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Well, Germany has been allowed to act as the emperor with no clothes for a while now; an economic powerhouse sitting on empty pension chests with an ageing popu

Well, Germany has been allowed to act as the emperor with no clothes for a while now; an economic powerhouse sitting on empty pension chests with an ageing population. To compare pension fund assets: US: $46k/capita UK: $42k/capita Netherlands: $76k/capita Germany: $2.9k/capita http://www.oecd.org/finance/Pension-funds-pre-data-2015.pdf http://www.oecd.org/finance/Pension-funds-pre-data-2015.pdf

1ris 11y ago
Germany does not have such a thing as a pension chest. Pensions are directly paid by the working generation. That has it's problems, but it does also have it's benefits and makes this comparison useless.
- junto 11y ago
  > Germany does not have such a thing as a pension chest. Pensions are directly paid by the working generation. That's only the statutory part though. You are advised to contribute to an occupational and/or private arrangement alongside the statutory scheme. They operate differently. The underlying problem Germany has is the population dynamics. The population is an ageing one. Lots of people are living longer and not enough children are being born to cover the gap. It might be politically unpopular, but importing refugees and successfully converting them to integrated German tax payers, might well be a long term goal of the state in order to stave off the pensions crisis.
  - vetinari 11y ago
    The economic migrants are not going to work and be a tax payers. Even if they wanted to work, there's no work for their qualification. They are going to drain the social support budget and increase the inner pressure in the society.
    - morsch 11y ago
      In the past, 10% of regugees were employed after a year, 50% after 5 years, 70% after 15 years[0]. So it takes a while, unsurprisingly, but your predicitions are not borne out in reality. Of course extrapolating from past experience is just an approximation, so it might take longer; on the other hand there are probably ways to speed up the process. [0] Figures released by a research institute of the federal government. http://doku.iab.de/aktuell/2015/aktueller_bericht_1514.pdf http://doku.iab.de/aktuell/2015/aktueller_bericht_1514.pdf
      - eronhp 11y ago
        Are you really implying that after 15 years, a 30% unemployment rate is a good outcome?
        morsch 11y ago
        I'm not implying anything. I'm saying that the GP's predictions of 100% unemployment after unspecified amounts of time are unfounded and digging up some more reasonable numbers. I suppose a good outcome would see the unemployment rate of refugees converge against the unemployment rate of the non-migrant population (vaguely: 7.9%[0]), or more specifically the unemployment rate of those parts of the non-migrant population with similar levels of qualification (vaguely: 13.3%). Because as these levels converge, it makes less and less sense to think of it as a migration issue and more of a more general labor market issue. [0] Numbers strictly to get a feel for the broad range, the first is the overall unemployment rate in 2011, the second the unemployment rate of people with basic education; unemployment numbers are a rats nest in the best of cases. http://www.bpb.de/nachschlagen/zahlen-und-fakten/soziale-situation-in-deutschland/61724/ausgewaehlte-arbeitslosenquoten-i http://www.bpb.de/nachschlagen/zahlen-und-fakten/soziale-sit...
  - bildung 11y ago
    > The underlying problem Germany has is the population dynamics. Actually the fact that wages stopped rising along with the economy as a whole (e.g. less of the generated profits get payed out as wages) seems to play an important role, too. The retirees represent a cost in absolute numbers (e.g. they are entitled to pension benefits of a certain size). The workforce is collectivly paying out the retirees with a share of their income. That system works fine even with a declining retiree/workforce ratio (which actually shrinks since at least the 1960s) as long as real wages continue to grow along with GDP and productivity. Which they don't, and that's a problem.
Tomte 11y ago
Germany has a PAYGO mechanism when it comes to pensions (which is incidentally the only crisis-resistant and -adaptive kind of pension system). Those "pension fund assets" can therefore only be private pension contracts on top of it.
wobbleblob 11y ago
My colleague from Greece has been giddy as a schoolboy about this story all week. Not quite the roaring, thunderous fits of laughter as with the Volkswagen scandal, but this is still developing.
- Kristine1975 11y ago
  I'm from Germany and the troubles of the Deutsche Bank please me to no end. The only thing I'm scared of is that it will be declared "too big to fail" and bailed out with tax money, while at the same time there's no money for schools, police, refugees etc because Wolfgang Schäuble is obsessed with his "black zero".
  - wobbleblob 11y ago
    Maybe he can propose to sell some of the German islands to cover the bailout.
    - kuschku 11y ago
      And then let Greece pay for the bailout! Good idea. We get rid of Sylt, and Greece has to pay.
      - imarg 11y ago
        Actually Greece has in a way already paid for a bailout of DB (+ other German & French banks). Just before the (famous?) PSI[1], the Greek state (through retirement funds, universities & other public and semi-public institutions) bought off a lot of (Greek) government bonds from these banks. Then the haircut happened. So instead for these banks to suffer the losses, they were moved to the taxpayer. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_sector_involvement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_sector_involvement
  - kuschku 11y ago
    > while at the same time there's no money for schools, police, refugees etc because Wolfgang Schäuble is obsessed with his "black zero". Schleswig-Holstein just decided to drop any plans for the black zero, and doubled the funding for new police recruits. Additionally, we decided to also build more schools. And fix the infrastructure.
dangerpowpow 11y ago
That is because pension is handled differently in germany?

