On that note, I read the paper of Lidner and IMHO he has good points. Germany does not have an issue with income but with spending. We spend way too much for social stuff, especially pensions. The idea proposed by the SDP would fuck every following generation over pretty hard.
And to loose the debt break to funnel that money to the Ukraine is brain dead.
Why does no one tackle overflowing spending for social stuff, insane bureaucracy, abysmal education.
I'm a bit concerned about new elections. That will probably make the CxU the major party, with probably SPD as a junior partner. However, IMHo the whole German political landscape is just FUBAR.
CDU/CSU=old guys sprinkled with new guys that are both corrupt. Scheuer, Spahn, Dobrindt et al. Merz as chancellor. Yeah fuck.
SPU=Give money from the middle class so poor, so they don't have to work that match
FDP=Unfortunately I do not own a Porsche, but generally speaking I find the ideas proposed by Lidner in his paper quite sound
Grüne=Ivory tower and out of touch with working people
AFD=Crude mix between Nazis and just braindead people
BSW=???
+ all the other smaller parties that are just useless
I pay the max amount possible for public healthcare (~1,1k€?) and pay about 1k+ in wage tax. That's just outright insane.
In the meantime, my ex wife gets paid a flat + utilities + some other stuff.
This is all fucked. The EU needs to get stronger, by having a Ungarn Exit and stopping the idiotic expansion to Moldova and the other states that will bring nothing to the table. Instead, they should be made partner, with some benefits, butno voting rights. Oh, and please no Schengen for all of them.
With the shit also going on with the US election this is all just shit.
1. Subventions for VW/other car manufactures: good to secure jobs, but eventually against strengthen of the German economy because we keep failed shot living for some time that is also doomed to fail
2. Energy price, how will he do it without screwing over private households?
3. Pensions: Yeah, the proposed pension packet would screw over newer generations tremendously, just to secure some votes from old people
4. More money for the Ukraine. Use that money to invest in to European Level defense
3. all young screwed with inflation money printing, and laws protecting rich to be rich, not poor become rich. so i doubt any coutry is different now.
2. check out nuclear in france and canada. they are fine. and... it was russia. ao de does not wants to fight it again?
1. yeah, exactly this, as i worked in that oart of de industry for a while.
2. I'm not sure nuclear is a good think. Sure, no CO2, but waste. Also, building them is just ridiculously expensive.
3. Unfortunately true! But the plans of the SPD were really insane IMHO
4. What I meant is that instead of sending anything to the Ukraine just invest in EU level defense.
I'm an entrepreneur with a small business and the FDP is closest to my personal views in theory. In reality, they are just a bit lighter shade of green-socialism than the other parties. Lindner's paper is a joke. Germany needs much more radical changes than he proposed to ensure a prosperous future, but even his very tame suggestions now caused a government collapse.
My payment for public healthcare is also at the maximum around 1k€/month and similar wage taxes. A few days ago I used an unemployment payment / "Bürgergeld" calculator and found out that if I stopped working and instead just got married and had 1-2 kids, I'd have more income after taxes than now. This is completely unsustainable, but nobody in politics talks about it.
New elections won't make a difference, other than taking away some time and focus from the people in power to do more harm to the country. There simply is nobody sensible to vote for.
Germany, and all of the EU in general, needs to hit absolute rock bottom first for new and sensible political parties to emerge.
Personally, I don't want to be around for the ride down, so I'm preparing to leave the sinking ship. Unfortunately thats not easy with enormous exit taxes and much of the western world in a similarly bad state. The US honestly seems like the best option right now.
I wouldn't call it a joke, but rather a starting point. I agree that more radical changes are required. But then again, who will do them? Which party? Yeah, there is none
> and found out that if I stopped working and instead just got married and had 1-2 kids, I'd have more income after taxes than now
That's not possible. Either you lied or didn't fill out the Bürgergeld calculator correctly.
If you make enough money to get to the Jahresarbeitsentgeltgrenze so you pay the maximum of 843.53€ for public healthcare, then you at least should get 3.213€ a month "auf die Hand". If you get you apartment payed and 563€ if you are alone or 506€ if you are married. Yes you get "extra" money if you have kids, but FUNFACT: Kids cost money.
