Recommendations of the Editorial team
Last week you could read everywhere that the government coalition’s pension dispute had been settled. So everything is fine, happy holidays and a happy new year? Not quite. The legislative package only regulates some aspects of old-age security. The actual directional decisions are yet to come. And everyone who didn’t happen to inherit or marry rich should quickly form an opinion on them.
“The pension system needs to be reformed” is a commonplace that most people can agree on today. Yes, the demographics! Politically this is banal. Because it’s not the question of what’s exciting that’s exciting Whether a reform, but after the How. It’s like being in a shared apartment that hasn’t been cleaned for a long time: everyone wants the mess to be cleaned up. But who is supposed to clean the toilet now? Or do you need a cleaner?
Our German shared apartment has the resources of time, money, manpower and risk to solve its pension problem. What now needs to be clarified is who should spend or get more or less of it in the future. If you follow the canon of most talk shows, editorials and association conferences, then there is actually only one way to reform pension provision in Germany: work longer, reduce pension levels and have a lot more funded private pension provision (in the future with more investment risk). What has to, has to.
Really? You don’t have to reject all of these proposals to realize that economic self-interest is being sold to us as a solution with no alternative.
The insured bear the costs
Increasing the statutory retirement age is clearly in the interests of employers. The population rejects this; in the current ARD Germany trend, 81 percent are against pensions at 70. A falling pension level would only have a negative impact on employees, because the purchasing power of their pensions would decrease. As a result, this is also clearly rejected in the German trend (76 percent against).
And the funded private pension provision? In principle, you don’t have to condemn them at all. But if it is touted as a gap-filler for a declining statutory pension, then the profiteers should be named without foaming at the mouth. On the one hand, there are employers who still have to pay half of the contributions for statutory pensions, but nothing for private pensions. And on the other hand, it is the financial service providers who get millions of customers for their business models. Meanwhile, the insured bear the costs and the risk.
A critical spirit is a good everyday companion. Isn’t it funny when the head of the employer-financed IW Cologne is at the magazine’s “Wealth Building Summit” sponsored by banks and asset managers?“Capital” sits and complains that politicians are making it too difficult for private pension products through high security requirements? And if the IW Cologne subsidiary INSM all accompanied by an expensive social media campaign?
Tip for the pension talk shows
It’s also cute how neo-brokers, fund companies and Frank Thelen appeal to the federal government to create “easy access to the opportunities of the capital market” – of course “tax-optimized” – while they (rightly) dismiss the Riester pension as inefficient. This is now worrying DVAG again, which makes good money with bad Riester contracts and wants to continue doing so. She has donated millions of euros to the CDU over the last few years and added another 180,000 euros in October. Better safe than sorry.
Where hundreds of billions of euros have to be distributed, no prisoners are taken in the fight for future market shares. For the pension talk shows in the coming months, I therefore recommend a few key questions with regard to the guests: Who is the person speaking for? What are the economic interests of the employer, its customers or donors? And how likely is it that the person will be dependent on a stable statutory pension in old age? All three together form a good spam filter against the worst nonsense.