201–210 of 216 posts
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> german pensions specifically rise with wages Is that because higher earners make higher contributions to the pension plan?
No, it is because pensions are scaled (yearly) proportionally to wages (simplified, the actual process is more complicated)
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No, it is because pensions are scaled (yearly) proportionally to wages (simplified, the actual process is more complicated)
People automatically get a higher pension because they make more money? Without actually paying more into the system? That's an obviously flawed and unfair system, bound to fall over no matter what.
Retirees then get paid based on how many points they have.
Both the worth and the "cost" of those points scales with average income every year.
This basically autocompensates for inflation and rising wage levels, but decreases in population size are problematic.
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My point is that this is not a case of "the rich took all the money so we can no longer pay decent pensions", even stripping "the rich" of everything couldnt prop the system up for long at all. I'm very much in favor of more progressive/capital gains taxation but thats not gonna fix this problem.
> stripping "the rich" of everything couldnt prop the system up for long at all I'd encourage you to think about what this actually means. When you say "stripping the rich of everything", what do you imagine happens to the factories and labs and patents and copyrights? Do they immediately cease to provide enough food and shelter and clothing for everyone just because they changed hands? The problem with actually doin…
The narrative "rich people took/take all the money that's needed for pension funding" is simply incorrect, and that is what I primarily wanted to argue against (the pension funding problem is an order of magnitude bigger than wealth inequality right now).
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waiting to be “financially ready for children” before having them is objectively a poor decision
"poor" is a subjective, not an objective property of a decision. I never do anything without being financially ready. I'm a big believer in only commiting to something when I have the cash to allocate for all of it. I wouldn't buy a car, house, anything without actually having the cash for it.
it’s more like getting into a cold swimming pool, you’ll never be fully prepared you just need to jump in
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…
Society pays a lot for children as well. Including members without children.
People who are not flying are also financing airports from taxes.
This is why butthurt "childless pay taxes for schools but not using them" is super stupid
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They voted and paid taxes based on a deal that was presented to them, in writing. Now the deal is being changed.
Deals kept changing, both the economy and politics never kept the same line over time. We even vote every few years for a deal presented in writing and it never turns out as written, so I'm not sure why some folks could claim with a straight face whatever historical promise. And let's be honest, there was never a "written deal", ever - what you mention here is simply an expectation building up for the last decades an…
They updated the law and the contract meant nothing. I mean, he and other teachers occasionally, through long term and sometimes very wide strikes, got some new policy struck down. But never through the courts. They won several court cases against the government, mind you, that was not the problem. But the government simply voted in a new law, including a stipulation that the court case result meant nothing (because of course a bunch of people were owed back pay due to the court's decision. Out of over 10.000 teachers that got court judgements against the government, TWO got paid what the contract explicitly said over 1 million teachers had a right to)
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> stripping "the rich" of everything couldnt prop the system up for long at all I'd encourage you to think about what this actually means. When you say "stripping the rich of everything", what do you imagine happens to the factories and labs and patents and copyrights? Do they immediately cease to provide enough food and shelter and clothing for everyone just because they changed hands? The problem with actually doin…
I'm not arguing against wealth taxation, my point is just that the amount you can extract that way is too small relative to pensions, even under extremely generous assumptions (in Germany, you'd need a ~7% yearly tax on all wealth to pay for pensions, which would be super insane compared to the income-based scheme used now). The narrative "rich people took/take all the money that's needed for pension funding" is simp…
That's also how much the stock market grows by on average.
An excellent, apolitical(*) video from Kurzgesagt about the current situation in Germany: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-gYFcVx-8Y It explains how we got there, the problems we are facing, the problems inherent to the proposed/possible solutions, etc. (*) as in, they really try hard to stay neutral on the topic until the end, in the clearly marked conclusions and opinion section.
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It... literally is? How much money did families spend on computers and phones in 1980? The snarky nonsense is not helpful, or appropriate, for this forum. Do better.
> It... literally is? It.... literally isn't? the cost of computers are lower today (in today's dollars) than they were in the 1980s and 1990s? https://www.chicagotribune.com/2021/09/20/cost-of-a-computer...
Obviously it's not about just computers. The point is we spend more on this stuff than we did in 1980. That is a fact.