I have over 50% of my income taken from me into a collapsing welfare state/pension system, live in centrally planned tiny apartment developments, and my employer is actively leaving Europe due to the energy (and military) insecurity and economic failings of the entire region.
At least they will still let me leave…for now. But politicians are currently trying to vote in policies that will seize my money and company too when I try to leave.
The USSR was supposed to be a cautionary tale. Not a guidebook!
- 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
60% of the voting block is above 55. Of course they would.
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.
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
That's incredibly high - where do you live if you don't mind saying?
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
No, the whole point of this discussion is that someone claimed Germany was capitalist. Which it isn't. It's in between systems.
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.
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 j-krieger 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 went even further, likening the European economy to communism:
> The USSR was supposed to be a cautionary tale. Not a guidebook!
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...
Very few are principled enough to stick to that in power.
Yet, other parties that include coalitions of literal communists, antivax hippies and people who want to bring Europe back to the Stone Age using dictator-like authoritarianism in the name of saving “the environment” are not labeled extreme left.
Many German political parties have extremist elements in them. Why they are okay with calling out the far right but not okay calling out the far left I will never understand.
I think the hypocrisy is pushing more people to toward alternatives.
So help me out here. "Far right" is usually full of brilliant ideas like lets round people up and deport them without due process, doesn't matter where - or starting to look into getting rid of people with fully legal right to stay, or saying that they haven't seen a single white face in a town somehow isn't racist and is a perfectly normal thing to say.
In the meantime far left is doing.....what exactly. Saying that we need to tax the rich? That everyone should have healthcare? That people should be free to decide their gender?
Honestly, help me out - what are those "far left" ideas that you say should be labeled as "extreme"?
I don't support AfD, I'm not German either - i just agree with parent poster's observation that for some reason left extremism(and I'm talking actual eco-terrorism for example) is more widely 'accepted' in public space when talking to Germans. Meanwhile mentioning even slightly Right ideas gets you lynched, and any form of discussions stops.
And from small sample size of Germans i know, this is the reason that did push quite few of those people towards AfD.
Frankly AfD is a perfect marker of your own policy making - are more people pushed towards it? you probably are doing something severely wrong as a policymaker.
The real reason, to which they react, is that they can no longer covertly express and exercise their ideas.
In other words, it's a reaction to getting publicly called out about being racist, misogynistic, homophobic, xenophobic etc.
I've heard plenty of times from such people that they've felt the government/establishment parties have made my bordering country less safe for women, gay people, etc and now numbers are also starting to show that. Pair that with those parties targeting those votes more and more and bringing in some more gays and women into the party and labels of mysoginist or homofobic that you used don't work to attack the far right anymore I've found gay people voting for the supposedly homofobic far right because they start to see their main talking points as a long term existential matter. Prisons that have a huge share of non nationals and are overfilled so prison strikes and shutdowns happen aren't helping either. The economical picture for non-eu migration has been abysmal too. The list goes on and on.
Even in france le pen who's father had some well known extreme views about gays she draws a lot of votes among gay men. Especially in Paris.
At that point you seriously, seriously fucked up.
How do I get folks that literally vote fascists to "my side"?
Does it involve changing "my side" to be a little fascistic?
What is to be done with the overlaps, e.g. people that are homosexuals but are racists, people from racial minorities that are homophobic, and so on?
Like, realistically, what do you think should happen to the left? Just tone it down?
I think we've realistically introduced a source of political hubris for generations to come and created a scenario where if we're not being too optimistic about the perfect path being taken there will be sharp edges whichever way you go.
The same happened here in the past with our flemish/wallonian sectarianism that should've never been started and inflamed. In fact over many decades migration seems to be the only thing that managed to overtake it.
Acknowledge issues and start doing stuff these parties have been calling for for the past 2 decades to stop influx and you legitimize their ideas and admit fault in some ways. Don't do anything, continue the status quo claiming everything smells of roses and you just build up more sectarian bullshit.
Ideally you slow migration down without too much noise about it imo. For example you adjust treaties so that people rejected in other european countries can be sent back and actually follow trough and employ european political power to actually facilitate this sending back and discourages staying in a way that was possible in the past. You start limiting family reunion schemes depending on the country, etc Additionally you invest hard in integration and not in the weird paternalistic shit that i hear about from germany now.