All political landscape is FUBAR. But in part that because there are unlimited different opinions but only a handful of party's. I don't know how Cum-Ex Scholz could get Chancellor and I am ashamed of it, but with E-Fuel-Porsche Linder... You know his company before politics, which he ran into ground was funded in part by the KFW? He wasted more of our money than a village of people getting Bürgergeld.
Yeah sure, the german car industry will be great again with this E-Fuel bullshit and then with lesser taxes the profits will trickle down to everyone.
Have fun with more poverty and richer Billionaires.
enormous exit taxes
much of the western world in a similarly bad state
The US honestly seems like the best option right now
If you give up residency in Germany and own company shares over 1%, you are taxed as if you sold them at the current value.
For private companies, this value is calculated by the tax authority with a procedure called "Vereinfachtes Ertragswertfahren" ("simplified income approach"), where they basically take the average post-tax profit of the last three years and multiply it by 13,75.
The tax you pay on that varies based on your personal circumstances (personal tax rate, church tax etc) but is around 30%.
So, the tax authority values your small company with 100k€ average yearly profit at 1,37m€ and wants you to pay roughly 400k€ exit tax for the privilege of moving out of Germany.
You already paid around 50k€ corporate tax per year to get to that 100k€ post-tax profit. And to pay out the 100k€ as dividends from the company to yourself, you pay another 25% capital gains tax on it, being left with 75k€. So to afford the exit tax, you'd have to save 100% of your profits for roughly 5 years, or less if you are able to save something from your regular salary.
This is very hard to afford under most circumstances, even with installments, and means that Germany quickly becomes a prison for even mildly successful entrepreneurs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expatriation_tax#Germany https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vereinfachtes_Ertragswertverfa...
So, as a "regular bloke" you can leave Germany for better pastures, no problem. But if you are "independently wealthy-ish", they really want to keep you there, to pay more taxes / employ people that pay taxes. Or take the money anyway, make sure they get their "capital gains taxes" so to speak?
25% capital gains tax is actually not that bad other than that Germany has no equivalent of an RRSP and TFSA. Capital gains are taxed as regular income in Canada for example. Your marginal tax rate is quite probably gonna be greater than 25%. To be fair, you only get taxed on half of the gains in many cases. Quoting https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-ca/learn/capital-gains-tax-c...:
As of June 25, 2024, however, you will be taxed on 50% of your annual capital gains up to $250,000. For any capital gains over $250,000, that ratio increases to two-thirds, or approximately 66.67%. Here’s how that would look in real life: Suppose one year you sell stocks for $300,000 more than you paid for them. 50% of the first $250,000 of those gains ($125,000) would be taxed as income. 66.67% of the remaining $50,000 ($33,335) would be taxed as well. So on the $300,000 gain, only $158,335 counts toward your taxable income.
For corporations and trusts, there’s no such threshold: regardless of the total capital gains, 66.67% are taxable
Like it does sound like Canadian departure tax basically. And it's not just about companies as the example above shows. That was just me owning stocks. Any Canadian leaving has to pay departure tax. Basically, when you leave Canada you have to pay tax on any of your investments. A "deemed disposition". Pay taxes as if you had sold, even if you keep ownership. Which if you think about it, makes some sense. For all the country knows, you've accumulated wealth without ever paying capital gains tax, because you never sold and now you leave the country (potentially never to come back but who knows?!), and sell shortly after leaving. Leaving to a country with no capital gains taxes. A year later you come back and retire in Canada like you always planned. Deemed disposition prevents that. Makes sense actually. If you do stay in the other country afterwards, that's none of Canada's business any longer.
The good thing here is that we do have the RRSP and TFSA. So hopefully before leaving Canada I would've paid myself dividends over the years, in a tax efficient way and put those into a TFSA to grow tax free and I won't have to pay departure tax on that (or anything in an RRSP). And an RRSP would AFAIK even be tax sheltered as a "retirement account" under Canada - Germany tax treaties.
(fun thought experiment to move from each of these countries to the other :) )
It does make some sense, yea. The draconic thing is taxing you on a fictitious sale. I wouldn't have a problem with it if it was delayed until you actually sell the shares. There are actually ways to delay it, but they require a collateral.
For example if you can reasonably prove that it is a temporary absence up to 7 years when moving outside the EU, you don't have to pay the exit tax, but need to have collateral.
