If the future German Chancellor is here, here's my proposal for your new campaign: "We choose to build one million affordable apartments in four years, not because it's easy but because it's hard".
It may not solve all of Germany's problems but at least you'll energize the construction sector, alleviate the housing crisis, learn how to finish a construction project on time and you'll have to remove some bureaucracy to reach the deadline. Build them with EV chargers outside and you'll help VW too.
Interesting that 2 similar problems - water rise and population increase - are treated that differently, i.e. it is considered normal that the government would build levies/etc. while the government building housing is an abomination.
Same in the US. Especially in the party that now lost. Maybe believing in some equality fairyland where everything is fair and equal doesn’t work. Doesn’t work for the US and doesn’t work for Germany. You need to let crazy people do crazy things (within the law of course). Many inventors were “crazy” at the time including Einstein, Turing and DaVinci to name a few. Maybe in 50 years we will talk about the government that forced Turing to take medication against his homosexuality in the same way as the woke politicians who supported cancel culture. A culture that has caused many academics to lose their job and caused even more academics to fear speaking up.
Germany is in a really dire situation now by the way. Car production is about 17% of GDP and sales for all their brands are declining steadily. Especially Chinese sales are going down fast. Relatedly, Xiami is now one of the fastest cars on the Nordschleife. But the German government doesn’t seem to have any solutions. Yes close power plants. Oh wait they have now the highest electricity prices in the whole of Europe.
And this is while their education system is fine. Young German engineers are great I think. I’ve seen many great German open source developers. Especially of course the creators of Typst.
> And this is while their education system is fine. Young German engineers are great I think.
German education system is not as fine as it used to be. It might still be fine at the later high school and university levels, but earlier school classes now often have a majority of kids that don't speak German, holding the whole class back. In parts of problem cities like Berlin there are even classes where no kid speaks German. We don't have enough teachers and the ones who are still there are frustrated and overworked.
> but earlier school classes now often have a majority of kids that don't speak German, holding the whole class back
Nope, that's not the problem. My wife is a teacher. Schools where teachers don't go on the toilet because it's so fucked up. That's the problem. But we need to reduce money there, because we need more tax breaks.
> You need to let crazy people do crazy things (within the law of course).
Yeah, like stripping away LGBT rights or abortion? The far-right, no matter if we are talking about the US, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Argentinia, Israel or the UK, has clearly stated what they want to do, and they have shown in more than enough cases (Argentinia, USA, UK) that they are willing to throw the entire nation under the bus for their ideological bullshit! And the people have suffered horribly for the foolishness of their fellow countrymen.
These are ideological battles which are specular to those of the left. All these laws to extend and protect LGBT rights? Marginally useful only to a small minority (which should be already protected in its fundamental rights by the normal laws) but great to avoid talking about difficult issues: how to go against established interests to improve the economy, how to modernise administration so that is more efficient and cheaper, etc.
I don’t know about you, but I actually watched interviews with Trump and he mostly seems to indicate that he doesn’t want a nation-wide ban on abortion. It should be up for individual states to decide. Although I’m in favor of more choice for women, I don’t think Trump’s stance is completely unreasonable. There are already more than enough federal rules and some states want to be more strict. But you make it sound like Trump wants to strip away abortion rights. Please give me a recent interview in which he himself clearly said that. Otherwise it seems someone else came up with that narrative.
To the people downvoting me again. Please come with arguments instead of just clicking the “I disagree” button. I’ll happily be proven wrong but I need someone to do it. Just clicking “I disagree” doesn’t add anything to the discussion. Thank you.
It's ok to downvote without comment if someone is not following the posted rules: Please "respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says"
Your response included the statement: "The left wants to chemically castrate gay teenagers and ban single-sex gay spaces." - I don't think that's a response made to the strongest plausible interpretation of mschuster91's post.
This is not destabilizing this democracy. The FDP has done that same thing before - twice! In 1966 and 1982.
Abandoning a non-functioning government and calling new elections is part of democracies. Just ask the Italians (68 governments in 76 years), or recently the French and the Brits.
