“Young generation has to pay”
Junge Union criticizes excessive pension increases
March 20, 2024, 1:16 a.m
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Labor Minister Heil calls the significant adjustment in retirement benefits for the summer good news for pensioners. The Junge Union warns that the burden is being shifted unfairly onto the younger generation. JU boss Vogel speaks of the traffic light’s denial of reality.
The head of the Junge Union, Johannes Winkel, sharply criticized the pension increase and called for future adjustments to be based on inflation instead of wages. “Politicians must return to a fair distribution of the high pension burdens. To achieve this, pensions must in future be based on price developments instead of wage developments,” said the CDU politician to the Editorial Network Germany (RND). “It is clear that pensioners also have to make a contribution. The traffic light wants to release pensioners from financial responsibility by ensuring that pension increases will only be financed by the younger generation in the future,” warned Winkel.
Winkel warned that politicians are engaging in a “breathtaking denial of reality” when it comes to financing pensions. “We have been experiencing a pension boom for years,” said the CDU politician. “Since 2010, these have increased by 32 percent in western and 47 percent in eastern Germany. Now the next increase of 4.57 percent is on the horizon,” he criticized. According to Winkel’s proposal, the pension increase this year would have been smaller. Pensioners in Germany will receive a 4.57 percent increase in their salaries as of July 1st. The Social Democratic Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil explicitly pointed out that the pension adjustment was “significantly” above the inflation rate. This is good news for pensioners.
Pension expert sees generational conflict coming
The pension expert Bernd Raffelhüschen also criticized that the traffic light’s pension policy was at the expense of the young generation: “Hubertus Heil is an advocate for the old generation – and not the young ones. There is no trace of intergenerational fairness in the sense of equal treatment here,” the economics professor told the newspapers Funke Media Group. The economist fears a generational conflict because “our children” will not be able to “shoulder the massive increases in contributions” in the long term. At some point, acceptance of pay-as-you-go pensions will dwindle. “Then we get an intergenerational distribution conflict that we have to solve in a way that is fair to the polluter.”
“The cause is the baby boomers who have not had enough offspring,” said Raffelhüschen. “In concrete terms, this means that the baby boomers will have to work longer. The retirement age must be increased as quickly as possible. The contribution must be set at a specific rate. Women must work more in full-time employment. In addition, immigration must be controlled according to qualifications.”
In the equal increase in pensions in East and West there is only apparent equality. “The pension earnings points in East and West are not the same, but are actually higher in the East. East German pensioners who worked in the GDR receive higher pensions than people in similar jobs in the West,” Raffelhüschen told the newspapers.