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Germany news: Childfree adults to pay more for elder care

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Re: Germany news: Childfree adults to pay more for elder care

#161

Post by robocat »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #116
robocat wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the elderly that have created this mess Unbalanced... The elderly also created most of the infrastructure everyone depends upon. When you get to be elderly, it will be your turn to be blamed.

In the US at least the majority of current elderly (boomers) fought tooth and nail against infrastructure improvements, and when they did happen often funded them with debt to pass the cost off to someone else. The Greatest Generation (WW2) and Silent Generation did the heavy lifting here.

The US is an economy - what matters is the resource flows within each day or year.

I sincerely hope you've had your 2.4 kids to support yourself - that's what the boomers managed and it is hard to measure in dollars or debt. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48281453

The idea of monetary debt between generations is just hand-waving (apart from the issue of trying to "color" a dollar via creative government accounting).

Note that government lending in other countries is different when borrowed in foreign currencies e.g. USD or Yuan (ask anyone living in bankrupted countries).

The boomers are dying (20% gone so far) - - in a few decades everyone else will have inherited everything, and the blame will shift to another name.

Re: Germany news: Childfree adults to pay more for elder care

#162

Post by bigballsbjorn »

jespinel wrote: post #104
bigballsbjorn wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

almost always the case especially in germany where you are already incentivised with super low income taxes, free kindergarten and a shit load of other payments from the goverment. its basically impossible to be poor enough not to afford children unless you are doing it intentionally.

Super low income taxes? The general income tax brackets break down in Germany is as follows: - Up to €12,348: 0% (Tax-free allowance) - €12,349 – €69,878: 14% to 42% (Progressive increase) - €69,879 – €277,825: 42% (Proportional rate) - Over €277,826: 45% (Reichensteuer or "rich tax") Source: https://www.expatrio.com/about-germany/german-tax-system IMO: that doesn't look "super low". A better tax system is the one us…

its low in practice for a family with a single earner is what i meant. ehegattenpsplitting. but yes by default its obviously very high but thats kind of the norm for western countries.

Re: Germany news: Childfree adults to pay more for elder care

#163

Post by bigballsbjorn »

thefz wrote: post #149
bigballsbjorn wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

children will massively compromise your lifestyle, not just financially but they require a lot of "labor" from you. this is probably the most important piece of the social contract and if you are breaking it you should be penalized.

So you want others to be miserable like you, to feel better?

[flagged]

Re: Germany news: Childfree adults to pay more for elder care

#164

Post by bigballsbjorn »

thefz wrote: post #143
myrmidon wrote: post #6

There's a bunch of criticism, but this is in my view the only general approach that makes sense (globally) and should have been done 50 years ago already. IMO a big factor for the whole sub-replacement fertility in developed nations (and resulting demographic problems) is that the state has invalidated/replaced all the economical gain that families got from children (cheap "workers" and elder care), but the chld-rela…

What about taxing the rich instead of putting yet another burden on the young.

again, the problem is demographic. people like you are not able to see beyond the first order effects. if you finance the social system from the rich you will fundamentally not fix the issue. you can't eat euros.

Re: Germany news: Childfree adults to pay more for elder care

#165

Post by laserdancepony »

7bit wrote: post #47
outside2344 wrote: post #21

So the plan is to make the cost of living even more expensive for people without kids? Do they understand the problem in the first place? Many people can't afford to have kids.

They don't. Chancellor Merz has an approval rating of 13 %. The German population almost unanimously thinks that he is doing a terrible job ( https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2026-05/umfrage-bund... ) They have no vision for the future and no idea how to bring Germany forward other that taxing the poor.

[flagged]

Re: Germany news: Childfree adults to pay more for elder care

#166

Post by zrn900 »

bigballsbjorn wrote: post #64
ahtihn wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many people can't afford to have kids Wrong. Poor people have 0 problems having kids. People can afford kids, they don't want to compromise on lifestyle.

children will massively compromise your lifestyle, not just financially but they require a lot of "labor" from you. this is probably the most important piece of the social contract and if you are breaking it you should be penalized.