The problem is that the far right is ready to exploit that situation with their broken populist rhetoric and look to gain massively from it. Currently, they are the second biggest faction behind the conservatives in the polls. All the moderate parties have so little support that the only coalition government options are the ones that couldn't stop this growing trend of disillusionment and protest voting in the past.
How about send to prison the main culprit behind it?
> Starting at 11:58, from behind a bulletproof shield, President Trump gave a speech, declaring that he would "never concede" the election, criticizing the media, and calling for Pence to overturn the election results.
At no point did those Jan6 people have the ability to actually overthrow the US government. Let's not exaggerate their ability to take over all US armed forces and government operations. Jan6 was more a barnacle on the leviathan that is the US government.
I have a tangential question, especially to the native Germans in this thread.
I've been living in Germany for a while now and have been trying to understand German politics in that time, including this whole concept of coalition governments and the crisis the Ampel is facing. Due to the latter, I came across this: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-could-face-snap-election/a-704...
In this article are statements such as (emphasis mine):
> Brandt called for a vote of confidence in the Bundestag with the aim of losing it, so that his chancellorship could be reconfirmed by voters in fresh elections.
> [Kohl] called for a vote of confidence, which he, too, deliberately lost on December 17, 1982.
> Schröder called for a vote of confidence, which he deliberately lost on July 1, 2005.
I just can't wrap my head around these in so many levels. The easier of these questions would be, how can a chancellor deliberately lose a vote of confidence? What makes the action deliberate exactly?
Brandt is a more complicated case to the point where I am, honestly, having a hard time putting my bewilderment into words. I'll try nonetheless: How can a chancellor expect voters in fresh elections to bolster their chancellorship, just right after losing a vote of confidence? I can only interpret this as some kind of political flex, basically telling the Bundestag that "I may not have your confidence but I still have mandate from the people".
(If it is, then, well, weird flex but ok, as we used to say a few years ago. It is a reason after all, even if I find it a bit absurd.)
Perhaps what adds to my confusion is, in Kohl's section we read: "Because Kohl's coalition of the CDU/CSU and FDP came to power through a vote of no confidence and not a general election, Kohl wished for additional legitimacy through a general election" which to me implies that Brandt's strategy would not have consolidated his position as strongly; indeed, the article notes his maneuver was fiercely criticized at the time.
I know I'm an idiot when it comes to German politics so I'd be glad if someone can make sense of my bewilderment. I know there is a lot of subtlety and context I am missing here and I'm sure I'm confusing one thing for another. But I strongly feel like this would go a long way to helping me understand the current machinations of the Ampel.
> How can a chancellor expect voters in fresh elections to bolster their chancellorship, just right after losing a vote of confidence?
I'd say in general, because his party has gained in the polls since the original election that put him in office.
In Brandt's case, he probably indeed thought that voters would reward him for this "political flex" and selflessness for the benefit of the country. Asking for the vote and thereby risking his own career, but also resolving the stalemate in government after they had their majority dramatically reduced.
I'm guessing that Scholz has a similar idea, but with how much the SPD already lost in polls since the last election, I don't see it going well for them and him. In fact, a majority of people are very unhappy with the government and have been in favor of new elections for months now. His plan of getting "critical" bills passed before Christmas with this minority government won't work. Opposition parties would be suicidal to work with him. So I'd say, the longer Scholz waits, the worse the SPD results will be. He needs to ask for the vote immediately, not in 2 months.
> I just can't wrap my head around these in so many levels. The easier of these questions would be, how can a chancellor deliberately lose a vote of confidence? What makes the action deliberate exactly?
Just openly telling your coalition to not vote for you.
> How can a chancellor expect voters in fresh elections to bolster their chancellorship, just right after losing a vote of confidence?
I don't think saying "I came into power, but I'am not sure, if you really want me so please vote for me." will have negative effects on your election results.
> I can only interpret this as some kind of political flex, basically telling the Bundestag that "I may not have your confidence but I still have mandate from the people".
The chancellor gives up on forming the government, but it's the parliament's to vote for a new election.