Here in Belgium in 2005 or so well over 70% had big concerns about migration. That was 2 decades ago well before the big influxes. Not losing many of them was easier than getting them back that's for sure but there's plenty more still on that edge. I'd also say we're doing way worse than Germany on these fronts. The only reason we haven't had an afd equivalent governing yet is how fractured our political landscape is when compared and the flemish/wallonian split.
To also answer one i didn't address : 'What is to be done with the overlaps, e.g. people that are homosexuals but are racists, people from racial minorities that are homophobic, and so on?'
The later if not a national you could in many cases not let/keep in your country or otherwise give citizenship. As for the later it just happens that i know a lesbian VB (our far right) advocate. She was a callbus driver that got attacked for her sexuality. It's not the average but someone you are unlikely to ever win back regardless of whether you typify her as racist or xenophobe or not because she sees "your side" as the origin of the former, the unintended champion of islamists and the like.
As soon as the topic is mentioned it becomes a discussion stopper. Thank you for your contribution into proving my point.
1. people that support some of: racism, xenophobia, homophobia, misogyny, anti-environmentalism, etc., i.e. authoritarianism for their group
2. people that have been pushed by extreme leftism because they can no longer discuss alternative points of view (but do not strictly belong to group 1)
exactly one person in first group - a genuine belief in efficiency of authoritarian system from someone on spectrum.
I also love how you neatly divided whole political spectrum into two, and bundled a lot of options into 'bad' category. Another example of political tribalism. while option "2" is clearly 'misguided' one.
For example anti-environmentalism can be seen from 'does not like Greens', through 'i think we should reevaluate our energy policy for feasibility of moving to renewables/nuclear and do a slow transition while persevering our beautiful nature' to 'we should only burn coal and gas forever'.
Same thing with xenophobia - it can be pure nationalism, or being anti illegal immigration while supporting legal one, or even just idea that government has responsibility for their own citizens first and foremost. Which one do you have in mind?
Where you draw the barriers between those arbitrary labels?
is there even anything i could say that would change your mind, or are you looking for validation of your views only?
I also think you misinterpreted "authoritarianism for their group", or I expressed it poorly. I don't mean "support of authoritarian governments", but rather "give more power to their group over others, or favor keeping such a status quo", in the context of race, sexuality, gender, culture, etc.
Yes, group 2 may be protest voters, and their rationale is that the best protest against some leftist policies and monologue is to vote the right - not blank, not abstention, and not some void middle-ground. Of course!
But these people are not complete idiots that forgot what the AfD obviously stands for. Thus, I cannot reasonably believe that they ALL fall under NONE of the categories of 1.
My most generous concession would be 20%, but realistically I would say there is maybe at most 5% that is purely protest and not at least one of: racist, xenophobic, homophobic, misogynist.
Simply put: If someone claims they are not racist, and not homophobic, and not misogynist, yet they still vote for AfD, then they are more likely to be some of that, or are okay with the current status of discriminations, and not some naive idiot.
What you could say to change my mind, is how someone votes/supports AfD purely based on e.g. strengthened immigration policies for purely economical reasons, or "do not like greens", or "just wants nuclear". I don't understand how someone could be so oblivious to the other standpoints, but maybe this is just my personal bias?
why you even do you bother to keep arguing in bad faith?
Genius.
The greens are filled with communists for example.
Or the literal communist party, Die Linke. Why are they never referred to as the extreme left.
The greens are not filled with communists. They would feel very unwelcome there, given the capitalist move the party did in the 90s.
Die Linke is also not a communist party. It supports capitalism, but targets a social capitalism, like the CDU did in the 50s and the SPD did until the 80s. There are communist parties in Germany, like the MLPD, but they do not get many votes. Background here is that in a divided Germany the communists were not popular in West germany, also most of them got killed by the Nazis before, and on top of that West Germany banned the main communist party already 1956.
Also, rightwing politicians do call "Die Linke" (incorrectly) extreme left, and accordingly the CDU/CSU has a mandate to never cooperate with them.
This is untrue and you will only have to go so far to read their party program to find out it isn't.
It took me all of 5 seconds to achieve this enlightenment. You should try it sometimes.
But indeed, the program now does distance itself from social capitalism specifically and gives further reasoning to why. I wasn't aware they spell it out so clearly now. We can still argue about how much capitalism would be left when following their program - like when the means of production are owned differently, but used similarly - but I have to give you a point there. My comment as written was not correct.
