[HN Gopher] German coalition government collapses
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German coalition government collapses
Author : gndk
Score : 39 points
Date : 2024-11-06 21:25 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.euronews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.euronews.com)
| Phelinofist wrote:
| As a German I'm quite happy with this, because the coalition was
| doomed to fail from the start.
|
| 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
|
| Grune=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 (~1,1kEUR?)
| 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.
| Phelinofist wrote:
| Oh, and the speech by Scholz was just taken from a drawer, so
| it has been written for quite some time. So overall this is
| just shady: Lidner wanted structured new elections but now
| Scholz forced this to be some shit show. Also the 4 points
| mentioned by Scholz are mostly 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
| dlahoda wrote:
| 4. what part of money sent to ukraine is actually investment
| to eu defence? trying tactics and seeing arms in actios and
| then selling these to aravia and asia because of good
| reviews.
|
| 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.
| Phelinofist wrote:
| TBH, I'm not sure I can parse your comment correctly, but
| I'll try anyway: 1. I also work for some subsidiary of VW
| and honestly them going down is no surprise. It's
| mismanagement on all levels
|
| 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.
| gndk wrote:
| As another German, I fully agree about the political landscape
| in Germany being FUBAR.
|
| 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
| 1kEUR/month and similar wage taxes. A few days ago I used an
| unemployment payment / "Burgergeld" 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.
| Phelinofist wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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
| blubberblase42 wrote:
| > My payment for public healthcare is also at the maximum
| around 1kEUR/month and similar wage taxes [...]
|
| > 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
| Burgergeld calculator correctly.
|
| If you make enough money to get to the
| Jahresarbeitsentgeltgrenze so you pay the maximum of
| 843.53EUR for public healthcare, then you at least should get
| 3.213EUR a month "auf die Hand". If you get you apartment
| payed and 563EUR if you are alone or 506EUR 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 Burgergeld.
|
| 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.
| SvenL wrote:
| I don't think the issue is spending on social stuff. There are
| more issues like tax evasion - even supported by the ministry
| of Lindner [1]. But I think the biggest issue is spending money
| by employing more and more governance worker. I heard that the
| Kanzleramt employs more people than most of the big companies
| in Germany.
|
| 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--...
| Phelinofist wrote:
| My comment was written with a bit of rage, I might have
| missed some things. So I agree with wealth tax and tackling
| tax evasion. Yes, I also should've added corruption to FDP,
| good catch! Movenpick. Also look at the absolute dog shit
| minister that is Wissing. I also agree with reducing spending
| on their side.
| SvenL wrote:
| I edited my comment also a little bit because I wrote in
| rage. It really feels frustrating the political landscape
| (voting the "least evil" party).
| Phelinofist wrote:
| I think you can also do this before someone replys, so no
| luck there.
|
| 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.
| the5avage wrote:
| As a german imo the real problem is that we replaced reasoning
| with ideology.
|
| There are sometimes complex connections between cause and effect.
| It is not enough to just have the right intention.
| rasmus1610 wrote:
| This.
|
| 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.
| huijzer wrote:
| Same in the US. Especially in the party that now lost. Maybe
| believing in some equality fairyland where everything is fair
| and equal doesn't work. Doesn't work for the US and doesn't
| work for Germany. You need to let crazy people do crazy
| things (within the law of course). Many inventors were
| "crazy" at the time including Einstein, Turing and DaVinci to
| name a few. Maybe in 50 years we will talk about the
| government that forced Turing to take medication against his
| homosexuality in the same way as the woke politicians who
| supported cancel culture. A culture that has caused many
| academics to lose their job and caused even more academics to
| fear speaking up.
|
| 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.
| huijzer wrote:
| To the people downvoting me again. Please come with
| arguments instead of just clicking the "I disagree" button.
| I'll happily be proven wrong but I need someone to do it.
| Just clicking "I disagree" doesn't add anything to the
| discussion. Thank you.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It
| never does any good, and it makes boring reading."
