If I were a native German, the following article would make my blood boil. The German mindset and temperament are different from those of an ornery American, however. It seems they’re willing to endure a lot of humiliation and exploitation before taking action to change their collective circumstances.
Many thanks to Hellequin GB for translating this article from the Austrian site AUF1. The translator’s comments are in square brackets:
“No lifetime achievement”: Government adviser wants to abolish widows’ pensions
The economist Monika Schnitzer, chairwoman of the federal government’s panel of experts, absurdly dubbed “Wirtschaftsweise” (Economy Wise), has called for the widow’s pension to be abolished. In doing so, she flatly denies the lifetime achievements of pensioners who have raised children and run the household. However, the “expert” has no problem with the lifelong full support of millions of immigrants.
On the contrary: Schnitzer had just called for the immigration of another 1.5 million supposedly “skilled workers” to Germany, and in all seriousness complained about an allegedly missing “welcoming culture”.
Millions of unskilled migrants, on the other hand, are “welcome”
At the same time, she now wants to reduce the old-age benefits of local women, calling for the abolition of widows’ pensions. This is drawn by four million women after not they, but their deceased husbands, paid for it. It’s set at 55% of her dead husband’s pension.
Schnitzer, who advocates for a policy that smuggles millions and millions of completely unqualified migrants directly into lifelong full subsistence through the social systems, actually justifies her proposal to end widows’ pensions by saying that these are drawn without their (the widows’) own lifetime achievements.
Pension-splitting required
To top it all off, she said: “The current regulation reduces the incentives to take up your own employment.” In addition, “single contributors” would be defrauded, who “contribute to the financing of pension entitlements
for non-working partners, who themselves are not paying into the system”. [What about all those generations of migrants who NEVER paid into anything and are only receiving? But I guess that would be racist, wouldn’t it?]As an alternative, Schnitzer proposed pension splitting, in which all pension entitlements acquired by one or both partners during a marriage should be split in half. As soon as one partner dies, the other would receive half of the jointly earned pension entitlements — plus the entitlements earned through their own work during the marriage.
Denigrated as a freeloader
Schnitzer presented this plan at a panel discussion of the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). She explained that these were only her personal views and not the position of the “economic wise men” as a whole.
The way she reduces women’s lifetime achievement to mere numbers shows how much the standards have shifted, and not only in Germany. Women who have had and raised children, and thus done more for society than the legions of state-paid accommodating scientists, quota politicians and NGO employees who haunt Germany with their non-existent expertise, are now downright degraded by Schnitzer as parasites. [Coming from a “wealthy” parasite that’s calling the kettle black, isn’t it?]
A disrespect beyond compare
She, herself a beneficiary of public money, portrays widows’ pensioners as collecting unjustified benefits for which they did nothing; an unparalleled disrespect. It was precisely these women who were the backbone in the development of the prosperity that is now being squandered at breathtaking speed.
But Schnitzer and her supposedly “wise” colleagues never uttered a single word of criticism. She prefers to work on people who no longer have any lobby and are at best still wanted as pay donkeys for the political madness in Germany.
Afterword from the translator:
That woman has three daughters, but I guess they are ‘career’ girls and most likely will not have children of their own. I wonder if one of those daughters were to become a stay-at-home mom and housewife and raise her grandchildren… Does she want to deprive her for all the work she’s done on her family’s and husband’s behalf? It looks like it.
On the other hand, she has most likely squirreled away quite a bit of “lobby benefits” and with a full governmental pension. No matter how much pension money of the German people they squander on those who never paid into the fund, she’ll live quite comfortably, and her daughters most likely too.
A widow’s pension, for normal Germans, is between 55% and 60% of the husband’s/wife’s pension; that’s not much in my eyes. After all, one person is subtracted from the monthly grocery bill, but all the other costs stay roughly the same. And to get this much, the woman has to be at least 47 years old and a lot of other things besides the red tape to jump through. While these migrants are granted anything they wish for.
Entire villages and hotel-complexes have been built in Turkey by “migrants” over the years with all the benefits they receive from the German government, and now, since they destroyed the goose that laid their golden nest-eggs, they need more money to pay the jizyah, and what easier way for these monsters than to take that money from those who are vulnerable?
Consider the following: the Dutch government raised the age of retirement from 65 to 72 years. At the same time, the progressive parties (who were instrumental for that raise) are very vocal to cut medical expenses on the elderly over 70 years. “As it is economically not viable”.
– You have to work until 72
– Medical care over 70 years is useless.
What does not compute?
