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!
Here’s the list.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Germans_by_net_worth
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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… without the rich paying their share.
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.
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.
So… The Germans are kicking all the wealthy leeches off their generational welfare suckholes, then?
That’s the real “welfare state”, NGL… 🖕🏽
there you go, they finally said it out loud. austerity it is.
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.
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
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.
it is. just a way to pinch pennies from us to themselves. they are ripping the proverbial copper from the walls.
“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.
Tick tock on the fascism clock.
Then how about stopping welfare for millionaires?
Or stop subsiding e.g. plane fuel. Better for the environment anyway.
… without finally taking the upper ten percent into the taxpaying fold.
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 now, 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.
https://www.politicalcompass.org/germany2025
Spd is a right leaning party no I’m talking about die linke
Edit: oops bsw is a russian support operation not a neoliberal party. I apologize for that mistake
Fuck bsw. The split is the opposite of a problem, it was desperately necessary and the catalyst for the Linke renaissance that I mentioned.
I am an outsider who only lived there a long time ago but it looks to me like the party was highjacked by neoliberals in order to split the vote. As far as I can tell German intelligence should have cracked down on both bsw and afd as soon as evidence emerged that they were part of a russian influence campaign. However the neoliberals instead ignored bsw’s russian support… this seems to be an obvious attempt to split leftist parties in half. Die linke is one of the last remaining leftist parties in the g7 outside of france. italy’s m5s is the other. And these parties seem to be losing to the right because the neoliberals sabotage them at every opportunity
I’m not sure how to make this any clearer: Die Linke is doing so much better both internally and in the polls / results since the fucks from BSW split off that I called it a renaissance twice now. And it was desperately necessary. BSW does not identify as left. Representatives actively reject the label and refuse to even pay lip service to leftist ideals, because they simply aren’t left. It’s time to let go of the notion this was “splitting the left”.
Who really lost big time are the centrists. FDP, SPD, CDU to various degrees. Greens too but less so. Because xenophobic populism doesn’t work for them nearly as well as it does for the fascists.
I should have recognized your point. Yes you are right. But I believe that the individual politicians inside of cdu csu sdp fdp etc as well as the bureaucrats inside of the state security apparatus believed that not countering russian propaganda would cleave the left and this may have backfired. Because it is strange that they outed afd as an obvious russian front but not bsw. Ex posto facto reasoning on my part but the other expla ation for the lack of action is that the German intelligence service truly believes that bsw is not a russian front or they think there’s nothing illegal about russia operating a fake politician party.
But again I’m a foreigner who doesn’t understand the German political system.
Im the usa though they did the same thing when they uncovered a russian influence campaign. They looked the other way and let it all go down (for the most part)
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.
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?
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
For starters, cancel the fucking F-35 order and tell Rheinmetall’s lobbyists and investors to shove it.
