- cross-posted to:
- europe@feddit.org
- cross-posted to:
- europe@feddit.org
The German chancellor has called for a welfare reform, putting him on course for a possible clash with the SPD.
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They should probably be executed for breaking the country’s welfare systems.
For starters, cancel the fucking F-35 order and tell Rheinmetall’s lobbyists and investors to shove it.
Friedrich Merz is Germany’s Kier Starmer and if you don’t understand what i mean go check on UK and how well they are doing under Starmers government and you’ll understand.
I typically abhor violence but i understand if somebody would kill Merz due to him being a danger to the general population. A politician has to help the people, not hurt them. If he doesn’t fulfill this one basic task, he’s unfit to be a politician. He has to understand that or step back immediately. If he doesn’t, he’s unreasonable and cannot be talked to logically.
Merz can no longer be financed
The passive voice in that statement is doing a LOT of heavy lifting there, Friedrich.
Sure it can.
Just raise taxes on the wealthy.
It’s like telling people that jump from diet fad to diet fad all they need to do is count calories.
We all know the solution, none of these countries are doing it
Merz is a conservative. They’re all like that.
Its crazy to me that the only left leaning party in Germany was split by internal divisions between neoliberalism and progressive politics. How was that even possible when more than half of Germany’s voters are left leaning?
Are you referring to SPD? They haven’t bothered with actual left-leaning politics for a while. Die Linke is our party on the left, and they are experiencing a renaissance right, but unfortunately not nearly as much as the far right.
To answer your question: Most German voters are centrists with a mix of vaguely conservative and social democratic views. And they’ve been exposed to economic anxiety narratives and xenophobic fear-mongering for the past two decades, while lacking the political education to smell the populist bullshit for what it is in a social media environment defined by anti-intellectualism and fake news.
He’s not “conservative”, he isn’t conserving anything. He isn’t conserving the living standard of the people. He’s just a dumbass posing as a conservative, while actually wreaking havoc on our collective future.
That’s conservationists that conserve things. Conservatives work to consolidate power, reinstate kings. Like Donald and the conservative republicans.
Then how about stopping welfare for millionaires?
Or stop subsiding e.g. plane fuel. Better for the environment anyway.
… without the rich paying their share.
All this while systematically crippling our tax investigation departments.
If I ever meet Merz or someone like him, I will have choice words to say.
Words alone have never stopped fascists.
there you go, they finally said it out loud. austerity it is.
“Why isn’t anyone having kids? I specifically requested it.”
If they want us to have kids, they have to pay for them, of course.
Austerity doesn’t even work. It’s deliberate cruelty.
It works for the wealthy. It saves them a lot of money on taxes.
It’s short sighted though.
if you assume that they want what they say
It’s not short sighted for the wealthy. Over the last 40 years, the wealthy have amassed massive amounts of income and wealth. It worked out great for them and the politicians that they purchase.
My view is that it will ultimately ruin the country. Has in the U.K.
I agree.
The wealthy do not care about countries or borders. Once a land is pilfered, their wealth makes it relatively easy to find another place to live.
Oh, we’re on the same page then. It’s terrifying.
exactly
Just before Covid it was in British news that austerity hadn’t worked (No shit…), so what did they do? More austerity. It’s fucking infuriating.
Merz is predictable and a traitor to the German people. He will usher in the fascist power grab through conservative policies - the AFD will grow in popularity as conservatives protect the 1%.
Die Linke’s tax plan would have paid for the yearly debt of the government and then some; their secret - tax the wealthy.
We can afford all of our costs, we can improve society, we can provide a thriving economy for all Germans if we simply tax the ultra wealthy out of existence. No one should have a billion euro net worth, nor 100 million nor 50 million. No one need own 3 houses while others go without even a flat.
We have enough wealth in this country, it’s just in the hands of the hoarders. Don’t look towards conservatives or the right for change, look towards those that address the root problem!
IMO the borders need to be closed first before taxing the rich works well enough. Allow me to explain:
If you tax the rich today, they drop the german citizenship and become carribean citizens tomorrow, and then you can’t tax them anymore. All the while they hold on to their companies in germany.
Instead, it has to be illegal to invest inside germany (above a certain threshold amount) if you don’t have german citizenship. This way, the rich can’t flee. They have to keep german citizenship to hold on to their companies, and then they can be taxed.
Although I appreciate the thought here, and I think the investment idea may even be good regardless of what I’m about to say, that’s not exactly how this works. If you tax the assets the rich own, where they own them, it doesn’t matter where they go. And they can’t live in Germany and not get taxed, so they can change citizenship all they want if they live here they will get taxed here. And based off of the most recent studies/reports I’ve seen (but not read) rich don’t actually move when taxes go up - which makes sense. People have lives, family, friends, favorite restaurants and hobby spaces.