It's frustrating to watch governments constantly argue over what they should do to help the economy when what they should be arguing about is what they should undo to stop hindering the economy.
i once was working for bosch contractor. they have team of 2-3 people doing in half year less work than i am in one month, and yet payed 2x less.
de lead of that 2-3 team was putting some integration tests ignored and unignored several times during that time as stabilisation effort, sure they were not stabilized.
team we dependent on for car data lagged behind for month all time, and people were pieced off when i was going to sent prs to their code to speed up things.
As a German I'm quite happy with this, because the coalition was doomed to fail from the start.
On that note, I read the paper of Lidner and IMHO he has good points. Germany does not have an issue with income but with spending. We spend way too much for social stuff, especially pensions. The idea proposed by the SDP would fuck every following generation over pretty hard.
And to loose the debt break to funnel that money to the Ukraine is brain dead.
Why does no one tackle overflowing spending for social stuff, insane bureaucracy, abysmal education.
I'm a bit concerned about new elections. That will probably make the CxU the major party, with probably SPD as a junior partner. However, IMHo the whole German political landscape is just FUBAR.
CDU/CSU=old guys sprinkled with new guys that are both corrupt. Scheuer, Spahn, Dobrindt et al. Merz as chancellor. Yeah fuck.
SPU=Give money from the middle class so poor, so they don't have to work that match
FDP=Unfortunately I do not own a Porsche, but generally speaking I find the ideas proposed by Lidner in his paper quite sound
Grüne=Ivory tower and out of touch with working people
AFD=Crude mix between Nazis and just braindead people
BSW=???
+ all the other smaller parties that are just useless
I pay the max amount possible for public healthcare (~1,1k€?) and pay about 1k+ in wage tax. That's just outright insane.
In the meantime, my ex wife gets paid a flat + utilities + some other stuff.
This is all fucked. The EU needs to get stronger, by having a Ungarn Exit and stopping the idiotic expansion to Moldova and the other states that will bring nothing to the table. Instead, they should be made partner, with some benefits, butno voting rights. Oh, and please no Schengen for all of them.
With the shit also going on with the US election this is all just shit.
I don't think the issue is spending on social stuff. There are more issues like tax evasion - even supported by the ministry of Lindner [1].
But I think the biggest issue is spending money by employing more and more governance worker. I heard that the Kanzleramt employs more people than most of the big companies in Germany.
Also, you wrote CDU is corrupt, but FDP feels as corrupt as CDU. At least it looks like working for FDP lead ministry pays off [2][3].
It just feels morally wrong to try to cut social spending when they can't cut spending on their side. Also, pensions for governance worker are pretty high too.
My comment was written with a bit of rage, I might have missed some things. So I agree with wealth tax and tackling tax evasion.
Yes, I also should've added corruption to FDP, good catch! Mövenpick. Also look at the absolute dog shit minister that is Wissing.
I also agree with reducing spending on their side.
I think you can also do this before someone replys, so no luck there.
Honestly I have no clue who to vote for. I guess we will get a GroKo again, which is utterly retarded, SPD has to go to. Their pension packet is just insane.
As another German, I fully agree about the political landscape in Germany being FUBAR.
I'm an entrepreneur with a small business and the FDP is closest to my personal views in theory. In reality, they are just a bit lighter shade of green-socialism than the other parties. Lindner's paper is a joke. Germany needs much more radical changes than he proposed to ensure a prosperous future, but even his very tame suggestions now caused a government collapse.
My payment for public healthcare is also at the maximum around 1k€/month and similar wage taxes. A few days ago I used an unemployment payment / "Bürgergeld" calculator and found out that if I stopped working and instead just got married and had 1-2 kids, I'd have more income after taxes than now. This is completely unsustainable, but nobody in politics talks about it.
New elections won't make a difference, other than taking away some time and focus from the people in power to do more harm to the country. There simply is nobody sensible to vote for.
Germany, and all of the EU in general, needs to hit absolute rock bottom first for new and sensible political parties to emerge.
Personally, I don't want to be around for the ride down, so I'm preparing to leave the sinking ship. Unfortunately thats not easy with enormous exit taxes and much of the western world in a similarly bad state. The US honestly seems like the best option right now.