German law tries to protect against anti-democratic groups and categorizes them as extremists (including left wing extremists) if they a threatening democracy.
In practice that means that group is then surveilled. If there is evidence that the group tries to overthrow democracy, they are banned.
Die Linke is in many ways _more_ democratic than other groups and parties as they support direct democracy and workplace democracy.
Die Linke tolerates antidemocratic hate groups within their party and is a financial sponsor of others. All of this is common knowledge, all of this can be looked up easily.
> Die Linke is in many ways _more_ democratic than other groups and parties as they support direct democracy and workplace democracy.
I know quite a lot of parties that were never once watched by a government watchdog, nor do they continue to support extremist groups, nor do those other parties continue to attract extremists at their demonstrations, nor do those other democratic parties have a continued problem of antisemitism within their ranks, nor do they have a dark past and continue to employ people at high ranks that were leaders in that past.
Feel free to read the chapter „Linksextremismus“. It talks about various violent Antifa groups and other cases. Keep in mind that the definition of „extreme left“ refers to organizations that want to replace the basic democratic system with communism or anarchy (according to the German constitutional court).
It does not necessarily include „political craziness“ that we may disagree with. The point of these legal descriptions of organizations is not to be used as a political weapon for parties you don’t like. You have to do some significantly malicious stuff to be considered as such.
The AfD, like all political parties, is simply a coalition of various smaller subgroups.
It’s by no means “extreme” right in entirety. Yet, leftist parties harboring actual communists are not labeled “extreme.”
While the party started with a different background, by now voters and members do know about these majority positions and thus support them.
As the time of writing, six different extreme left groups are tolerated within Die Linke and are also financed by their members. All of these groups are currently being watched by the government secret service.
It's definitely not true that people never refer to Die Linke as extreme left. In fact, all kinds of people - including prominent politicians from e.g. the CDU - refer to Die Linke as extreme left.
This is not commenting on whether that is a correct moniker or not, I'm just pointing out that your dichotomy is nonsensical because the thing that you suggest to not be happening absolutely is happening.
But it seems to be a Europe-wide phenomenon in traditional media outlets. Nobody calls out the far left properly, and the bias is just oozing out from the pages of all European news media.
The backlash is just waiting to happen. It’s so obvious to anyone capable of critical thinking. And it will probably just lead to more irrational policies but from the opposite side.
No, they don't. Extreme in this context is defined as anti-democratic, those who want to dismantle the system at its foundation and destroy democracy, usually while removing certain groups. That's not something other parties aim for. Sure, they want to change the system, but only to improve the democratic.
> but not okay calling out the far left
There are not many real far left parties in Germany, and usually they are very small, irrelevant and called far left. Most of them are also not against democracy, they are fine with the general system, but argue about details or the economic system. The biggest far left party is "Die Linke", and they are radical left, not extreme left. Maybe they do have some extreme voices, but they are irrelevant.
If you are re-branding a belief in authoritarian seizing of all private capital as "Minor democratic arguments on details of the economic system" then it's obvious you either don't know the constituents of the political coalitions in most major European countries, or are not arguing in good faith.
Just like the actual extreme right, the entire goal of any left extremist (eg. your communists, eco-terrorists, anti-tech doomers, etc.) is to dismantle democratic freedoms and enforce their unpopular agenda via absolute authority.
The bolsheviks never ran on the idea they would brutally murder middle class families and seize their assets. This was just an inevitable step necessary to achieve their 'utopia.'
Lets skip over the fact that far left is being called out as well (especially by... the far right...).
The AfD is actually a extremist far right political party which has been steadily growing and growing. They are much more relevant to anyone living in germany than small extremist far left factions.
The public was sold this Nazi story about the AfD by the established powers to keep them down. Looking at what has been going on it's wild to me to call the AfD authoritarian compared the the Altparteien...
One of those empty words one needs to be careful with it does not mean anything, and everything. Politics is not about suppressing ideas of other people, somethings parties can agree on others not so much.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/29/the-tr...
You may it seem like they operate independently. They do not. This determination (while I subjectively agree) came of a report was released by a failed government's acting minister of internal affairs, on her last day of office. I read it myself and even though I don't like it, it's pretty imprecise and does some pretty heavy straw grasping at times.