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this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2026
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"Reforms" making the poor poorer and rich richer
Hey, it‘s not only about money, alright? They also keep cutting life quality! That deserves some ‚praise‘ too, no?
Not really, social transfers have not decreased due to the reforms.
The reforms are about a new German business model:
The new pension system could potentially yield returns in some decades.
In the short term, it requires increasing the already high savings rate, which removes money from economic circulation and lowers consumption.
How lower demand is supposed to entice companies to increase investment, is beyond me.
Ah yes, the perpetually 20 years away fusion industry, the “quantum” industry, AI aka the currently biggest bubble in the world, batteries where Varta just went insolvent and the economic minister is actively slowing down the growth of energy storage.
I’d very much like to see these “detailed plans”.
Besides the higher savings rate already depressing demand, neither longer work hours nor modernization of the public sector would increase demand. If you believe in linear productivity, longer work hours could increase supply. But that wouldn’t help the economy because it’s already producing under capacity due to insufficient demand, in particular from abroad because exports were the business model of the last decades.
And please let me know where the higher wages come from. The pension reform will increase social security contributions and lower net wages and I have heard nothing that would increase gross wages.
From the German orthodox economic policy standpoint (only used to supply side interventions), all your points are obvious. I think that explains the pervasive negative bias among Germans about their economy. This is the first time ever Germany deals with a structurally reduced demand from abroad. So the policy response is new in that way.
I'll try to respond to your points.
capital market reforms are largely about how to increase firms and households investment inside Germany vs abroad, and how they invest it. Think of how Swedish pension funds vs German pension funds invest their money. Germany has a lot of savings (no need to increase them) that are badly invested and lossmaking (here you need the policy intervention).
voilà! https://hightech-agenda-deutschland.de/
more hours worked per employee at same activation rate, more disposable income, more household expenditure. More public sector modernization (more construction works for schools, bridges, roads, cables, fleet, IT systems..), more demand.
That may be, but that is primarily a personal finance problem. The economic advantage of such pension funds is that it can provide dividends that can then be spent but that takes time. And these dividends must be created by some form of economic activity, which in international funds happens abroad, not domestically.
The money for investment that capital markets can provide only helps companies that want to grow. Companies only need to grow if they see or expect demand that they can not fulfill with their current capacities. That is for the most part not the case for the current German economy.
As I said before German companies have more capacity than demand. If demand does not pick up soon they will fire people they no longer need. The economy does not need more money in capital market right now, it needs more consumption.
Thanks for that but honestly, these are just fancy wish lists. Their detailed plan for fusion is:
I must admit, I had to look up activation rate. It's not the most common metric in the manufaturing industry where all these endangered jobs are currently. But it seems to me that if workers are supposed to work more and the success metric does not change, then that means effectively less productivity. Surely, if anything, you'd want the opposite.
Yes, both would be great. Now, where exactly are these supposed to come from? As mentioned, the pension reforms will reduce net income.
Again, yes please, but where is it?
Before the government was voted in they quickly negotiated a reform to the debt limit and set up a special fund that was supposed to be used for "additional investment" only. During the last year they moved all already approved investment from the regular household to this fund so they had more room for non-investment spending.
Their detailed "plan" to grow 6 industries actually includes sabotaging battery production on the grid level for their fossil fuel industry buddies, sabotaging battery production in EVs by constantly spouting desinformation about the viability of ICEs via synthetic fuels (same,same...). And every talk about AI and biotech is just a pretense to press the topic of demolishing data protection to sell our medical data (sadly their electronic patient file project is sich a disaster that noone tries to buy the data when it's leak left and right constantly anyway) as well es every other private information. Fusion (alongside fission) is just another fairy tale to keep people doubting renewables, again just to keep the oil, gas and goal burning up.
Could you substantiate your fears with the actual plans? https://hightech-agenda-deutschland.de/