> My payment for public healthcare is also at the maximum around 1k€/month and similar wage taxes [...]
> and found out that if I stopped working and instead just got married and had 1-2 kids, I'd have more income after taxes than now
That's not possible. Either you lied or didn't fill out the Bürgergeld calculator correctly.
If you make enough money to get to the Jahresarbeitsentgeltgrenze so you pay the maximum of 843.53€ for public healthcare, then you at least should get 3.213€ a month "auf die Hand". If you get you apartment payed and 563€ if you are alone or 506€ if you are married. Yes you get "extra" money if you have kids, but FUNFACT: Kids cost money.
All political landscape is FUBAR. But in part that because there are unlimited different opinions but only a handful of party's.
I don't know how Cum-Ex Scholz could get Chancellor and I am ashamed of it, but with E-Fuel-Porsche Linder...
You know his company before politics, which he ran into ground was funded in part by the KFW? He wasted more of our money than a village of people getting Bürgergeld.
Yeah sure, the german car industry will be great again with this E-Fuel bullshit and then with lesser taxes the profits will trickle down to everyone.
Have fun with more poverty and richer Billionaires.
> Lindner's paper is a joke. Germany needs much more radical changes than he proposed to ensure a prosperous future, but even his very tame suggestions now caused a government collapse.
I wouldn't call it a joke, but rather a starting point. I agree that more radical changes are required. But then again, who will do them? Which party? Yeah, there is none
Oh, and the speech by Scholz was just taken from a drawer, so it has been written for quite some time. So overall this is just shady: Lidner wanted structured new elections but now Scholz forced this to be some shit show.
Also the 4 points mentioned by Scholz are mostly shit:
1. Subventions for VW/other car manufactures: good to secure jobs, but eventually against strengthen of the German economy because we keep failed shot living for some time that is also doomed to fail
2. Energy price, how will he do it without screwing over private households?
3. Pensions: Yeah, the proposed pension packet would screw over newer generations tremendously, just to secure some votes from old people
4. More money for the Ukraine. Use that money to invest in to European Level defense
4. what part of money sent to ukraine is actually investment to eu defence? trying tactics and seeing arms in actios and then selling these to aravia and asia because of good reviews.
3. all young screwed with inflation money printing, and laws protecting rich to be rich, not poor become rich. so i doubt any coutry is different now.
2. check out nuclear in france and canada. they are fine. and... it was russia. ao de does not wants to fight it again?
1. yeah, exactly this, as i worked in that oart of de industry for a while.
TBH, I'm not sure I can parse your comment correctly, but I'll try anyway:
1. I also work for some subsidiary of VW and honestly them going down is no surprise. It's mismanagement on all levels
2. I'm not sure nuclear is a good think. Sure, no CO2, but waste. Also, building them is just ridiculously expensive.
3. Unfortunately true! But the plans of the SPD were really insane IMHO
4. What I meant is that instead of sending anything to the Ukraine just invest in EU level defense.
If the future German Chancellor is here, here's my proposal for your new campaign: "We choose to build one million affordable apartments in four years, not because it's easy but because it's hard".
It may not solve all of Germany's problems but at least you'll energize the construction sector, alleviate the housing crisis, learn how to finish a construction project on time and you'll have to remove some bureaucracy to reach the deadline. Build them with EV chargers outside and you'll help VW too.
That was essentially the slogan of the current coalition and they failed completely.
Interesting that 2 similar problems - water rise and population increase - are treated that differently, i.e. it is considered normal that the government would build levies/etc. while the government building housing is an abomination.
Haha, yeah, forget it. Too much bureaucracy.
But I agree, doing something like this would address quite a few issues people have.
Which party would tackle that though? I can't think of any.
As a german imo the real problem is that we replaced reasoning with ideology.
There are sometimes complex connections between cause and effect. It is not enough to just have the right intention.
This.
Just had a longer discussion with my wife just now why this is.
So many discussions in Germany revolve around ideology and not what’s best in the situation right now.
