Germany is facing the same demographics problems as the rest of the West.
Aging populations who will want to live off government freebies, with no new workforce coming in to supplement the tax base.
The unpopular anti-immigrant policies are only going to get worse as no Gov is going to come in and actually cut the parasitism so importing people is their only option.
The stability Westerners have known their entire lives is going away. Prepare to protect yourself and your family. 
AI and automation. That's the couterforce.
There are still many unknowns, but it's reasonable to expect it won't just cancel out the reduction in workforce and it won't be free of side effects. But I'm pretty sure it will make many jobs obsolete.
If AI does actually improve into something meaningful, the jobs it would obsolete are the only things Western service-based economies have left after hollowing out its industrial base.
Im bearish on the West, there’s 20+ years of pain to eat on the horizon.
Yes it needs to improve and also probably we need to discover the limits. The way it is bullshiting rn is quite dangerous.
Some of the stuff it does in with media is "gamechanging" and it clearly gets better fast. Not a good news for many artists that found a way how to turn their passion into a living though.
But it also really helps with robotics (from what I have seen), this will enable a new level of automation that will make a lot of manufacturing jobs obsolete.
The aging population gave the government almost half of their money for 50 years to reach the freebie-pension level. My mum for example is getting enough to not have money by the 20th of the month. For this privilege she paid her taxes and other contributions for her entire life.
Your mum participated in a ponzi scheme. Unknowingly, most people don’t understand this, but that’s what this system is.
Retirement needs to change. We need to return to multi-generational family living where the grandparents are heavily involved with the kids and the parents are being productive for the generations below and above.
We cannot fund these statist ponzis, and we shouldn’t be handing kids over to the state for indoctrination - that means being productive and not allowing the State to soak up all our wealth for their bullshit schemes any more. It’s already unsustainable, the sooner we break it the sooner we can get about to fixing it.
Shawn just posted a good article by James Lavish which details the fiscal problems: nostr:note13zjfg3zrj4xl88mk4z9w4287jmpfkhuykqrwn64qg5f8v9hn000sdx44gs
She did and while I was travelling she used to tell me how Germany has the strongest social network in the world and how nobody is ever left behind or not being looked after. This is one reason why the Government has lost its right to collect tax from me. I need my own money myself to support my mother.
Multigenerational family living sounds like a socialist nightmare to me. F that business.
What you get from that is a bunch of little emperor turdbags with grandma hoping she don’t get kicked out.
I’m not saying the current retirements schemes are not ponzies or don’t have a solution but I sure as hell don’t think it’s hoping the grandkids take good care of you.
"We need to return to multi-generational family living where the grandparents are heavily involved with the kids and the parents are being productive for the generations below and above."
💯 Families are the best safety net.
🫂
Can Social Security work? ABSOLUTELY
Unfortunately what it requires in order to be successful are honest politicians...
It is absolutely a fiscally sound concept--it can indeed fund the retirement of an entire country.
But when politicians have the ability to "re-purpose" the funds, and spend them on other projects (because there is a "surplus") than is when the system breaks down.
Don't blame Social Security - blame the politicians!
It cannot work and it never could. It is a fiat ponzi scheme reliant on the constant devaluing of currency and infinite population growth.
Constant devaluation is unsustainable. It spirals out of control with high debt to GDP levels. Productive people exit reducing the tax base, and interest on the debt consumes too many resources.
And the population doesn’t grow when people cannot afford children - that’s why you see the bottom end of the population pyramid in this graphic tapering off.
Ponzi schemes are not fiscally sound concepts. They’re balancing acts which have a finite window until they unwind.
Social Security (as originally envisioned) was essentially an individual retirement plan (i.e. you pay in each month, and over time accumulate enough savings to fund your retirement). It's no different (really) than our modern 401K plans.
Simple math is all it takes to determine the appropriate contribution amounts each month to provide a known retirement benefit at a given age.
As the years progress, that math can be adjusted to ensure all beneficiaries are fully funded (say in periods of high inflation, or low birth rate, when the math and the plan should be adjusted).
Again--it's just math.
What's happened is the US is that the program was a) mismanaged (i.e. bad math, with no / inappropriate adjustments over time) and b) political reallocation of the SS funds for other projects (which is the main reason we're in our current mess).
But the math is relatively simple--the program would just need to be properly managed (and good financial planners do this now every single day).
Just don't trust the government to do it--that's been the problem.
The purpose of a system is what it does.
All this talk of what it could be, or should be, or was originally envisioned as is nonsense. It’s the kind of shit leftists tell themselves trying to justify their good intentions when their desired policies inevitably fuck things up and they want more intervention to fix their last round of mistakes.
If people want retirement money - save it yourselves. You don’t pay into a goddamn ponzi scheme reliant on perpetual currency debasement + population growth.
There is no need for a “system” for this, humanity survived Millenia without one and only started doing this shit in the late 1800s when Statism took off. There is no such thing as “properly managed” when it comes to Statism.
Ah--now I agree with you!!
People SHOULD save it for themselves! That was the original point of Social Security - a recognition that people DON'T save, and then the government stepped in with a "solution".
And the solution *could* work--if set up and managed correctly (which is true)--yet (as with all things government) it was completely bollocksed up.
And at this point, it really is completely broken and quite likely irrecoverable (at least I can't envision a way to recover it).
(And it never really had to rely on population growth and currency debasement--that's just been the "excuse" given for the government mismanagement and theft of the SS treasury for othe projects)
Oh look the curve is flattening