Kind of hard to find much sympathy for the Germans affected by this since every chance they get to vote about it they vote for more of the same. As they voted for it all their lives. Perhaps when the AfD is winning elections with actual majorities and not just the largest percent of all parties then I’ll feel they’re moving in the right direction.
My view on pensions and retirement is that it’s shortly to be a thing of the past for almost all persons. The current system is a historical aberration; a generational ponzi-scheme that might have been feasible in the era it was created but makes no sense in this time when those sucking money like vampires from the young struggling to pay their own bills were the ones responsible for breaking the social contract that provided good lifetime jobs and stability. These same elderly were the same ones who created no-fault divorce and then proceeded to jump in and out of marriages, discarding partners and children like they discarded their used condoms. And they also were the ones who shuttered the factories and the mills and shipped them all off to China for a little extra lucre in their 401k’s. They presided over the financialization of everything, preferring to create endless inflation to inflate the value of their assets and inflate away the cost of servicing their debts, both personal and public.
In the German version, the elders created a generous welfare state then imported cheap Turkish workers to help pay for it. Now they’re shocked to discover that the few kids they didn’t abort or use contraception to prevent, and the hordes of orcs they imported in lieu of making their own countries hospitable and affordable places for their children to have families, are unwilling to continue to support the ponzi-scheme?
At any rate, I think when the Greatest Depression finally hits the West along with the end of the Anal Empire and the dollar, there won’t be any retirements in the contemporary sense of the word for almost everyone living in the West for many generations to come.
Would pensions and retirement have been impossible to achieve without the “shuttered the factories and the mills and shipped them all off to China”, “hordes of orcs they imported”, giving away resources through foreign-aid etc?
Yes, it was always a generational ponzi-scheme that relied upon much higher birthrates and a lower number of people reaching retirement age, or expiring shortly after they started collecting it. And benefits weren’t nearly as generous when these programs started as they are now.
A major reason for closing the factories and moving them overseas was management looking to get out of its pension obligations to union workforces, which truly did make costs higher for companies. There should have been pushback from governments against the practice once it started but nothing happened. Corporations were also allowed to change their pension plans from defined benefits to matching 401ks then just 401k without employer matching to now, where many have no pension plans at all.
I don’t believe that its good for society to neglect its elderly in their old age, and this was one of the things that social security in the US and the various public pension schemes across Europe were designed to alleviate. Another was creating a massive bloc of voters who’s income was tied to the decisions of political parties. Perhaps a solution would have been removing the right to vote in federal elections from those receiving federal money.
And like I said, this is a generational contract that has been broken by the elders who were foolish and shortsighted, allowing these things to happen on their watch and now they’re facing the consequences for them. Refusing to have enough children for reasons, not means testing these plans or preventing the benefits from becoming too generous, allowing all manner of corporate chicanery so that they were able to weasel out of their obligations, allowing mergers and consolidations that resulted in the mass layoffs of redundant employees with no pensions as a result while sending corporate board of director pay to stratospheric heights, allowing the financialization of everything which further accelerated offshoring of everything, and lastly, allowing the import of hordes of orcs to replace those native-born workforces or in the case of Germany and Europe, to further destabilize white society with their criminality and increased demand upon public services, these are the proximate causes for the feast of consequences which is upon the west and will fall hardest upon its elders once the collapse really gets going.
There was a list, called the “Teufels Liste/Devils List”, in which one could see how much money the Government “borrowed” – without ever paying it back – from the Pension fund in Germany since the late 1950’s.
That List got “cancelled” in the early 2000’s when Schroeder was chancellor.
At that time they had stolen something like 200 Billion Deutschmarks from the Pension fund.
Imagine what that number is now, and in Euro?
Also, in Germany everybody that was employed had to pay into it and only the self-employed were not required, but could if they wanted to.
Mostly artisans and small business owners took that option and paid through their noses.
The big boys didn’t, and it’s those that did all the damage and benefitted from all of it.
It’s always the same, the little people get skinned and beboned, while the big-wigs get pampered.
Feudalism hasn’t stopped at all, just got re-packaged into “DEMOCKERACY”
Yes, those giant pots of money were always tempting targets for the unscrupulous. Same happened in America with Social Security getting raided for decades by both parties, or I daresay, the uniparty. Now it’s “lockbox” is stuffed full of IOUs like that briefcase from the Dumb and Dumber movie, but the demographic impossibility of it working for more than a generation or two was apparent as soon as the Pill was in widespread use and the high inflation in the 70s and 80s put the scheme into the red. Union bosses also raided the pension funds of private pensions, and many companies just failed to properly fund them in the first place.
