_by_net_worth
Creating 1500B € out of thin air to build killing machines: Whatever it takes to protect the country!
Spending 50B € to actually protect the people from poverty/malnutrition/starvation: Nooooo we can't afford that.
Humanity at it's best: Limitless effort to create suffering, 0 effort to reduce suffering.
I suspect there will be many, many 'I didn't think they'd do this to ME' posts coming from German people in the coming months.
So... The Germans are kicking all the wealthy leeches off their generational welfare suckholes, then?
That's the real "welfare state", NGL... 🖕🏽
Tick tock on the fascism clock.
My partner and I almost moved to Germany last year and I am so glad we didn't. If we're going to be in a fascist country, I'd prefer to be a citizen since white fascists tend to frown extra hard on us brown immigrants.
While the current government in Germany is certainly not the best, it is very far away from a fascist country.
Most likely the right wing CDU talks big now to wiggle out some small concessions against their socialist coalition partner and againt the green/left opposition.
They can not change anything big because otherwise the current coalition would fold.
The CDU can not form a coalition or cooperate with the ultra right AFD because that would cost them a big chunk of their current voters.
They currently have nothing going for them that would win them voters on their own.
How’s your Spanish? I hear good things about Chile.
What’s “unaffordable” here?
The worry is:
The solution is:
It's unaffordable to greedy corporations and billionaires who would not afford the working to have a single dime in their pocket if they had it their way.
If only "tax" meant "tap" as in "tap a sugar maple for its sweet sweet amber sap" and the freshly gutted 1% could also be used as fertilizer afterward.
Win/win! Poverty and hunger in one fell slash? I'm in.
And this is how you further damage democracy and strengthen the far right. Because a lot of the people who don’t vote or vote for the far right are people who feel left behind who are of the impression that the system is broken and they don’t benefit from it. Social welfare is a way to directly show everyone what a democratic state is good for. Policies that benefit the poor, the working class and the middle class make a strong society. But Merz and others simply don’t seem to get it or care and stare in wonder at the ever rising numbers of people who want to see the world burn.
The capitalist elite has less problem with fascism than socialism. Only one of those threatens their wealth
In the short term. Both threaten their wealth in the long run. Fascism still wins out.
Fully agree. The big problem is Germany industry is in the shits and can't afford to finance the welfare state anymore. Military spending is all debt.
the german industry produces more goods than it ever has in its entire history. that growth has slowed down to close to zero simply means that it's literally at its peak.
explain to me why there aren't enough resources to go around for everyone?
... without finally taking the upper ten percent into the taxpaying fold.
Im ashamed for who has become our chancellor. Flying around in his private "middle-class" jet while taxing the poor. Jfc Friedrich, step back
I should hope heads of state are not flying around on commercial jets.
No, he has owned a private jet for many years prior to becoming chancellor.
COUNTRY welfare state can no longer be supported
Change COUNTRY for any west European country and this has been said while it CAN be supported but the rich want to get more rich
Always has been. "We cannot afford x any more" has been their standard argument for dismantling social security and lining up their own pockets for decades now.
it could easily , just slim down the government , remove tax waste and more. a city near me just bought 32 benches at the cost of 70k€ EACH yes 70.000 why ? end of quarter they didnt want to get budget cuts the next quarter. some citizens found very similiar benches from another company ( like minimal different same material ) for 3,5k EACH 3500 each or many of the million graves of taxes , we have in my city multiple "Autobahn" which arent used but were built and need maintenance why ?
Our Government makes home owners pay for street repairs in full and more , where does our tax money go?
where does our tax money go?
This is a pretty easy question to answer given that you're talking about a public institution.
The only difficulty is that the answer is complex and requires reading and understanding many sets of financial reports and accompanying minutes et cetera.
a city near me just bought 32 benches at the cost of 70k€ EACH
That's a pretty absurd claim, and simply not how budgets in public institutions work.
Sure there might have been some kind of fuckup so installation of one of 32 benches cost $70k, or any number of other plausible explanations, but large public institutions don't just throw $2.25m EUR at the end of a quarter as a budget stuffing exercise.
just slim down the government
It's an easy thing to say, but even with the waste and bloat the government function itself is just a few percent of the expense. Pensions, health, education and child support are the vast majority of expenses. Remove the money from government, tack in on to pensions and you kicked the can down the road for another few years. After that the pension and health costs increases and eats up the extra money due to ageing of the population. Now you're back at square 1 but with a lot less people in government to keep things together.
You can't use immigrants to work jobs and pay taxes. It was tried, got a bunch of backlash in the end and by now the right has their campaigns ready to go all out if somebody suggests this. Birth rate is going down so it'll be rising costs of ageing and no new incomes from new workers. They're f-ed and know it. We all knew this moment would come, but if somebody suggested saving now for later they got voted out of office so nothing got done.
What if the homeless and poor go to war for your rich ass?
Then there's plenty of money for the weapons. So maybe buy less of that and more shelter, clothes, food and education?
You mean it is now?
I typically abhor violence but i understand if somebody would kill Merz due to him being a danger to the general population. A politician has to help the people, not hurt them. If he doesn't fulfill this one basic task, he's unfit to be a politician. He has to understand that or step back immediately. If he doesn't, he's unreasonable and cannot be talked to logically.