The rich will try to dodge the taxes, they may even succeed but we don’t have to legistate a bullet proof solution we just have to agree:
- the rich need to be heavily taxed (I’d even say out of existence)
- taxing the rich is possible via various methods
- taxing the rich would solve and/or reverse most of societies problems so everyone should talk and support it.
But yes, I’m a big fan of no outside investment. I’m also a fan of government investment requiring ownership purchases. I’m also a fan of requiring companies to be partially or totally owned by their workers. And I don’t think anyone should have a net worth over let’s say 50 million.
So you’re saying the assets (factory, houses, land) should be taxed directly, instead of the billionaires?
Interesting idea, i need to think about it.
Edit: after having thought about it, i’d like there to be a “exempt tax amount”, i.e. if you own less than $10m, you don’t pay any wealth taxes. if you do taxation solely on a per-asset basis, that’d be difficult. It would be better if the person gets taxed and not the asset itself. Sothat you can deduct a tax-exempt amount per person, not per asset.
I mean if the billionaires own the houses and factories and land it’s the same thing right?
After having thought about it, i’d like there to be a “exempt tax amount”, i.e. if you own less than $10m, you don’t pay any wealth taxes.
- if you do taxation solely on a per-asset basis, that’d be difficult.
- It would be better if the person gets taxed and not the asset itself. Sothat you can deduct a tax-exempt amount per person, not per asset.
does that make sense to you?
That makes sense. My point isn’t to tax the property it’s that the property is taxed, if that makes any sense. You tax based on the property, it traces to the owner, the owner gets taxed based on the property. If the owner lives in Beijing or Antarctica the property is still here and gets taxed, they can’t avoid it by moving unless they can take the property.
So in that case, an exempt amount is fine. I’d just want it to be steep up to a point where it’s 98 or 100%.
No one gets a third house before everyone gets one kinda thing. And also no one is allowed to have enough wealth they can destabilize democracy or even a city.
Semi-related, my ideal taxation plan looks like this:
When doing new, big projects, it makes sense to try them out on a small scale, then see how it goes and scale it up later. For an initial set of parameters, i propose the following:
Assume you live in country CNTRY.
- If you own less than the tax-exempt amount, you pay no wealth taxes at all. The tax-exempt amount is $10m.
- If you’re a citizen of country CNTRY, no matter where you live, your total wealth gets calculated, and you have to pay wealth tax on everything above the tax-exempt amount to the country CNTRY. The tax rate is 3% annually. E.g. if you own $25m, the tax-exempt amount is $10m, and the non-exempt amount is $15m, so you pay $450k annually.
- If you’re not a citizen of CNTRY, there is no tax-exempt amount for you and you have to start paying wealth tax on everything you own inside CNTRY. This is to avoid tax-avoidance schemes, like people investing in other countries to avoid paying taxes in their own countries. E.g. a person owning $250m might invest in 25 different countries, where in each of them the tax-exempt amount is $10m, sothat they don’t pay taxes in any of the countries.
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It can. Tax the billionaires.
Tax wealth not work!
They will just move to the next country.
Let them. If they don’t pay their share, they are not worth keeping.
If they want to operate in the world’s 3rd largest economy, they will not.
surprisingly good video.
yeah, exactly what i’m saying, real assets (houses, agricultural areas, factories) are local and cannot be moved to other places easily, so they can be taxed. tax the rich.
Then you set up an exit tax and a tax on citizens living abroad
Not a solution as this will hurt people who aren’t billionaires as well.
With fair tax brackets it shouldn’t matter much
Always threatened, but never happens.
So they all live in low tax countries? No? Ok.
They own assets. Take away those assets, they lose their “leverage”.
They probably will at first. But they will want to come back. And billionaires really don’t like not getting what they want, even if it costs them more than they want to get it. You don’t need to be the lowest bidder to get billionaires. They won’t all go live in Bermuda or LA forever. What good is their money if it doesn’t let them live wherever they want? You already have all the things you need to attract them. Culture, history, prestige, safety. You will have even more of al those things when you make them pay their share.
Here’s the list.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Germans_by_net_worth
Creating 1500B € out of thin air to build killing machines: Whatever it takes to protect the country!
Spending 50B € to actually protect the people from poverty/malnutrition/starvation: Nooooo we can’t afford that.
Humanity at it’s best: Limitless effort to create suffering, 0 effort to reduce suffering.
I suspect there will be many, many ‘I didn’t think they’d do this to ME’ posts coming from German people in the coming months.
Oh no! Did you “progressive” liberal parties take away all your entitlements to appease their corporate overlords? Don’t worry, I’ll make sure to blame all of the German people when AfD becomes the dominant party in Germany next election
It depends on the country, I suppose.
I don’t know enough about German politics to be able to place blame on anyone. I just know from observing US and UK politics that there is always a percentage of people who vote fascist thinking that it won’t adversely affect their own lives personally.
The problem is the fascists have figured out how to win: rig the game so all the viable choices are at least somewhat fascist. Picking the lesser of several evils will never protect you from fascism.
You’re right.
