• geissi@feddit.org
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    11 hours ago

    People keep pointing out the amount of pension subsidies in the federal budget but that is not who Merz is talking about. Pensioners are his core voting demographic.

    No, Merz means social security recipient. People who are unemployed or who don’t earn enough despite working.
    He and his party have been waging a constant, baseless culture war against these Bürgergeld recipients since before he took office.
    They keep claiming that these people are lazy and refuse to work or that social security fraud is rampant. When pressed for concrete numbers they could not name any. Economists have already crunched the numbers and even if you take the Union at their word, the potential savings in the area of social security is minuscule.

    This has nothing to do with finances or good governance. It’s a culture war and a deflection from growing demands to re-introduce the wealth tax and to close loopholes in inheritance tax.

    • pantherina@feddit.org
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      4 hours ago

      Makes sense

      Baseless bullshit as counterargument to force people to be “neutral” and discuss nonexistent problems instead of just discussing how much more rich people should pay. Not “if” and not “what about the poor”