> but they require a lot of "labor" from you

Unpaid work. If that work were paid enough through tax incentives and state aid, people would have been having children. But it's not. If they have children, they will be working intensely at their day job in an economic environment that expects ever-increasing productivity from everyone, and then doing more work when they get home. Japan did that. People started collapsing where they worked or stopped having children. Now they are trying to reduce workload, increase financial security and increase wages.

Germany set itself on the road to depopulation.

Re: Germany news: Childfree adults to pay more for elder care

#167

Post by em-bee »

bigballsbjorn wrote: post #64
ahtihn wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many people can't afford to have kids Wrong. Poor people have 0 problems having kids. People can afford kids, they don't want to compromise on lifestyle.

children will massively compromise your lifestyle, not just financially but they require a lot of "labor" from you. this is probably the most important piece of the social contract and if you are breaking it you should be penalized.

children will massively compromise your lifestyle

why though? if you feel that way then in my opinion there is something wrong on your expectation of your lifestyle. or rather, on what our society projects what our lifestyle should be like.

but in my opinion we are also doing it wrong. we delay having children for to long, and we spend our 20s either working to hard or enjoying our freedom, and then we have children in our 30s and 40s and then in our 50s we are to old to enjoy the rest of our life. if we had children in the early 20s then they would be grown up in our 40s and we would be able to enjoy our freedom then. get the hard stuff, including raising children out of the way first.

of course, in order to do that, we need a society that values and supports that. and that's what we messed up in the west. in china it is much more normal to have children early, and people are more supportive and tolerant.

Re: Germany news: Childfree adults to pay more for elder care

#168

Post by bigballsbjorn »

em-bee wrote: post #167
bigballsbjorn wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

children will massively compromise your lifestyle, not just financially but they require a lot of "labor" from you. this is probably the most important piece of the social contract and if you are breaking it you should be penalized.

children will massively compromise your lifestyle why though? if you feel that way then in my opinion there is something wrong on your expectation of your lifestyle. or rather, on what our society projects what our lifestyle should be like. but in my opinion we are also doing it wrong. we delay having children for to long, and we spend our 20s either working to hard or enjoying our freedom, and then we have children…

its true tho, basically all the time after working your 9-5 you have to invest into your children. i personally still want to have children in my mid 20s. i don't really care about the downside due to my ideological conviction. but even if you are a rational actor and respect the social contract you must bear the burden.

Re: Germany news: Childfree adults to pay more for elder care

#169

Post by bigballsbjorn »

zrn900 wrote: post #166
bigballsbjorn wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

children will massively compromise your lifestyle, not just financially but they require a lot of "labor" from you. this is probably the most important piece of the social contract and if you are breaking it you should be penalized.

> but they require a lot of "labor" from you Unpaid work. If that work were paid enough through tax incentives and state aid, people would have been having children. But it's not. If they have children, they will be working intensely at their day job in an economic environment that expects ever-increasing productivity from everyone, and then doing more work when they get home. Japan did that. People started collapsin…

why would it be paid? you get the value back through the social contract. monetary incentives for children are empirically proven to be very ineffective. so the ship will go down regardless. why not to punish the culprits out of spite?

Re: Germany news: Childfree adults to pay more for elder care

#170

Post by triceratops »

myrmidon wrote: post #98
SkiFire13 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I'm paying taxes for my pension, and my kids will pay taxes for theirs. I know that the economics don't actually work like this, but this is the social contract.

You need to pay taxes and have kids for the numbers to work out. If your pension benefits are calculated based on a 4 workers/retiree ratio, but then your whole generation has like 1 kid per family then the system will obviously break down...

But why? That would imply a worker 30 years ago produces only as much as a worker today. Which is obviously untrue.
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