Same in the US. Especially in the party that now lost. Maybe believing in some equality fairyland where everything is fair and equal doesn’t work. Doesn’t work for the US and doesn’t work for Germany. You need to let crazy people do crazy things (within the law of course). Many inventors were “crazy” at the time including Einstein, Turing and DaVinci to name a few. Maybe in 50 years we will talk about the government that forced Turing to take medication against his homosexuality in the same way as the woke politicians who supported cancel culture. A culture that has caused many academics to lose their job and caused even more academics to fear speaking up.
Germany is in a really dire situation now by the way. Car production is about 17% of GDP and sales for all their brands are declining steadily. Especially Chinese sales are going down fast. Relatedly, Xiami is now one of the fastest cars on the Nordschleife. But the German government doesn’t seem to have any solutions. Yes close power plants. Oh wait they have now the highest electricity prices in the whole of Europe.
And this is while their education system is fine. Young German engineers are great I think. I’ve seen many great German open source developers. Especially of course the creators of Typst.
> And this is while their education system is fine. Young German engineers are great I think.
German education system is not as fine as it used to be. It might still be fine at the later high school and university levels, but earlier school classes now often have a majority of kids that don't speak German, holding the whole class back. In parts of problem cities like Berlin there are even classes where no kid speaks German. We don't have enough teachers and the ones who are still there are frustrated and overworked.
> but earlier school classes now often have a majority of kids that don't speak German, holding the whole class back
Nope, that's not the problem. My wife is a teacher. Schools where teachers don't go on the toilet because it's so fucked up. That's the problem. But we need to reduce money there, because we need more tax breaks.
"Car production is about 17% of GDP"
Not sure where you got this number. Actually it's been between 4% and 5% for the last couple of years.
Thanks. I think you’re right.
This is my source: https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/exports-by-category
295B for “vehicles other than railway, tramway”.
I don’t know where the 17% on that page comes from. It’s indeed 6% if you compare it to GDP (4.4T).
> Same in the US. Especially in the party that now lost.
I'd say it's the same in both parties
> You need to let crazy people do crazy things (within the law of course).
Yeah, like stripping away LGBT rights or abortion? The far-right, no matter if we are talking about the US, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Argentinia, Israel or the UK, has clearly stated what they want to do, and they have shown in more than enough cases (Argentinia, USA, UK) that they are willing to throw the entire nation under the bus for their ideological bullshit! And the people have suffered horribly for the foolishness of their fellow countrymen.
> like stripping away LGBT rights or abortion?
These are ideological battles which are specular to those of the left. All these laws to extend and protect LGBT rights? Marginally useful only to a small minority (which should be already protected in its fundamental rights by the normal laws) but great to avoid talking about difficult issues: how to go against established interests to improve the economy, how to modernise administration so that is more efficient and cheaper, etc.
I don’t know about you, but I actually watched interviews with Trump and he mostly seems to indicate that he doesn’t want a nation-wide ban on abortion. It should be up for individual states to decide. Although I’m in favor of more choice for women, I don’t think Trump’s stance is completely unreasonable. There are already more than enough federal rules and some states want to be more strict. But you make it sound like Trump wants to strip away abortion rights. Please give me a recent interview in which he himself clearly said that. Otherwise it seems someone else came up with that narrative.
To the people downvoting me again. Please come with arguments instead of just clicking the “I disagree” button. I’ll happily be proven wrong but I need someone to do it. Just clicking “I disagree” doesn’t add anything to the discussion. Thank you.
“Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.”
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It's ok to downvote without comment if someone is not following the posted rules: Please "respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says"
Your response included the statement: "The left wants to chemically castrate gay teenagers and ban single-sex gay spaces." - I don't think that's a response made to the strongest plausible interpretation of mschuster91's post.
Perhaps it's time to integrate LLMs into politics. Not sure that I'm even joking at this point.
So, destabilized democracies seems to be the theme of the early 21st century: the UK (Brexit), the US (twice) and now rumbles from Germany. Great
This is not destabilizing this democracy. The FDP has done that same thing before - twice! In 1966 and 1982.
Abandoning a non-functioning government and calling new elections is part of democracies. Just ask the Italians (68 governments in 76 years), or recently the French and the Brits.
