Europe

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.

Pensions, retirement benefits, and long-term care add up to roughly 40% of the German social budget, while 23% goes toward healthcare. That's already 63%.

Approximately 10% is spent on supporting children and young people (with problems), and about 5% on child benefits and the like.

AND ABOUT 4% IS SPENT ON CITIZENS' WELFARE, AND THAT'S ALL WE'RE DISCUSSING?

When Merz calls for the welfare state to finally be modernized, he only wants one thing: redistribution.

From the bottom up. Merz and his co. have just significantly increased pensions and retirement benefits with a lawn sprinkler, while tax increases for the rich are ruled out! And no one seriously believes that inheritance tax will ever become a real tax that also affects billionaires.

Budget figures here:

https://www.sozialpolitik-aktuell.de/files/sozialpolitik-aktuell/_Politikfelder/Finanzierung/Datensammlung/PDF-Dateien/abbII2.pdf

More Facts:

48 billion euros still flow into fossil fuel subsidies every year.

The absurd company car privilege (Dienstwagenprivileg) costs 13 billion.

100 billion is lost to the state because tax loopholes for corporations and the wealthy aren't closed.

• Three separate health insurance systems that could be unified
• Still no reinstatement of wealth taxes
• Underfunded prosecution of tax evasion, which could collect millions and billions
• Ease entry and participation of immigrants in the job market (instead of preventing them from working for months and years)

It's so simple. But of course, Merz is doing politics for the very rich. No surprise there. Talking bullshit.

/edit: Adding a fourth simple action.

I’m sure he will have entirely considered the cost of not doing so, right?

Merz can't no longer be financed - the German welfare state.

Note that Germany hasn't reinstated the wealth taxation since more than 30 years and the inheritance tax is designed in a way to protect rich inheritors, so people who inherit hundreds of millions or billions usually pay no or a rather small percentage of inheritance tax, while people who inherit a few millions pay upwards of 30% on it.

Because of the lacking wealth taxation, there is no proper knowledge of how rich the rich in Germany actually are. The 1970s marked the end of the "Wirtschaftswunder" the time of rapid economic growth. Nonetheless since 1980 the real economic output has increased by 230%.

It isn't a matter of affordability for now that the social security is being attacked. It is a matter of political prioritization to enrich the rich and fight the middle and lower income people. In the longer run we will also see a huge demographic issue as there simply won't be enough people to keep working in the industries, but more importantly for social security in the healthcare and eldercare.

All of this was and is predictable. It has been matter of "discussion" since more than 30 years. Every government since then chose to remain inactive or work to make things worse. Doesn't matter if led by the CDU/CSU or SPD and doesn't matter if the coalition partners were Green or FDP (ultra-neoliberals). They all worked together to bring us here and now they get to reap the reward of neoliberalism in the form of rising fascism.

Lower taxes, keep potential workers from foreign countries out, complain about demographic change and fiscal limitations. CDU creates the problem and then complains about it. Next wave of privatization incoming I guess.

CxU can no longer be financed.

Edit: I know this is a stupid retort but they are so obviously and actively working against us people living in Germany it's agonizing to watch how thoroughly they pave the way to a coalition with AfD. I hate Merz, the asshole rapist apologist so much..

We have a bit of money left. We can finance the car industry that failed to shift to the modern world... Or the social system everyone benefits from.

Merz chooses cars.

Whenever someone suggests to raise taxes for the super rich billionaires, the conservative answer is:

he stressed there would "not be any increase in income tax on medium-sized companies in Germany with this federal government under my leadership,"

which is super effective in a country where everybody thinks they are "middle class".

The problem right now is that the baby boomers are retiring, but are still to young to die. In Germany the baby boom was between 1955-69. So with the current retirement age of 67, that means that they started retiring in 2022 and it will end in 2036. With a life expectancy of about 80 in Germany, 2035 is also, when they really start to die. Retirement is really the big cost factor of the welfare state, so this is an actual problem.

However many will choose to retire a bit earlier using savings or some laws, which allow one to retire four years earlier, for lower pensions, if one for fills certain criteria.

This obviously increases costs and hurts the economy as fewer people are working. However the ration will start to improve in a decade or so and there are other reasons for the economy doing poorly, such as the transition to EVs.

Anything we can do, we can afford.

will not*

putting him on course for a possible clash with the SPD.

I am sure there is a party willing to help if the SPD objects. Of course the CxU would never cooperate with them, because the SPD will not object.