There was an interesting article today via ARD public TV news....chatting over retired Germans in serious pension troubles and how they now rely upon charity operations which operate food 'tablets'.
The 'tablets' are a co-op operation....where grocery operations and farms will ship off their left-over items, and get some note for donation purposes....which can bring a tax-credit for the farmer or grocery.
1.65 million Germans use the 'tablets'...out of the 82-million population, and has become a key surviving habit for retirees.
How this pension shortfall occurred? You can generally go back to the 1970s and say that a fair number of Germans finished school.....took up minimum wage jobs....and never progressed. So they were retiring over the past twenty-odd years to find that their 600 to 900 Euro a month simply doesn't cut it. The 'tablets'? They started to fill in for food requirements. You could pay them 25 Euro, and get 75 Euro of food. Various charity groups had different methods of operation, and found lots of people in need of food.
So here's the worry aspect of the story.....the trend-line is increasing. Some kind of reform probably needs to be put into place, but finding this formula or concept is going to be difficult.
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