The German chancellor has called for a welfare reform, putting him on course for a possible clash with the SPD.
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Tax wealth not work!
They will just move to the next country.
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
So they all live in low tax countries? No? Ok.
Always threatened, but never happens.
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.
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.
And this is how you further damage democracy and strengthen the far right. Because a lot of the people who don’t vote or vote for the far right are people who feel left behind who are of the impression that the system is broken and they don’t benefit from it. Social welfare is a way to directly show everyone what a democratic state is good for. Policies that benefit the poor, the working class and the middle class make a strong society. But Merz and others simply don’t seem to get it or care and stare in wonder at the ever rising numbers of people who want to see the world burn.
The capitalist elite has less problem with fascism than socialism. Only one of those threatens their wealth
In the short term. Both threaten their wealth in the long run. Fascism still wins out.
Fully agree. The big problem is Germany industry is in the shits and can’t afford to finance the welfare state anymore. Military spending is all debt.
- Print 1bn in welfare
- Welfare ultimately gets spent into rich folks’ coffers
- Tax that 1bn back out of the rich
- Net cost: zero
What’s “unaffordable” here?
It’s unaffordable to greedy corporations and billionaires who would not afford the working to have a single dime in their pocket if they had it their way.
If only “tax” meant “tap” as in “tap a sugar maple for its sweet sweet amber sap” and the freshly gutted 1% could also be used as fertilizer afterward.
Win/win! Poverty and hunger in one fell slash? I’m in.
Im ashamed for who has become our chancellor. Flying around in his private “middle-class” jet while taxing the poor. Jfc Friedrich, step back
I should hope heads of state are not flying around on commercial jets.
No, he has owned a private jet for many years prior to becoming chancellor.
… without the rich paying their share.
Tick tock on the fascism clock.
My partner and I almost moved to Germany last year and I am so glad we didn’t. If we’re going to be in a fascist country, I’d prefer to be a citizen since white fascists tend to frown extra hard on us brown immigrants.
While the current government in Germany is certainly not the best, it is very far away from a fascist country.
Most likely the right wing CDU talks big now to wiggle out some small concessions against their socialist coalition partner and againt the green/left opposition.
They can not change anything big because otherwise the current coalition would fold.
The CDU can not form a coalition or cooperate with the ultra right AFD because that would cost them a big chunk of their current voters.
They currently have nothing going for them that would win them voters on their own.
How’s your Spanish? I hear good things about Chile.
Good enough to be understood but not good enough to not use idioms incorrectly. For example, I spent a solid five minutes trying to remember if “así así” or “ni fu ni fa” can apply to competency before throwing my hands up.
Mediocre. Mi español es mediocre.
I just need practice.
… without finally taking the upper ten percent into the taxpaying fold.
So… The Germans are kicking all the wealthy leeches off their generational welfare suckholes, then?
That’s the real “welfare state”, NGL… 🖕🏽
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Austerity doesn’t even work. It’s deliberate cruelty.
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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.
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It works for the wealthy. It saves them a lot of money on taxes.
It’s short sighted though.
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.
if you assume that they want what they say
“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.
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.
Always has been. “We cannot afford x any more” has been their standard argument for dismantling social security and lining up their own pockets for decades now.
it could easily , just slim down the government , remove tax waste and more. a city near me just bought 32 benches at the cost of 70k€ EACH yes 70.000 why ? end of quarter they didnt want to get budget cuts the next quarter. some citizens found very similiar benches from another company ( like minimal different same material ) for 3,5k EACH 3500 each or many of the million graves of taxes , we have in my city multiple “Autobahn” which arent used but were built and need maintenance why ?
Our Government makes home owners pay for street repairs in full and more , where does our tax money go?
where does our tax money go?
This is a pretty easy question to answer given that you’re talking about a public institution.
The only difficulty is that the answer is complex and requires reading and understanding many sets of financial reports and accompanying minutes et cetera.
a city near me just bought 32 benches at the cost of 70k€ EACH
That’s a pretty absurd claim, and simply not how budgets in public institutions work.
Sure there might have been some kind of fuckup so installation of one of 32 benches cost $70k, or any number of other plausible explanations, but large public institutions don’t just throw $2.25m EUR at the end of a quarter as a budget stuffing exercise.
While I couldn’t find the article anymore ( it’s a bit old ) I just found one for 12 for 170 thousand.
Another where they pay 20k for each because they are circular and more.
Tax waste is just all surrounding.
So you’re just making things up based on the vibe.
Exactly nope.
just slim down the government
It’s an easy thing to say, but even with the waste and bloat the government function itself is just a few percent of the expense. Pensions, health, education and child support are the vast majority of expenses. Remove the money from government, tack in on to pensions and you kicked the can down the road for another few years. After that the pension and health costs increases and eats up the extra money due to ageing of the population. Now you’re back at square 1 but with a lot less people in government to keep things together.
You can’t use immigrants to work jobs and pay taxes. It was tried, got a bunch of backlash in the end and by now the right has their campaigns ready to go all out if somebody suggests this. Birth rate is going down so it’ll be rising costs of ageing and no new incomes from new workers. They’re f-ed and know it. We all knew this moment would come, but if somebody suggested saving now for later they got voted out of office so nothing got done.
COUNTRY welfare state can no longer be supported
Change COUNTRY for any west European country and this has been said while it CAN be supported but the rich want to get more rich