> Just ask the Italians (68 governments in 76 years)
When each and every government is non-functioning, I'd say that democracy is already destabilised or broken.
The problem is that the far right is ready to exploit that situation with their broken populist rhetoric and look to gain massively from it. Currently, they are the second biggest faction behind the conservatives in the polls. All the moderate parties have so little support that the only coalition government options are the ones that couldn't stop this growing trend of disillusionment and protest voting in the past.
I wish the US democracy had this feature. We have to just suffer through it for 4 years.
What is unstable about the US?
Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't Trump's followers raid the capitol last time (with his approval)? Seems unstable from the outside
One of them was shot and more than 600 were sent to prison. Seems stable enough to me.
Stable democracies hand over to new governments without bloodshed. Any amount of violence in the process is too much to count as stable.
Pretty safe bet those in prison will be pardoned, and I wouldn't be shocked if the dead traitor got a posthumous medal.
How about send to prison the main culprit behind it?
> Starting at 11:58, from behind a bulletproof shield, President Trump gave a speech, declaring that he would "never concede" the election, criticizing the media, and calling for Pence to overturn the election results.
Just reading about the whole thing again on Wikipedia is appalling beyond belief. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_6_United_States_Capito....
At no point did those Jan6 people have the ability to actually overthrow the US government. Let's not exaggerate their ability to take over all US armed forces and government operations. Jan6 was more a barnacle on the leviathan that is the US government.
I have a tangential question, especially to the native Germans in this thread.
I've been living in Germany for a while now and have been trying to understand German politics in that time, including this whole concept of coalition governments and the crisis the Ampel is facing. Due to the latter, I came across this: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-could-face-snap-election/a-704...
In this article are statements such as (emphasis mine):
> Brandt called for a vote of confidence in the Bundestag with the aim of losing it, so that his chancellorship could be reconfirmed by voters in fresh elections.
> [Kohl] called for a vote of confidence, which he, too, deliberately lost on December 17, 1982.
> Schröder called for a vote of confidence, which he deliberately lost on July 1, 2005.
I just can't wrap my head around these in so many levels. The easier of these questions would be, how can a chancellor deliberately lose a vote of confidence? What makes the action deliberate exactly?
Brandt is a more complicated case to the point where I am, honestly, having a hard time putting my bewilderment into words. I'll try nonetheless: How can a chancellor expect voters in fresh elections to bolster their chancellorship, just right after losing a vote of confidence? I can only interpret this as some kind of political flex, basically telling the Bundestag that "I may not have your confidence but I still have mandate from the people".
(If it is, then, well, weird flex but ok, as we used to say a few years ago. It is a reason after all, even if I find it a bit absurd.)
Perhaps what adds to my confusion is, in Kohl's section we read: "Because Kohl's coalition of the CDU/CSU and FDP came to power through a vote of no confidence and not a general election, Kohl wished for additional legitimacy through a general election" which to me implies that Brandt's strategy would not have consolidated his position as strongly; indeed, the article notes his maneuver was fiercely criticized at the time.
I know I'm an idiot when it comes to German politics so I'd be glad if someone can make sense of my bewilderment. I know there is a lot of subtlety and context I am missing here and I'm sure I'm confusing one thing for another. But I strongly feel like this would go a long way to helping me understand the current machinations of the Ampel.
> How can a chancellor expect voters in fresh elections to bolster their chancellorship, just right after losing a vote of confidence?
I'd say in general, because his party has gained in the polls since the original election that put him in office.
In Brandt's case, he probably indeed thought that voters would reward him for this "political flex" and selflessness for the benefit of the country. Asking for the vote and thereby risking his own career, but also resolving the stalemate in government after they had their majority dramatically reduced.
I'm guessing that Scholz has a similar idea, but with how much the SPD already lost in polls since the last election, I don't see it going well for them and him. In fact, a majority of people are very unhappy with the government and have been in favor of new elections for months now. His plan of getting "critical" bills passed before Christmas with this minority government won't work. Opposition parties would be suicidal to work with him. So I'd say, the longer Scholz waits, the worse the SPD results will be. He needs to ask for the vote immediately, not in 2 months.