1ris 11y ago

Germany does not have such a thing as a pension chest. Pensions are directly paid by the working generation. That has it's problems, but it does also have it's benefits and makes this comparison useless.

junto 11y ago
> Germany does not have such a thing as a pension chest. Pensions are directly paid by the working generation. That's only the statutory part though. You are advised to contribute to an occupational and/or private arrangement alongside the statutory scheme. They operate differently. The underlying problem Germany has is the population dynamics. The population is an ageing one. Lots of people are living longer and not enough children are being born to cover the gap. It might be politically unpopular, but importing refugees and successfully converting them to integrated German tax payers, might well be a long term goal of the state in order to stave off the pensions crisis.
- vetinari 11y ago
  The economic migrants are not going to work and be a tax payers. Even if they wanted to work, there's no work for their qualification. They are going to drain the social support budget and increase the inner pressure in the society.
  - morsch 11y ago
    In the past, 10% of regugees were employed after a year, 50% after 5 years, 70% after 15 years[0]. So it takes a while, unsurprisingly, but your predicitions are not borne out in reality. Of course extrapolating from past experience is just an approximation, so it might take longer; on the other hand there are probably ways to speed up the process. [0] Figures released by a research institute of the federal government. http://doku.iab.de/aktuell/2015/aktueller_bericht_1514.pdf http://doku.iab.de/aktuell/2015/aktueller_bericht_1514.pdf
    - eronhp 11y ago
      Are you really implying that after 15 years, a 30% unemployment rate is a good outcome?
      - morsch 11y ago
        I'm not implying anything. I'm saying that the GP's predictions of 100% unemployment after unspecified amounts of time are unfounded and digging up some more reasonable numbers. I suppose a good outcome would see the unemployment rate of refugees converge against the unemployment rate of the non-migrant population (vaguely: 7.9%[0]), or more specifically the unemployment rate of those parts of the non-migrant population with similar levels of qualification (vaguely: 13.3%). Because as these levels converge, it makes less and less sense to think of it as a migration issue and more of a more general labor market issue. [0] Numbers strictly to get a feel for the broad range, the first is the overall unemployment rate in 2011, the second the unemployment rate of people with basic education; unemployment numbers are a rats nest in the best of cases. http://www.bpb.de/nachschlagen/zahlen-und-fakten/soziale-situation-in-deutschland/61724/ausgewaehlte-arbeitslosenquoten-i http://www.bpb.de/nachschlagen/zahlen-und-fakten/soziale-sit...
- bildung 11y ago
  > The underlying problem Germany has is the population dynamics. Actually the fact that wages stopped rising along with the economy as a whole (e.g. less of the generated profits get payed out as wages) seems to play an important role, too. The retirees represent a cost in absolute numbers (e.g. they are entitled to pension benefits of a certain size). The workforce is collectivly paying out the retirees with a share of their income. That system works fine even with a declining retiree/workforce ratio (which actually shrinks since at least the 1960s) as long as real wages continue to grow along with GDP and productivity. Which they don't, and that's a problem.

Tomte 11y ago

Germany has a PAYGO mechanism when it comes to pensions (which is incidentally the only crisis-resistant and -adaptive kind of pension system). Those "pension fund assets" can therefore only be private pension contracts on top of it.

wobbleblob 11y ago

My colleague from Greece has been giddy as a schoolboy about this story all week. Not quite the roaring, thunderous fits of laughter as with the Volkswagen scandal, but this is still developing.

Kristine1975 11y ago
I'm from Germany and the troubles of the Deutsche Bank please me to no end. The only thing I'm scared of is that it will be declared "too big to fail" and bailed out with tax money, while at the same time there's no money for schools, police, refugees etc because Wolfgang Schäuble is obsessed with his "black zero".
- wobbleblob 11y ago
  Maybe he can propose to sell some of the German islands to cover the bailout.
  - kuschku 11y ago
    And then let Greece pay for the bailout! Good idea. We get rid of Sylt, and Greece has to pay.
    - imarg 11y ago
      Actually Greece has in a way already paid for a bailout of DB (+ other German & French banks). Just before the (famous?) PSI[1], the Greek state (through retirement funds, universities & other public and semi-public institutions) bought off a lot of (Greek) government bonds from these banks. Then the haircut happened. So instead for these banks to suffer the losses, they were moved to the taxpayer. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_sector_involvement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_sector_involvement
- kuschku 11y ago
  > while at the same time there's no money for schools, police, refugees etc because Wolfgang Schäuble is obsessed with his "black zero". Schleswig-Holstein just decided to drop any plans for the black zero, and doubled the funding for new police recruits. Additionally, we decided to also build more schools. And fix the infrastructure.

dangerpowpow 11y ago

That is because pension is handled differently in germany?