If you move inside the EU, the exit tax actually clashes with the EU's free movement directive and I think there are pending court cases for this up to high levels.
So if you move within the EU, you can delay indefinitely without interest, but they will still require a collateral. And if you want to leave Germany, you'll usually also want to leave the EU for the same reasons...
Switzerland is an option because due to various bilateral agreements, it is treated similarly as other EU countries.
Its funny that you mention this Canadian departure tax on stock holdings. Because just a few weeks ago the German government actually enhanced the exit tax and it now also applies if you own more than 1% OR 500k€ in a _single_ investment fund.
Supposedly this is to close loopholes around creating family-owned investment funds to get around the exit tax.
But as we all know, once a new tax is there, it will never go away. Easy enough to lower the limit or apply it to all holdings in the future.
Fictitious sale = deemed disposition. Same thing. If you can't pay the tax from cash you have lying around you will have to actually sell some of the investments.
Now I do get that selling a business might not be as easy as selling (part of) a liquid stock. But take the real estate example again. Selling your real estate empire seems much harder than selling some of your NVDA shares to pay the tax. If you aren't prepared to sell your business though and you want to hold onto it, why would the government be inclined to believe that you really want to leave and never come back so to speak?
No idea. And for a corporation (GmbH) in Germany, it would actually be trivial to track and control this, since the ownership transfer is only possible through a notary public and only becomes legal fact after its published in the public company register. So put a flag on it, and when that transfer shows up, just block it until the exit tax from when you left is paid.
My point is that it's very understandable that the government doesn't just trust that you'll pay your departure tax at some future later point, once you've been able to sell your business, in say like 5 years from now, or maybe 7 or like never ;)
I'm not trying to argue that everything is rosy. Just trying to see both sides so to speak. In a non-ideal world. Where not everyone is like you, who'd actually pay his taxes as soon as they were able to sell but they just really really want to leave like now.
I agree with your point that the government generally doesn't trust me to pay at some point in the future. Blocking the ownership transfer for a corporation like I mentioned above would be one way to ensure it though.
But there's no incentive for them to do that.
Could you explain what you're talking about here? "It sucks to be poor", that makes sense. But being gay doesn't matter imo and I fail to see how other (western) countries are much different.
I generally have similar feelings about your other points, but don't have personal experience there.
That said, we are talking about this in context of Germany, where you are correct in that women's rights are less enshrined than one might think of in such a country. And especially in AfD country you don't want to be seen going off to party at CSD. Being gay in the middle of Berlin I guess is akin to being gay in the middle of a metro city in California, while being gay in the middle of the Thuringian forest is like being gay in the middle of certain "flyover states".
Also, you wrote CDU is corrupt, but FDP feels as corrupt as CDU. At least it looks like working for FDP lead ministry pays off [2][3].
It just feels morally wrong to try to cut social spending when they can't cut spending on their side. Also, pensions for governance worker are pretty high too.
(sorry for German sources)
[1] https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/gerda-hofmann-finanzm...
[2] https://www.merkur.de/politik/schuldenbremse-bundeshaushalt-...
[3] https://www.stern.de/politik/deutschland/finanzministerium--...
Honestly I have no clue who to vote for. I guess we will get a GroKo again, which is utterly retarded, SPD has to go to. Their pension packet is just insane.
We spend way too much for social stuff, especially pensions
Germany told everyone that they needn't worry about their pensions. The government has got your back. We take care of it.
Norbert Bluem - "Your pension is safe!"
Shortly after they introduced legislation that would make pensioners pay tax on their pension income. Something that was "not a thing" before. They also basically told those people that would now have to pay tax on their pension income that they "should've had private pension plans already anyway".
Oh and they introduced multiple ways to help insurance companies steal people's money. "Riester Renter" and such. Not a good deal at all. Oh and there's no way to save money in a tax advantaged way without using insurance companies. No self-serve investment 401k or RRSP. It's all employer and insurance tied.
Way to fuck over your population.
There are sometimes complex connections between cause and effect. It is not enough to just have the right intention.
Just had a longer discussion with my wife just now why this is.
So many discussions in Germany revolve around ideology and not what’s best in the situation right now.
