For starters, cancel the fucking F-35 order and tell Rheinmetall's lobbyists and investors to shove it.
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Sure it can.
Just raise taxes on the wealthy.
Just fucking start collecting the existing taxes on wealth
They are in the law already, they just haven't been collected in over twenty years
It's like telling people that jump from diet fad to diet fad all they need to do is count calories.
We all know the solution, none of these countries are doing it
Friedrich Merz is Germany's Kier Starmer and if you don't understand what i mean go check on UK and how well they are doing under Starmers government and you'll understand.
Merz is a conservative. They're all like that.
Its crazy to me that the only left leaning party in Germany was split by internal divisions between neoliberalism and progressive politics. How was that even possible when more than half of Germany's voters are left leaning?
Are you referring to SPD? They haven't bothered with actual left-leaning politics for a while. Die Linke is our party on the left, and they are experiencing a renaissance right now, but unfortunately not nearly as much as the far right.
To answer your question: Most German voters are centrists with a mix of vaguely conservative and social democratic views. And they've been exposed to economic anxiety narratives and xenophobic fear-mongering for the past two decades, while lacking the political education to smell the populist bullshit for what it is in a social media environment defined by anti-intellectualism and fake news.
https://www.politicalcompass.org/germany2025
Spd is a right leaning party no I'm talking about die linke
Edit: oops bsw is a russian support operation not a neoliberal party. I apologize for that mistake
Fuck bsw. The split is the opposite of a problem, it was desperately necessary and the catalyst for the Linke renaissance that I mentioned.
I am an outsider who only lived there a long time ago but it looks to me like the party was highjacked by neoliberals in order to split the vote. As far as I can tell German intelligence should have cracked down on both bsw and afd as soon as evidence emerged that they were part of a russian influence campaign. However the neoliberals instead ignored bsw's russian support... this seems to be an obvious attempt to split leftist parties in half. Die linke is one of the last remaining leftist parties in the g7 outside of france. italy's m5s is the other. And these parties seem to be losing to the right because the neoliberals sabotage them at every opportunity
I'm not sure how to make this any clearer: Die Linke is doing so much better both internally and in the polls / results since the fucks from BSW split off that I called it a renaissance twice now. And it was desperately necessary. BSW does not identify as left. Representatives actively reject the label and refuse to even pay lip service to leftist ideals, because they simply aren't left. It's time to let go of the notion this was "splitting the left".
Who really lost big time are the centrists. FDP, SPD, CDU to various degrees. Greens too but less so. Because xenophobic populism doesn't work for them nearly as well as it does for the fascists.
I should have recognized your point. Yes you are right. But I believe that the individual politicians inside of cdu csu sdp fdp etc as well as the bureaucrats inside of the state security apparatus believed that not countering russian propaganda would cleave the left and this may have backfired. Because it is strange that they outed afd as an obvious russian front but not bsw. Ex posto facto reasoning on my part but the other expla ation for the lack of action is that the German intelligence service truly believes that bsw is not a russian front or they think there's nothing illegal about russia operating a fake politician party.
But again I'm a foreigner who doesn't understand the German political system.
Im the usa though they did the same thing when they uncovered a russian influence campaign. They looked the other way and let it all go down (for the most part)
He's not "conservative", he isn't conserving anything. He isn't conserving the living standard of the people. He's just a dumbass posing as a conservative, while actually wreaking havoc on our collective future.
That's conservationists that conserve things. Conservatives work to consolidate power, reinstate kings. Like Donald and the conservative republicans.
I typically abhor violence but i understand if somebody would kill Merz due to him being a danger to the general population. A politician has to help the people, not hurt them. If he doesn't fulfill this one basic task, he's unfit to be a politician. He has to understand that or step back immediately. If he doesn't, he's unreasonable and cannot be talked to logically.
Then how about stopping welfare for millionaires?
Or stop subsiding e.g. plane fuel. Better for the environment anyway.
They should probably be executed for breaking the country's welfare systems.
The passive voice in that statement is doing a LOT of heavy lifting there, Friedrich.
... without the rich paying their share.
Merz can no longer be financed
Creating 1500B € out of thin air to build killing machines: Whatever it takes to protect the country!
Spending 50B € to actually protect the people from poverty/malnutrition/starvation: Nooooo we can't afford that.
Humanity at it's best: Limitless effort to create suffering, 0 effort to reduce suffering.
I suspect there will be many, many 'I didn't think they'd do this to ME' posts coming from German people in the coming months.
Merz is predictable and a traitor to the German people. He will usher in the fascist power grab through conservative policies - the AFD will grow in popularity as conservatives protect the 1%.
Die Linke's tax plan would have paid for the yearly debt of the government and then some; their secret - tax the wealthy.
We can afford all of our costs, we can improve society, we can provide a thriving economy for all Germans if we simply tax the ultra wealthy out of existence. No one should have a billion euro net worth, nor 100 million nor 50 million. No one need own 3 houses while others go without even a flat.
We have enough wealth in this country, it's just in the hands of the hoarders. Don't look towards conservatives or the right for change, look towards those that address the root problem!
All this while systematically crippling our tax investigation departments.
If I ever meet Merz or someone like him, I will have choice words to say.
Words alone have never stopped fascists.
And this is how you further damage democracy and strengthen the far right. Because a lot of the people who don’t vote or vote for the far right are people who feel left behind who are of the impression that the system is broken and they don’t benefit from it. Social welfare is a way to directly show everyone what a democratic state is good for. Policies that benefit the poor, the working class and the middle class make a strong society. But Merz and others simply don’t seem to get it or care and stare in wonder at the ever rising numbers of people who want to see the world burn.
So... The Germans are kicking all the wealthy leeches off their generational welfare suckholes, then?
That's the real "welfare state", NGL... 🖕🏽
Tick tock on the fascism clock.
My partner and I almost moved to Germany last year and I am so glad we didn't. If we're going to be in a fascist country, I'd prefer to be a citizen since white fascists tend to frown extra hard on us brown immigrants.
- Print 1bn in welfare
- Welfare ultimately gets spent into rich folks’ coffers
- Tax that 1bn back out of the rich
- Net cost: zero
What’s “unaffordable” here?
The worry is:
- the german government prints 1bn euros and hands it out to the people
- the people will spend 300m of it to buy furniture, cars, smartphones
- that money goes to companies abroad, to billionaires abroad, and can't be "taxed back"
The solution is:
- literally create import tariffs that make importing goods from other countries more expensive, so people are incentivized to spend money on domestically produced goods
- now the money flows back to domestic billionaires,
- where it can be "taxed back"
It's unaffordable to greedy corporations and billionaires who would not afford the working to have a single dime in their pocket if they had it their way.
Im ashamed for who has become our chancellor. Flying around in his private "middle-class" jet while taxing the poor. Jfc Friedrich, step back
... without finally taking the upper ten percent into the taxpaying fold.
Always has been. "We cannot afford x any more" has been their standard argument for dismantling social security and lining up their own pockets for decades now.
COUNTRY welfare state can no longer be supported
Change COUNTRY for any west European country and this has been said while it CAN be supported but the rich want to get more rich