> I just can't wrap my head around these in so many levels. The easier of these questions would be, how can a chancellor deliberately lose a vote of confidence? What makes the action deliberate exactly?
Just openly telling your coalition to not vote for you.
> How can a chancellor expect voters in fresh elections to bolster their chancellorship, just right after losing a vote of confidence?
I don't think saying "I came into power, but I'am not sure, if you really want me so please vote for me." will have negative effects on your election results.
> I can only interpret this as some kind of political flex, basically telling the Bundestag that "I may not have your confidence but I still have mandate from the people".
The chancellor gives up on forming the government, but it's the parliament's to vote for a new election.
It's frustrating to watch governments constantly argue over what they should do to help the economy when what they should be arguing about is what they should undo to stop hindering the economy.
i once was working for bosch contractor. they have team of 2-3 people doing in half year less work than i am in one month, and yet payed 2x less.
de lead of that 2-3 team was putting some integration tests ignored and unignored several times during that time as stabilisation effort, sure they were not stabilized.
team we dependent on for car data lagged behind for month all time, and people were pieced off when i was going to sent prs to their code to speed up things.
As a German I'm quite happy with this, because the coalition was doomed to fail from the start.
On that note, I read the paper of Lidner and IMHO he has good points. Germany does not have an issue with income but with spending. We spend way too much for social stuff, especially pensions. The idea proposed by the SDP would fuck every following generation over pretty hard.
And to loose the debt break to funnel that money to the Ukraine is brain dead.
Why does no one tackle overflowing spending for social stuff, insane bureaucracy, abysmal education.
I'm a bit concerned about new elections. That will probably make the CxU the major party, with probably SPD as a junior partner. However, IMHo the whole German political landscape is just FUBAR.
CDU/CSU=old guys sprinkled with new guys that are both corrupt. Scheuer, Spahn, Dobrindt et al. Merz as chancellor. Yeah fuck.
SPU=Give money from the middle class so poor, so they don't have to work that match
FDP=Unfortunately I do not own a Porsche, but generally speaking I find the ideas proposed by Lidner in his paper quite sound
Grüne=Ivory tower and out of touch with working people
AFD=Crude mix between Nazis and just braindead people
BSW=???
+ all the other smaller parties that are just useless
I pay the max amount possible for public healthcare (~1,1k€?) and pay about 1k+ in wage tax. That's just outright insane.
In the meantime, my ex wife gets paid a flat + utilities + some other stuff.
This is all fucked. The EU needs to get stronger, by having a Ungarn Exit and stopping the idiotic expansion to Moldova and the other states that will bring nothing to the table. Instead, they should be made partner, with some benefits, butno voting rights. Oh, and please no Schengen for all of them.
With the shit also going on with the US election this is all just shit.
I don't think the issue is spending on social stuff. There are more issues like tax evasion - even supported by the ministry of Lindner [1]. But I think the biggest issue is spending money by employing more and more governance worker. I heard that the Kanzleramt employs more people than most of the big companies in Germany.
Also, you wrote CDU is corrupt, but FDP feels as corrupt as CDU. At least it looks like working for FDP lead ministry pays off [2][3].
It just feels morally wrong to try to cut social spending when they can't cut spending on their side. Also, pensions for governance worker are pretty high too.
(sorry for German sources)
[1] https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/gerda-hofmann-finanzm...
[2] https://www.merkur.de/politik/schuldenbremse-bundeshaushalt-...
[3] https://www.stern.de/politik/deutschland/finanzministerium--...
My comment was written with a bit of rage, I might have missed some things. So I agree with wealth tax and tackling tax evasion. Yes, I also should've added corruption to FDP, good catch! Mövenpick. Also look at the absolute dog shit minister that is Wissing. I also agree with reducing spending on their side.
I edited my comment also a little bit because I wrote in rage. It really feels frustrating the political landscape (voting the "least evil" party).
I think you can also do this before someone replys, so no luck there.
Honestly I have no clue who to vote for. I guess we will get a GroKo again, which is utterly retarded, SPD has to go to. Their pension packet is just insane.