Germany is in a really dire situation now by the way. Car production is about 17% of GDP and sales for all their brands are declining steadily. Especially Chinese sales are going down fast. Relatedly, Xiami is now one of the fastest cars on the Nordschleife. But the German government doesn’t seem to have any solutions. Yes close power plants. Oh wait they have now the highest electricity prices in the whole of Europe.
And this is while their education system is fine. Young German engineers are great I think. I’ve seen many great German open source developers. Especially of course the creators of Typst.
Your response included the statement: "The left wants to chemically castrate gay teenagers and ban single-sex gay spaces." - I don't think that's a response made to the strongest plausible interpretation of mschuster91's post.
Yeah, like stripping away LGBT rights or abortion? The far-right, no matter if we are talking about the US, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Argentinia, Israel or the UK, has clearly stated what they want to do, and they have shown in more than enough cases (Argentinia, USA, UK) that they are willing to throw the entire nation under the bus for their ideological bullshit! And the people have suffered horribly for the foolishness of their fellow countrymen.
These are ideological battles which are specular to those of the left. All these laws to extend and protect LGBT rights? Marginally useful only to a small minority (which should be already protected in its fundamental rights by the normal laws) but great to avoid talking about difficult issues: how to go against established interests to improve the economy, how to modernise administration so that is more efficient and cheaper, etc.
German education system is not as fine as it used to be. It might still be fine at the later high school and university levels, but earlier school classes now often have a majority of kids that don't speak German, holding the whole class back. In parts of problem cities like Berlin there are even classes where no kid speaks German. We don't have enough teachers and the ones who are still there are frustrated and overworked.
Nope, that's not the problem. My wife is a teacher. Schools where teachers don't go on the toilet because it's so fucked up. That's the problem. But we need to reduce money there, because we need more tax breaks.
Not sure where you got this number. Actually it's been between 4% and 5% for the last couple of years.
This is my source: https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/exports-by-category
295B for “vehicles other than railway, tramway”.
I don’t know where the 17% on that page comes from. It’s indeed 6% if you compare it to GDP (4.4T).
I'd say it's the same in both parties
Best is subjective, some care about human rights, some care about their children, some care about people other than themselves and others don't care and frame everything they don't care about as ideology.
https://www.politico.eu/article/nuclear-reactors-germany-inv...
https://montelnews.com/news/652d5434-12f1-459b-bec5-8c1236f3...
> Starting at 11:58, from behind a bulletproof shield, President Trump gave a speech, declaring that he would "never concede" the election, criticizing the media, and calling for Pence to overturn the election results.
Just reading about the whole thing again on Wikipedia is appalling beyond belief. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_6_United_States_Capito....
“The electoral ballots have been compromised, Congress is in disarray with its leadership killed. I’m staying in office for the duration of this emergency, and the states will decide on a process to select new electors, or the House of Representatives will elect the next president per its Constitutional authority.”
Peaceful transition of power is the most important factor in the long-term stability of any system of governance. Whenever a leader loses legitimacy or dies, there must be a process to select a successor. If the outcome of the process is contested, the system is at a high risk of collapsing in the power struggles of its elites. It's far more common for a state to fail due to internal power struggles than external threats.
To imply that the US is an "unstable democracy" is laughable.
Instability does not mean that a collapse is imminent. It means that further shocks may cause a collapse more easily than in a stable system. It makes a collapse more likely in the long term, which in this context means something like a human lifetime.
Abandoning a non-functioning government and calling new elections is part of democracies. Just ask the Italians (68 governments in 76 years), or recently the French and the Brits.
When each and every government is non-functioning, I'd say that democracy is already destabilised or broken.
de lead of that 2-3 team was putting some integration tests ignored and unignored several times during that time as stabilisation effort, sure they were not stabilized.
team we dependent on for car data lagged behind for month all time, and people were pieced off when i was going to sent prs to their code to speed up things.
It may not solve all of Germany's problems but at least you'll energize the construction sector, alleviate the housing crisis, learn how to finish a construction project on time and you'll have to remove some bureaucracy to reach the deadline. Build them with EV chargers outside and you'll help VW too.
But I agree, doing something like this would address quite a few issues people have.
Which party would tackle that though? I can't think of any.
Rents skyrocketed, utility bills getting more expensive, waiting twice as long for a doctor? Well that's not my problem, is it pleb?
It'd be one thing if they were actively clearing the path for it to minimise impact. Preemptively clearing land and building hospitals etc.
