Over the weekend, via ARD news (public TV, Channel One).....Germany's Minister of Labor (Hubertus Heil, SPD Party) came out with a pretty radical idea, which the news media suggests will be eventually approved.
Basically....there's this idea of creating a basic pension in Germany, where the minimum would be 900 Euro (roughly 1,100 US dollars).
Right now.....if you were a German and worked a minimum of 35 years in a minimum wage situation....your pension would only be 517 Euro. For most folks, it isn't enough to survive, and you end getting some form of social welfare to accompany it.
How would the extra money be generated to pay it out? Well.....not by the pension tax. It's suggested that the government would just take it out of the general taxation 'basket'. Somehow, they'd go and find two to three billion Euro, and carve it off. Is there money out there to cover this idea? Not really....you'd have to go and find some other ways of taxing folks and lessening costs in infrastructure or military spending.
But here's the thing.....off 517 Euro a month (the current deal if you did minimum wage your whole life)....it just won't cover a guy, apartment costs, food and a car. Some would even argue that the 900 Euro barely does. A lot depends on where you live (metropolitan Hamburg, or rural Bitburg). With the EU election coming up this year.....both the CDU and SPD parties need to suggest they are working for the 'little-guy' and this would be a great deal.
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