As another German, I fully agree about the political landscape in Germany being FUBAR.
I'm an entrepreneur with a small business and the FDP is closest to my personal views in theory. In reality, they are just a bit lighter shade of green-socialism than the other parties. Lindner's paper is a joke. Germany needs much more radical changes than he proposed to ensure a prosperous future, but even his very tame suggestions now caused a government collapse.
My payment for public healthcare is also at the maximum around 1k€/month and similar wage taxes. A few days ago I used an unemployment payment / "Bürgergeld" calculator and found out that if I stopped working and instead just got married and had 1-2 kids, I'd have more income after taxes than now. This is completely unsustainable, but nobody in politics talks about it.
New elections won't make a difference, other than taking away some time and focus from the people in power to do more harm to the country. There simply is nobody sensible to vote for.
Germany, and all of the EU in general, needs to hit absolute rock bottom first for new and sensible political parties to emerge.
Personally, I don't want to be around for the ride down, so I'm preparing to leave the sinking ship. Unfortunately thats not easy with enormous exit taxes and much of the western world in a similarly bad state. The US honestly seems like the best option right now.
> My payment for public healthcare is also at the maximum around 1k€/month and similar wage taxes [...]
> and found out that if I stopped working and instead just got married and had 1-2 kids, I'd have more income after taxes than now
That's not possible. Either you lied or didn't fill out the Bürgergeld calculator correctly.
If you make enough money to get to the Jahresarbeitsentgeltgrenze so you pay the maximum of 843.53€ for public healthcare, then you at least should get 3.213€ a month "auf die Hand". If you get you apartment payed and 563€ if you are alone or 506€ if you are married. Yes you get "extra" money if you have kids, but FUNFACT: Kids cost money.
All political landscape is FUBAR. But in part that because there are unlimited different opinions but only a handful of party's. I don't know how Cum-Ex Scholz could get Chancellor and I am ashamed of it, but with E-Fuel-Porsche Linder... You know his company before politics, which he ran into ground was funded in part by the KFW? He wasted more of our money than a village of people getting Bürgergeld.
Yeah sure, the german car industry will be great again with this E-Fuel bullshit and then with lesser taxes the profits will trickle down to everyone.
Have fun with more poverty and richer Billionaires.
> Lindner's paper is a joke. Germany needs much more radical changes than he proposed to ensure a prosperous future, but even his very tame suggestions now caused a government collapse.
I wouldn't call it a joke, but rather a starting point. I agree that more radical changes are required. But then again, who will do them? Which party? Yeah, there is none
Oh, and the speech by Scholz was just taken from a drawer, so it has been written for quite some time. So overall this is just shady: Lidner wanted structured new elections but now Scholz forced this to be some shit show. Also the 4 points mentioned by Scholz are mostly shit:
1. Subventions for VW/other car manufactures: good to secure jobs, but eventually against strengthen of the German economy because we keep failed shot living for some time that is also doomed to fail
2. Energy price, how will he do it without screwing over private households?
3. Pensions: Yeah, the proposed pension packet would screw over newer generations tremendously, just to secure some votes from old people
4. More money for the Ukraine. Use that money to invest in to European Level defense
4. what part of money sent to ukraine is actually investment to eu defence? trying tactics and seeing arms in actios and then selling these to aravia and asia because of good reviews.
3. all young screwed with inflation money printing, and laws protecting rich to be rich, not poor become rich. so i doubt any coutry is different now.
2. check out nuclear in france and canada. they are fine. and... it was russia. ao de does not wants to fight it again?
1. yeah, exactly this, as i worked in that oart of de industry for a while.
TBH, I'm not sure I can parse your comment correctly, but I'll try anyway: 1. I also work for some subsidiary of VW and honestly them going down is no surprise. It's mismanagement on all levels
2. I'm not sure nuclear is a good think. Sure, no CO2, but waste. Also, building them is just ridiculously expensive.
3. Unfortunately true! But the plans of the SPD were really insane IMHO
4. What I meant is that instead of sending anything to the Ukraine just invest in EU level defense.