It truly is unfair to those who paid into them their entire lives, but collectively they didn’t hold governments and corporations accountable for failing to live up to their responsibilities so now we are in a situation where there’s no money for pensions, no chance of fixing it, and the only real political solution is revolution, burning the existing system to the ground, killing everyone that had anything to do with the mess and confiscating what assets they had. No wonder the elites have bunkers hidden all over New Zealand.
You are quite the militant, blaming ordinary people with no power whatsoever for everything the self-described ‘elites’ have stolen from us, on going even now with the Ukraine fiasco.
You are free with the blaming. I’m glad I don’t know you personally. Usually I find your comments interesting, but this one is just off-the-wall!
Do you like chicken, MM?
Yours is a fair criticism.
I am very opinionated and not afraid to call a spade a spade if I believe it’s warranted. I freely write what I think because there are many more like me with similar views and beliefs but either are not able to articulate them, or too afraid of criticism to put it out there for all to see. Those individuals need to know that they are not alone in their views.
I don’t know you personally either. I assure you that I am not an ogre, and there is nothing exceptional about my appearance except the lack of tattoos, piercings, plugs, brandings, man-buns, unnaturally colored hair, or beer belly. I help old ladies with their groceries, open doors for others, say sir and ma’am, and even brake for squirrels and rabbits.
If I had to guess, I would guess that you’re a Boomer. They tend to take being called out for their terrible stewardship of what they were bequeathed and the disaster they subsequently made of it very poorly. Apparently the truth hurts.
As to ordinary people not being able to influence events that’s true up to a point. Collectively their decisions have a great deal of power, which is how the most spoiled generation managed to first not value what they were handed from their parents, then subsequently destroyed it with their licentiousness through the 60’s, 70’s, and the 80’s when they discovered money making and greed.
If you weren’t a hippy or flower child, weren’t promiscuous or tolerated those who were, didn’t divorce your spouse and abandon your children, didn’t watch the sitcoms or much tv at all, didn’t buy stocks in companies that closed their factories and offshored, if you went to the PTA meetings and held school boards accountable, stayed informed and voted in local elections, and wisely managed the generational windfall you’d received so that there would be an inheritance for your children then I am not directing my criticism and blame at you.
The Long March through the Institutions was the work of Boomers with the conscious intent to destroy the society they’d been handed. The elites didn’t get their power from nowhere. Collective decisions to go along to get along, or to tolerate shameful things, not push back against numerous small things that led to this mess, perhaps watching the crap on tv instead of just turning it off altogether, not being aware of what your kids were being taught and just delegating that job to the schools, or if you were aware of it then not going to the PTA meetings when they were still a thing and raising holy heck or getting involved to get leftists voted off the boards and replaced or home schooling your children instead.
My point is that there were many times and circumstances where a strong stand would have been easy to make and would have made a difference, but now the situation is so far gone that people are getting fired for saying that a man can’t become pregnant, and through generations of morons due to a precipitous decline in education standards following the capture of the institutions the deep state has such control over the levers of power that the only realistic way out is burning the whole thing to the ground and slaughtering the elites and their followers as well.
Yes, I am free with my blaming of a particular generation that left all subsequent ones diminished and saddled with all manner of pathologies. I blame those who don’t fight back, who choose to go along to get along. I blame those Ukranians who didn’t refuse the draft notices, who didn’t kill the press gangs, didn’t rally in the streets of Kiev to demand negotiation and an end to the war but chose instead to tolerate the slaughter of all the men in Ukraine, the Germans who don’t burn down the homes of the judges who release rapists and continue to vote for their occupation. So, yes, I am guilty as charged.
Yes we blame the so called people with no power because they voted for the parties that that did this to us and you are very much part of the problem because you bloody well voted for it!
Compliments to a persisting “Sharp” Mind.
It’s a pity we didn’t defeat Germany the way we defeated Japan. There is something fundamentally wrong with krauts – but nothing a few well-placed nukes wouldn’t fix
Germany/krauts are closer in proximity/culturally to other Europeans (Europe/North America)?
I am making a note.
I blame you bloody GD Brits and your silly games as to why we are here now, for if the Kaiser had won or fought to a draw, we would not have had the 3rd world invading us as we are now making a Balkans on steroids inevitable and a financial crisis that is going to make the Great Depression look like a cake walk, so look in the bloody mirror before you start throwing stones Brit, look in your own bloody backyard as to why we are here now.
If it’s any consolation, childless workers will pay more “Old Age Care” insurance premiums. Sure it’s a pittance, but hey, optics.