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > You need to let crazy people do crazy things (within the
| law of course).
|
| 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.
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| "stripping away LGBT rights"
|
| Did you mean refusing to take away women's rights and
| protections to hand them to men, and not doing sex
| changes on children?
|
| The left wants to chemically castrate gay teenagers and
| ban single-sex gay spaces. It's them who are anti gay,
| and they're extremists.
| huijzer wrote:
| I don't know about you, but I actually watched interviews
| with Trump and he mostly seems to indicate that he
| doesn't want a nation-wide ban on abortion. It should be
| up for individual states to decide. Although I'm in favor
| of more choice for women, I don't think Trump's stance is
| completely unreasonable. There are already more than
| enough federal rules and some states want to be more
| strict. But you make it sound like Trump wants to strip
| away abortion rights. Please give me a recent interview
| in which he himself clearly said that. Otherwise it seems
| someone else came up with that narrative.
| throw310822 wrote:
| > like stripping away LGBT rights or abortion?
|
| 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.
| gndk wrote:
| > And this is while their education system is fine. Young
| German engineers are great I think.
|
| 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.
| blubberblase42 wrote:
| > but earlier school classes now often have a majority of
| kids that don't speak German, holding the whole class
| back
|
| 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.
| osrmostsis wrote:
| "Car production is about 17% of GDP"
|
| Not sure where you got this number. Actually it's been
| between 4% and 5% for the last couple of years.
| huijzer wrote:
| Thanks. I think you're right.
|
| 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).
| baud147258 wrote:
| > Same in the US. Especially in the party that now lost.
|
| I'd say it's the same in both parties
| p2detar wrote:
| Perhaps it's time to integrate LLMs into politics. Not sure
| that I'm even joking at this point.
| killjoywashere wrote:
| So, destabilized democracies seems to be the theme of the early
| 21st century: the UK (Brexit), the US (twice) and now rumbles
| from Germany. Great
| pc86 wrote:
| What is unstable about the US?
| nilsherzig wrote:
| Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't Trump's followers raid the
| capitol last time (with his approval)? Seems unstable from
| the outside
| stickfigure wrote:
| One of them was shot and more than 600 were sent to prison.
| Seems stable enough to me.
| gmueckl wrote:
| Stable democracies hand over to new governments without
| bloodshed. Any amount of violence in the process is too
| much to count as stable.
| nosianu wrote:
| This is not destabilizing this democracy. The FDP has done that
| same thing before - twice! In 1966 and 1982.
|
| 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.
| gmueckl wrote:
| The problem is that the far right is ready to exploit that
| situation with their broken populist rhetoric and look to
| gain massively from it. Currently, they are the second
| biggest faction behind the conservatives in the polls. All
| the moderate parties have so little support that the only
| coalition government options are the ones that couldn't stop
| this growing trend of disillusionment and protest voting in
| the past.
| throw310822 wrote:
| > Just ask the Italians (68 governments in 76 years)
|
| When each and every government is non-functioning, I'd say
| that democracy is already destabilised or broken.
| dlahoda wrote:
| i once was working for bosch contractor. they have team of 2-3
| people doing in half year less work than i am in one month, and
| yet payed 2x less.
|
| 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.
| cryptica wrote:
| It's frustrating to watch governments constantly argue over what
| they should do to help the economy when what they should be
| arguing about is what they should undo to stop hindering the
| economy.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| If the future German Chancellor is here, here's my proposal for
| your new campaign: "We choose to build one million affordable
| apartments in four years, not because it's easy but because it's
| hard".
|
| 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.
| Phelinofist wrote:
| Haha, yeah, forget it. Too much bureaucracy.
|
| 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.
| trhway wrote:
| Interesting that 2 similar problems - water rise and population
| increase - are treated that differently, i.e. it is considered
| normal that the government would build levies/etc. while the
| government building housing is an abomination.
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