Last week, I essayed a piece on the shortfall expected now with the German budget in 2019 (5-billion Euro short.....mostly due to a decline in tax revenue and slowing economy). ARD (public German TV, Channel One) got around to this topic last night and an odd twist to the story.
The Finance Minister (Scholz, SPD Party) was the one who spoke about the shortfall last week. But now, he's basically signing up and pressing hard on a SPD political agenda point....a hefty increase in the idea of a basic pension (basically ensuring all Germans would get 900-Euro as they reach retirement age.....each month.
If you worked all your life in Germany, for minimum wage, you would retire with a pension around 450 to 500 Euro a month.....which you'd admit it just won't work. So this SPD idea of taking regular tax money (not increasing the pension tax), and laying another 400 to 450 Euro on top of that would make practical sense.
But the problem here.....if you were going to be 5-billion short on funds for 2019, where will the billions come from for this basic retirement fund idea?
I would go and speculate that when this CDU-SPD joint meeting occurs in a week....there's going to be a card laid down upon the Bundeswehr (German Army), and a budget cut of about a billion Euro (minimum) and some type of increased tax burden on more wealthy Germans....to make up this shortfall and the basic retirement money bucket.
Getting people hyped up? Probably so, but this whole minimum-wage-pension situation should have been picked up twenty years ago and discussed. The money ought to come out of the pension contributions.
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