But that would imply something about these people that they definitely are not. Ruled by the worst among us.
“To put their impact in perspective, in 2018, the average per capita fiscal contribution of first-generation immigrants was $16,207. In contrast, the average drain was $11,361, resulting in a net positive fiscal impact of $4,846 per immigrant in 2012 dollars. Multiplied by the number of immigrants present in 2018 (45.4 million), this amount results in a cumulative net fiscal impact of +$220 billion. Adjusted for inflation, that number is 1.2 percent of U.S. GDP in 2018 ($18.7 trillion in 2012 dollars) and 3.7 percent of all 2018 government spending ($6.031 trillion in 2012 dollars). The former number is roughly in line with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s 2006–2018 estimates, which are 1 percent for the United States and between plus or minus 1 percent for most OECD countries”
And
”The Cato Model finds that immigrant individuals who arrive at age 25 and who are high school dropouts have a net fiscal impact of +$216,000 in net present value terms over the next 30 years, which does not include their descendants. Including the fiscal impact of those immigrants’ descendants reduces those immigrants’ net fiscal impact to +$57,000. By comparison, native-born American high school dropouts of the same age have a net fiscal impact of −$32,000 that drops to −$177,000 when their descendants are included (Table 31).”
I've been living in Germany for a while now and have been trying to understand German politics in that time, including this whole concept of coalition governments and the crisis the Ampel is facing. Due to the latter, I came across this: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-could-face-snap-election/a-704...
In this article are statements such as (emphasis mine):
> Brandt called for a vote of confidence in the Bundestag with the aim of losing it, so that his chancellorship could be reconfirmed by voters in fresh elections.
> [Kohl] called for a vote of confidence, which he, too, deliberately lost on December 17, 1982.
> Schröder called for a vote of confidence, which he deliberately lost on July 1, 2005.
I just can't wrap my head around these in so many levels. The easier of these questions would be, how can a chancellor deliberately lose a vote of confidence? What makes the action deliberate exactly?
Brandt is a more complicated case to the point where I am, honestly, having a hard time putting my bewilderment into words. I'll try nonetheless: How can a chancellor expect voters in fresh elections to bolster their chancellorship, just right after losing a vote of confidence? I can only interpret this as some kind of political flex, basically telling the Bundestag that "I may not have your confidence but I still have mandate from the people".
(If it is, then, well, weird flex but ok, as we used to say a few years ago. It is a reason after all, even if I find it a bit absurd.)
Perhaps what adds to my confusion is, in Kohl's section we read: "Because Kohl's coalition of the CDU/CSU and FDP came to power through a vote of no confidence and not a general election, Kohl wished for additional legitimacy through a general election" which to me implies that Brandt's strategy would not have consolidated his position as strongly; indeed, the article notes his maneuver was fiercely criticized at the time.
I know I'm an idiot when it comes to German politics so I'd be glad if someone can make sense of my bewilderment. I know there is a lot of subtlety and context I am missing here and I'm sure I'm confusing one thing for another. But I strongly feel like this would go a long way to helping me understand the current machinations of the Ampel.
Just openly telling your coalition to not vote for you.
> How can a chancellor expect voters in fresh elections to bolster their chancellorship, just right after losing a vote of confidence?
I don't think saying "I came into power, but I'am not sure, if you really want me so please vote for me." will have negative effects on your election results.
> I can only interpret this as some kind of political flex, basically telling the Bundestag that "I may not have your confidence but I still have mandate from the people".
The chancellor gives up on forming the government, but it's the parliament's to vote for a new election.
I'd say in general, because his party has gained in the polls since the original election that put him in office.
In Brandt's case, he probably indeed thought that voters would reward him for this "political flex" and selflessness for the benefit of the country. Asking for the vote and thereby risking his own career, but also resolving the stalemate in government after they had their majority dramatically reduced.
I'm guessing that Scholz has a similar idea, but with how much the SPD already lost in polls since the last election, I don't see it going well for them and him. In fact, a majority of people are very unhappy with the government and have been in favor of new elections for months now. His plan of getting "critical" bills passed before Christmas with this minority government won't work. Opposition parties would be suicidal to work with him. So I'd say, the longer Scholz waits, the worse the SPD results will be. He needs to ask for the vote immediately, not in 2 months.